from
The Fountain-Like Expression of Life
Uranda July 27, 1953 Class
In carrying forward the pattern of Heavenly Magic or the magic of living, I would like to find the right way to help you to a realization of practical function in the Shekinah Pattern of Being. You are beginning to sense it, beginning to know it, but there needs to be practice, there needs to be the development of experience. The maturing expression of experience fills life with richness, with meaningfulness.
We have considered the seven patterns of the endocrine system at various times in various ways, but there still tends to be a sense of something more or less obscure or unrelated to oneself; there is a recognition of the fact and yet, in a larger sense it has not become the reality of Truth, in the sense of design and control—that is, it has not become the reality of Truth to you to the fullness that it should.
I do not wish to open up cycles which we cannot properly carry forward sufficiently in the period allotted to us in the few weeks yet remaining for our togetherness in person, but there needs to be a development of the centering of the mind—there tends to be a scattering of the mind. I have mentioned in time past, what I call a noisy mind. In our class periods, any noisy mind tends to make itself known. Did you know that? A noisy mind reveals itself by its noise, by its failure to function effectively in relationship to the pattern at hand. In order to give a deeper sense of actual function in the pattern of control or dominion, in the realization that the currents of control, influence, the release of power, are working through the seven seals, individually and collectively, I would like to lead, if you will follow, to a point a little later in this meditation period, where we can center attention, let the mind come to point. Now if you start trying to think about the point, you will develop a knock or a noisiness in the mind.
The process of thinking is really quite different from what most people imagine it to be. There must be alertness and real observation, a recognition of the proper way to connect up points and correlate—real thinking involves an unfolding process, but you have to let it unfold. Suppose I gave you a key thought and asked you to all write something, an expression of realization on the basis of this key thought, and all of you had the same starting point, the same key. Some of you might find difficulty in finding anything to write; others would tend to write on the basis of an old pattern, more or less just the expression of words. Some of the points brought out might be quite correct, but the fountain-like unfolding of the essence of Truth which might appear in relationship to the key thought would probably not develop too well with any of you. I think that I can safely say that all of you need to learn to think more effectively. And, if this expression of ideas failed to follow out the fountain nature of the unfolding of the thought, it would show up in more or less crystallized patterns of expression—the arbitrary projection of a particular wording, a particular habit pattern of thought, a particular aspect of your own nature.
You could, some of you at least, take that key thought and just arbitrarily build something, put together ideas and thoughts on the basis of—what shall we say?—what you might think I would want you to do, perhaps. But not the natural unfolding, like something coming out of a fountain. Did you ever look at a fountain, perhaps in lights, and consider its significance? We have seen fountains in various place, whether at a World Fair or somewhere, in some gardens or some particular place—the sense of the fountain constantly flowing, the patterns in which the drops fall or the water falls, depending on the nature of the fountain, how fine a spray is involved, and the play of color, perhaps. Sometimes that play of color may have been just from the working of the light through the water—a rainbow effect from the sun. Other times it may have appeared by reason of colored lights or of a white light, securing something of a rainbow effect—various possibilities—but the bubbling of the fountain.
As the fountain bubbles does it arbitrarily determine this drop shall fall here, this drop shall fall there. If the fountain is so busy trying to make each drop hit just where it should, there would be a lot of drops getting by that would fall without direction. Now I am not talking about something that goes out from under control or that leaves the reality of design. In the true expression of thinking there is something of a rhythm, perhaps sometimes a bit of poetry—something that naturally unfolds. Thinking is not a process arbitrarily imposed upon an idea, it is the bubbling expression of the idea itself. Let us note this principle in relationship to the physical body for a moment.
I pointed out to you that the body, as such, has no choice. It does have the power or the ability to feel pain so that it can object to something that hurts or it has the ability to enjoy some certain sensations so that they are welcome, but the body has no choice. Your body—it has to just take whatever you impose upon it, and because human beings start imposing things on their bodies, the body that has no choice, arbitrary patterns develop and instead of the bubbling expression of the fountain of life there begins to be a pattern of crystallized existence, and finally the fountain dies out. The bubbling, unfolding expression of life ceases, because of the arbitrary impositions exerted from external sources upon the body, and then the mind or the heart may accept some of those arbitrary things and impose them from within. But they are first imposed from external sources, perhaps in babyhood or perhaps even in the prenatal period; perhaps from the standpoint of the genes going back generations, but something imposed from without, which taken within is likewise imposed from within on an arbitrary pattern—and the body is subjected to these things. The body, as such, cannot choose. It may object to pain and seek pleasant sensation, but if the mind and heart are not functioning as true guardians, true comforters, there will be a continued arbitrary imposition of that which produces pain. The human being may say, “But I'm seeking pleasure. I like pleasant things. I like pleasant sensations”—but functioning without regard to the true bubbling expression of life, the fountain manifestation of life, imposes this and that upon his body, seeking to have something pleasant, and it prevents the fountain-like manifestation of life.
Now if we see this in relationship to the body, the physical pattern of life, perhaps it will make it easier to see it in relationship to the mind itself; for in all three aspects of the Shekinah Pattern of Being there must be the fountain-like manifestation of life, the fountain expression with respect to the mind in the processes of true thinking and the fountain-like manifestation of Love as the Fire that burns. If any of you have ever tried to impose love, either to make yourself love someone or trying to impose what you deem to be love upon another when it was not accepted, you found that such imposed substitutes for love are very very unsatisfactory. They do not work really. If there is love, it is because there is a fountain flowing from the inside, and the interchange of love works on the basis of radiation and response, a give and take, an interplay; but some people are like cavities, like caverns, like volcanic pits in the ground. There is a big cavern into which you can pour a lot of life or a lot of love or something, and they may like the sensation while you are pouring it, but nothing ever answers, nothing ever responds. The individual may act insulted if you stop pouring in, but there is no response, no cycle, no interplay, no reality of the fountain. In such cases, you cannot really do anything.
In the true interplay of the vibratory forces of being, there is a sharing; in that interplay, no one tries to get but is so busy giving that the individuals own receiving comes as something special, something delightful, something that you did not try to get, but comes to you as a gift of giving, which you receive. And as you build or rebuild the altar unto the Lord, the body or the soul restored, you begin to share the experience of living with others. It includes all three aspects of the Shekinah Pattern of Being, and it is in the interplay and the experience of that interplay of giving and receiving that we begin to have the pattern of experience which gives maturity, background richness. If we are to have this bubbling up from the fountain, we have to contact the fountain.
The Master made the statement with respect to the Water of Truth, that if we receive of that water, we will never thirst. Why? Because one drink is enough to last a lifetime? No. If you just receive a cup of water and say, “Well now, you will never be thirsty again”, that would be foolish. Why never thirst? Not because it is just a cup of water from the outside, but because by reason of function in relationship to that cup of water, the individual is assisted to a position of finding the fountain, and the fountain bubbles up from within, and if it is there and it never runs dry, if it is always flowing, why should you thirst again? You may get thirsty enough to take another drink, but that is not real thirst—you never become really thirsty because the well runs dry, because there is no water, because there is no fountain—and it is this bubbling fountain which permits the manifestation of the true processes of living, whether in the body from the standpoint of life and healing, or whether in the mind from the standpoint of life and thinking, or whether in the heart from the standpoint of life and feeling—there must be the fountain.
To assist you to find this fountain and to share it, is our purpose here; not to impose something from the outside but to offer something from the outside that will help you connect up with something inside, so that you will be sharing; it will be the expression through you. In order to achieve this end, we have to remove the arbitrary patterns that have been imposed for so long from the outside and which have been accepted inside; the substitutes that man has devised to take the place of the fountain. So often parents impose some kind of an arbitrary pattern upon their children. I am not suggesting that there should not be discipline, government, control, but the individual expression of life must come out according to the design of that individual child, and if the parent assumes to force into a pattern of arbitrary life, it becomes something unnatural, something that ought not to be, something imposed, and it shuts off the approach to the fountain. Now we need not look for a scapegoat and start blaming parents or someone else, but if the fountain is not there, we should begin to seek for it.
The Master said, “Seek ye first”—not secondly, not after you have done everything else you think you ought to do—“Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all of these things shall be added unto you.” What things? Perhaps not the things that you think you are trying to get as of now, but “all of these things” are the things of Heaven, the things of God. Human beings sometimes repeat those words or read them and think, “Well now, the things I'd like to have: a house, an automobile, a bank account, a friend, a change in my husband, wife, parent, someone. I'd like to have all of these things, so if I do this, then these things that I want will be added.” Now that is not what it says. That is not the Divine Design at all. You are not supposed to want in the first place. You can open to a pattern for the filling without wanting in the ordinary sense, but if you want this or that, and think they are going to be added because you say, “Well now, I'll keep an eye on those things, but I'll seek first the Kingdom of God. I'll watch over my shoulder, but I'll seek this so I can get that.” It does not work.
What is the Kingdom of God? It is here. It is the Shekinah Pattern of Being. A kingdom is a place of control, is it not? If there is really a Kingdom in a true sense then there is a king and the king has meaning. He is not just a figurehead. In a true kingdom, the king has some power; the king has some authority; the king exerts some control, and so, the Kingdom of God is anywhere where God's control is felt and known. Seek ye first the Kingdom of God—the place where God's control has true meaning in you and through you. Well now, how shall this Kingdom, this control manifest? In relationship to your body, it must rise up in the pattern of life. In relationship to your mind, it must rise up in the pattern of thinking, the function of the mind, the light that glows. In relationship to your heart, it must rise up in relationship to love, the things you feel and perceive through feeling. So, the Shekinah Pattern of Being which reveals the presence of the One Who Dwells, or God, or God Being, must be the means by which we begin to know the realities that are. If we accept the Shekinah Pattern of Being and begin to seek to come under that control, we are then seeking the Kingdom of God.
Now if we say, “I’d like to have the Power of God so I can do this and achieve that and get the other thing”, we are wrong. But if we say, “I will seek the Kingdom of God, the control aspects of the Kingdom, the Power of God in relationship to my own life; I will seek to let life bubble up in the fountain expression of Being”—with the coming of life there will surely come the control necessary to the uses of life. When life is diminishing we have a sense of something out from under control, and very often the human being becomes desperate and says, “But how am I going to govern my life?” How are you going to govern your life? The government of your life must arise from the source of your life, for if you try to govern your life, you are going to impose something on it that begins to make it diminish. We are not here to govern our lives but to let our lives be governed.
If we have truly found the fountain of life, then the governing factors with respect to the expression of life appear as life appears. The laws are there in advance perhaps, certain principles, certain factors set for the receiving of life, but the actual governing of life must appear with the instant of the manifestation of life. You can not say, “Well now I have all of the controls ready; I’ll go get a chunk of life; I'll bring it over here, get it under control and make it mean something.” You cannot go get a piece of life like you might go get a slice of beef off of a carcass. Life evolves, life unfolds. Life is the child of Love and Truth, and so, as life manifests, in the instant of its manifestation—not before and not afterward—the elements of control with respect to the function of that life appear; they are there then in that instant. If they are thwarted or ignored and not allowed to act, then you have a little current of life which is on a diminishing pattern that is out from under control for the moment, and so the human being tries to impose control or use it.
Do you know what I think of as an illustration in this regard. My little son had, I do not know whether he still has it, but he was very proud of a little squirt gun, a little water pistol, and he would fill up this little water pistol and go squirting it around here and there. The life that comes out of the fountain and is not allowed to manifest in relationship to the control elements that should appear with the manifestation of life goes on out like a little squirt from a squirt gun—little squirts of life out from under control. You aim it this way and it goes maybe a little ways, and you aim it this way and try to reach that, like a child with a squirt gun, a little water pistol—little squirts of life here and there, and after the water squirts out of the pistol you want to control it then, and make it land so, and do so and so, and it is too late; too late, and life gives a sense of being out from under control. We should not be children with water pistols trying to live life.
We should be mature men and women letting life express like a fountain, and with the fountain expression of life, there always appears with life, the elements essential for its own control—if we will let them manifest and be used. If we reject the elements of control, we will have life on our hands without control and it is not so good. You have the little water pistol squirt—no power, no real meaning, no real value. As you stop imposing the arbitrary patterns of control, trying to force life to be thus and so, you will find that there is enough life so that you can afford to let it bubble. You are not going to be afraid if some of it gets away from you. You are not going to say, “I’ll contain it, I’ll use it, I’ll govern it so.” You diminish it and soon you do not have enough.
Take away the arbitrarily imposed controls by which you have thought to govern life in its manifestation and it will be like cleaning out the spring, the fountain, getting all the muck and the mire, and the chunks of rock, and everything else out of it and instead of just being a little trickle of muddy water that you try to do something with, it will begin to flow crystal clear water and if a little of it flows and overflows, all right—the cup of life is supposed to overflow. There is supposed to be enough so that you do not have to be niggardly with the use of life—you can let it flow; and you will begin to find that life always has its elements of control with it when it appears.
I wonder how your body was formed in the womb of your mother, when you could not be there pushing this imposition, imposing that, shaping the other, making it be just so—the forming of a body for the manifestation of a new life and you could not control it, you could not impose your own ideas, and make your nose long or short, and make your ears small or big, or something else. How in the world did your body ever get formed in your mother's womb? You were not there to impose control to make it be this or that. Of course, as soon as the babe is born, then we have to start imposing control, arbitrary methods, at once, instead of letting the control that is inherent with life have an easy natural expression.
I have heard parents say, “Well, I tried so hard with my children. I wanted them to be such good children. I tried so hard to make something out of them and they have disappointed me so. My son or my daughter they have disappointed me so. They haven't turned out so good. I'm ashamed.”—or something. Did you ever hear anyone talk like that? I wonder. They were going to make something out of them. God could not do it so they were going to do the job. It is the same thing all over again. They cannot reach inside the womb and say, “Now this is going to be a boy or a girl. It is going to have black or blonde hair. It is going to have a long nose or short, such and such lips, etc.” They are going to shape it all, are they? They cannot in the womb, and somehow God gets the job done and the body of the babe forms and there is control—there is life, but there is control and it takes such nice form and the baby is born, such a lovely little thing and it is all right there. The control has been working right along with the fountain expression of life, but immediately, God's methods are not any good on earth, after you are born. Immediately we start imposing, jamming, forcing—we are going to control life from birth on. How did your body ever get formed in the womb? Did you ever think about that and wonder? Isn't it a miracle that you were ever born when you were not there to shape your life before your birth? That is a miracle, indeed.
When you begin to realize that the control necessary for the expression of life comes with the Life, they are not separate packages, and you do not have to impose it from the outside—of course if human beings reject the real control, sometimes we have to impose a little from the outside. But what is the pattern of government here on Sunrise Ranch? A lot of rules and regulations? No. I never impose any rule or regulation unless I am forced to, unless human beings refuse to let the true governing force that comes with life manifest in relationship to their own lives. If they will not learn, sooner or later they will come under rule and regulation, and it will not be presented in uncertain terms, but you are given a chance to find out that the governing force appeared with life itself—it appears with life itself, and it takes time to learn to stop imposing that arbitrary control on the body and begin to let the control that God provides appear, because you should develop during childhood and adolescence and into maturity on the same basic control that was at work in the womb.
Oh there is a gradual unfolding of consciousness in the sense of awareness, yes, so that there can be a deeper understanding of letting that control have meaning. But why do people go to school? To get knowledge to store it in their minds so that they can arbitrarily impose control. They are going to study psychology, they are going to study this and that, and then they are going to impose control. They are going to control their own lives and they are going to control the lives of others, and have everything just right—and look at the just right patterns. Aren’t they a bit on the ugly side? Aren’t they a bit smeared, discolored, distorted? Where do you find them? You do not. With all the vaunted knowledge, no you do not. And the people come here, and they expect to learn on the same basis and when they find out it does not work, why they get troubled. They think I ought to teach on the same basis, to give some knowledge so that they can go out and impose it here and impose it there and get results.
I have had people say, “I can’t get hold of anything. What is the matter, is something wrong with me?” I have had people say there must be something wrong with me as a teacher—but you see, I play tricks on them. I do not let them get a hold of it in a way so that they can go according to their own bright ideas and impose it. They have to learn to let it work like the fountain or it does not turn out to be any good. It evaporates in their hands. The minute someone thinks he has gotten hold of something and he is going to go and use it, he gets to where he is going and he opens his hands and they are empty—gone! It does not work. There must be the fountain manifestation of life in relationship to the body, of thinking in relationship to the mind, and of love in relationship to the heart, and all of these things bring the control with them as they are born into the range of your perception—the control elements are present with them.
I have heard people say, “I try so hard to concentrate so I can meditate, but my mind leaps here and my mind leaps there, and I can’t think about any one subject for any length of time. It is all over the place.” Well of course. They have been trying to use the wrong method—man’s method instead of God’s method. God’s method is so easy, so natural, so right. When we begin to realize that the control elements are always present with the design elements—always, if it is coming from God—the control elements are always present with the design elements, and we will not try with our human minds or human wills to try to make something be—we are going to impose something!
Suppose I was going to give an attunement and I was going to use the power of my will to just make those cells fall into line—I’m just going to impose some control here and make you get well. You would not be here, would you, if I had been acting like that? You would have gone somewhere else long long ago—but I do not. When I give you an attunement, I know that the control factors are always present with the design factors in relationship to that which comes from God, whether it is life—I am opening up the fountain of life within you, helping you to learn to let it flow, so that you stop trying to impose some arbitrary government upon it. People say, “I like this and I don't like that”—well, I start helping you to learn that it is not like and dislike that governs. You learn to like something you thought you did not, and you learn to dislike some things you thought you did like so much—not to like it so much anyway.
Gradually we begin to change things—open up so the fountain can get through and so that you are not being arbitrary with the pattern of your life. You are beginning to learn to seek the Kingdom of God, the control of God which appears with all of those things which come from God. God does not give you life and say, “Now you control it.” Human beings have assumed that that is so, but it is not. It is a false concept. He does not give you a mind and say, “Now you control it,” or a heart and say, “Now you control it.” No.
What is it that is written about the tongue? An unruly member. And, “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.” And the tongue says all kinds of things that it does not have any business saying—lack of control. If there is some ill condition—lack of control; if someone is sick—lack of control with respect to the manifestation of life. So you are going to come along and impose some control are you? No. Open the fountain, stop imposing control and let the fountain of life appear, and the control will come with life and everything begins to smooth out and is so easy. The Master said, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light—and it is, it is so easy. Every other pattern of life or approach to existence is hard, but the right way is easy, and it takes a long time to convince people of that. They say, “Yes? Well maybe it is for you. Maybe it will be some day. Maybe it was some time in the past—but not for me. You don’t realize; you just don’t realize how hard life is for me, what burdens I have.”
As we begin to unfold and let the pattern of life appear, we find that the control comes with it, always. That which comes from God, which you can begin to see because of design, has with it the elements of control and you stop functioning from the standpoint of human weakness, human limitations, human inabilities to control. Man cannot even control a cell of his own body. By the controls which he imposes upon his body, he can destroy cells, but he cannot control cells. What is cancer? It is a situation where cells have gone wild; where cells have gone out from under the control that is natural—man cannot control them. He may try to destroy them and stop the development of the cancer, but if he were letting his cells be controlled in the true sense, there would not be any cancer. Cancer, actually, as such, is not a problem. They are spending millions of dollars trying to learn how to cure cancer. Well, I would not want cancer to be cured. We can just as well let it pass away. We do not need it, and if you cured it you would have it forever. People are always talking about curing disease—that is going to make it permanent, I guess. We are not interested in curing disease. We are interested in letting disease die, letting it pass away, letting it come to an end.
The control always comes with the design in relationship to that which comes from God, and if you learn to let that control have meaning, you will find that your mind has a wonderful part to play in the creative processes by which the beauty of life appears, by which the meaning of life is made known on earth, by which the Will of God is done on earth as it is in Heaven. And instead of an emptiness inside, we begin to have a richness in the mind and in the heart—the reality of love, the true working of intelligence and the wonder of life. Now with this little introduction to a vast subject, perhaps you will have something upon which to meditate in the interval. If you let the vibrational pattern hold, I will hope to move forward with this same subject tomorrow.
© Emissaries of Divine Light
The Holy Spirit Commands Absolute Adoration
from This Ministry
Martin Cecil May 30, 1976
It is important that one should have vision with respect to anything that is undertaken. Where there is no vision the people perish. So, regardless of what it is that is being undertaken in any given aspect of the creative cycle, there necessarily should be vision which transcends the immediate matter at hand. This is true with respect to all aspects of our living. There are some details of living which human beings slide over at times, imagining that they have no particular significance. They only lack significance in that individual’s consciousness, not in fact, because, if an angel is present and acting on earth, every detail of that action is of a creative nature, is important, and relates to far more than the immediate point in question.
There isn’t anything which may be undertaken—and we are constantly undertaking things in our daily living—which does not have ramifications of this nature. Where the vile attitudes of earthly orientation prevail human beings are inclined completely to overlook the responsibilities that are being carried and the effect, therefore, of their own behavior upon vast numbers of people. This relates to the matter of integrity, doesn’t it? A person of integrity is very keenly aware of his or her responsibility to his or her fellows—responsibility which can only be carried correctly when there is heavenly orientation. Therefore, on no account, at any time, for any reason, would there be a failure to maintain the essential heavenly orientation.
I spoke of the vile attitudes which are inevitable in earthly orientation. Now, there are a lot of apparently good people whose basic premise of living is earthly orientation. Their attitudes would not be considered to be vile; but if there is earthly orientation they are, in fact, vile. There is a constant betrayal of their fellows, quite apart from a constant violation of their own integrity. Those who begin to experience heavenly orientation may see these things, so that there is an absolute revulsion toward anything that smacks of earthly orientation.
When we come together in a service such as we share this morning heavenly orientation is emphasized. I’m sure it is emphasized in the consciousness of all concerned. In times past it has been said that when we come into the Chapel, to a service, the distorted patterns of human nature should be left outside. This, of course, is indication of what it is that should be present in the Chapel if we are to be gathered together with one accord in one place. But the fact of the matter is that if there are distorted patterns of human nature still present in you—when you come into the Chapel they can’t help but come in with you.
This was rather aptly described when it was said that the sons and daughters of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them. In other words, Satan is always among those who come to present themselves before the Lord until Satan is no longer a factor in their expression of momentary living. If it is a factor in their momentary living, it will be a factor when they come into the Chapel. And while it may recede into the background for the moment because primary attention is being paid to spiritual things, it is still there. To the extent that it is still there, we cannot be with one accord in one place. If we cannot be with one accord in one place, there cannot be the experience of what has been described as the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
Such a description tends to engender human concepts. I am not talking about any conceivable human concept. I’m simply talking about the experience which is the natural event when there are those who are with one accord in one place. But it is absolutely impossible to be with one accord in one place as long as the distorted factors of human nature are retained in personal identity. While you may be encouraged to leave them outside the door when you come into the Chapel, you can’t, in fact, do it without staying outside the door yourself. This is a very important realization, because, regardless of what may have been achieved in the unfoldment of the creative process in which we have shared, there has never been an occasion when we were with one accord in one place. Never! That was simply impossible of experience, because the elements of distorted human nature were still present in the identity of the individual who was offering him- or herself to the Lord—Satan came also among them. And we know what havoc is wrought when Satan is allowed to have his say.
Now, usually he doesn’t have his say, very loudly at least, during the course of a service. There may be rumblings occasionally underneath. But he has his chance when those concerned leave the Chapel and return to their daily tasks. And he surely takes advantage of his chance. But as long as he is allowed to take advantage of his chance, then it is quite sure that never when we do gather, at least physically in one place, in the Chapel, will we be with one accord. Never! I have not emphasized this point as pointedly as I am doing it this morning—consequently there has been a tendency to imagine that there have been occasions when we have really been with one accord.
Possibly, in a relative sense, we have experienced more agreement than most people in their gatherings on earth. Perhaps Satan has been a little less assertive during the course of a service than is generally the case on such occasions in the world in general. But it has never been that, when the sons and daughters of God came to present themselves before the Lord, Satan didn’t also come among them. And he’s here this morning. No matter how earnestly you might have desired to leave him outside the door, you couldn’t do it and still be present in the Chapel.
The outpouring of the Holy Spirit—the Holy Spirit of life, characterized by love and truth—not characterized by anything other than love and truth. The word holy derives from the Old English, halig or hal, which is translatable as whole. I turned up the definition of holy in the dictionary this morning, and there is quite an extensive explanation in this regard, but I would read a portion of it: “holy—set apart to the service of God.” The Holy Spirit, then, would be the characteristic expression, totally, of God; nothing else included. Here is the second definition: “characterized by perfection and transcendence; commanding absolute adoration and reverence.” Does the Holy Spirit command absolute adoration and reverence in you, or are there other spirits which exert their commands, commands which you on occasion obey?
The Holy Spirit is absolute, completely whole; nothing else at all. The Holy Spirit is the true spirit of those who compose the reality of what we have called this ministry. There are those who have taken the attitude, of course, that they don’t belong in this ministry. This may be true in the sense that there have been some rather restricted concepts as to what this ministry really is. If it has been looked upon by some as a religious denomination or sect, then certainly everybody doesn’t belong in that—the fact of the matter is that nobody really belongs in that. But if it is seen for what it really is—all-encompassing, all-inclusive—then the fact is that everybody on the face of the earth really belongs in that ministry. There isn’t any other state in which human beings really belong.
It has been the fact of the matter that virtually the total population of mankind has excluded itself from the experience of the fact that they do belong. They have been busy trying to belong to this or that humanly established pattern, whether religious or otherwise, ignoring the real state in which everyone, in fact, belongs. If there is a realization of the true nature of this ministry, and a person says that he does not belong in that, he is saying, in effect, that he does not belong anywhere. And if one does not belong anywhere, and experiences the ultimate state of not belonging anywhere, what would that state be? It has been called death. The person who is dead proves that he does not belong anywhere.
One must be alive to belong somewhere. And the somewhere is describable by the words, this ministry. This ministry is all-inclusive. I’m not talking about a human organization. I’m talking about a state in which human beings really belong, in which they are men and women created by God in the image and likeness of God—that is, the true state. And we can describe it by using words, this ministry.
To describe these things, we have to use words, and these words are very pointed. Perhaps we wouldn’t say these things in a general sense, because most people couldn’t understand. But surely you do. If you feel yourself, at any time, being pushed out, so to speak, you may know exactly why. No one can be pushed out of this ministry against his will. No one is ever excluded. Insofar as the truth of the matter is concerned, everybody is included. If a person insists upon a sense of exclusion, that is that person’s choice. It wasn’t imposed by anyone else, anywhere, at any time. It may have seemed so, if there has been earthly orientation. In earthly orientation the individual can always justify his position; but in earthly orientation it is a false state and what is seen in that state is not true.
The Holy Spirit commands absolute adoration and reverence. This means that the distorted state of human nature has been set aside. But if you try to set aside the distorted state of human nature when you come in through the door into the Chapel, it can’t be done. That set-aside condition is still present with you; it’s a part of what you claim as your identity in your expression of existence. If there is anything that you have to set aside in order, as you think, to come into the Chapel pure and holy, you can’t come into the Chapel in the moments of the expression of your living. You know that it’s gone when the moments of the expression of your living prove it. If there is no proof there, it hasn’t gone. Or if the proof is inconsistent, it hasn’t gone. Inconsistency in this regard proves earthly orientation. Heavenly orientation is characterized by consistency.
If you can slip back into earthly orientation, you don’t know what heavenly orientation is, because if there is heavenly orientation, you can’t slip back into earthly orientation. You’re still just thinking about it or hoping or dedicated, if you can still slip back into earthly orientation. Heavenly orientation is absolute in its nature, and when we know the Holy Spirit of Life we know it; we don’t know anything else. If we know something else, we don’t know the Holy Spirit of Life, because it is whole—it is absolute, it is complete.
We may say, “Oh, well, I touched it.” And remarkable things happen when people touch it, yes. There was a story of the woman with the affliction who touched the hem of the Master’s garment. Marvelous! But what happened to her later, I wonder? No further comment. I doubt if she was consistent. One can be fooled by the wonderful experiences that are known simply because something was touched. If that experience comes because you touched something, what you touched is not yet your experience; it’s separate and apart from you—it must be, for you to touch it. When the truth is known, that’s all that is known; you’re not touching anything. You are that truth in the expression of your living, and you cannot be anything else.
We have so often spoken of absoluteness; but it has been approached rather gently, I think, so that those who heard were not overwhelmed. But there must come a point somewhere along the way where we may say, “That’s it!” If that point never comes, well, we could say that’s it in another way too. How human beings love to justify their ill states, justify the things which they may say need clearing. What is it that needs clearing? One thing and one thing alone: earthly orientation. And that can only be cleared by the experience of heavenly orientation. One can’t manipulate things in earthly orientation to experience what would be experienced in heavenly orientation. There must be the genuine article, heavenly orientation, in one’s own experience, to know what it is.
There have been a great many views about heavenly orientation from the standpoint of earthly orientation. The individual, firmly planted in earthly orientation, is considering heavenly orientation, and one day “I’m making progress.” In what? Well, in earthly orientation, I suppose; shifts occurring in earthly orientation. Some of them look good. But heavenly orientation is not earthly orientation; there’s no similarity even. It is a thing of itself, absolutely. Everyone belongs in heavenly orientation or, to put it another way, in this ministry—because this ministry is the state of heavenly orientation, if it is anything. If it isn’t that, it is nothing. And if there are those who merely observe from the standpoint of earthly orientation, this ministry is, in fact, nothing to them. The state of heavenly orientation remains nothing to those who are experiencing earthly orientation. It may be a concept of the mind, but that is nothing.
Let us not delude ourselves in these matters. Satan is a word that has been used to describe a very wily character who has successfully deluded and deceived human beings for millennia. That’s right, he’s done it. And Satan’s as good a name as any to describe the character of human beings in earthly orientation. In that state human beings can fool themselves, and have fooled themselves, constantly. Thus far, very few who lived on earth ever came out of the state of deception. But now we’d better do it. We’d better be willing to do it, and we’d better be willing to stop fooling ourselves, to stop deliberately maintaining the state of earthly orientation because we are absolutely centered in the Holy Spirit.
“Out of Egypt have I called my son.” These words, O Lord, we may remember this morning. It is our great privilege to have sufficient vision to see beyond the state of self-delusion in which human beings have existed ever since they denied and betrayed Thee. So would we accept the reality of integrity, that there may be no shadow of turning, no continuing insistence upon wallowing in the various states consequent upon earthly orientation, while occasionally rising so that our heads are above this morass. When we do rise to this extent, we recognize that there is another state; but until that other state, which is a consistent state, is accepted, we do not really know what it is.
How thankful we are, O Lord, for the assurance of the strength and stability of Thy Holy Spirit, by which we may be held steady and sure in the expression of Life on earth, to Thy glory, in the Christ. Holy, holy, holy, Lord of hosts. Glory be to Thee, O Lord most high.
© Emisaries of Divine Light
Metamorphosis
And The Continuity Of Life
John Gray September 29, 1991 Glen Ivy, California
To all who are alert enough to watch and to see, the One Spirit constantly reveals aspects of its divinity through all life forms and functions. Here in this realm of creation with which we are familiar, on planet Earth, correlations with all of life’s other forms and functions are contained in essence in human beings. So, anywhere we observe life working we may learn something about ourselves.
Many of us have been talking lately about change. A lot more people have been thinking about change. And everybody, like it or not, is experiencing change. Change characterizes life as it expresses itself in forms. Nothing alive is static or stagnant. In the current affairs of the world we live in, it is so obvious as to be impossible to overlook that deep and unprecedented changes are occurring everywhere. People handle these changes or react to them in different ways: some with jubilant welcome, others with resistance.
To me, one of the most dramatic demonstrations of change takes place countless millions of times each year all over the world: it is the process that certain insects go through in changing from one form into another. Metamorphosis is a classic metaphor. Deep in the human psyche there is a fascination with it.
I have a rather old little paperback book called The Great Chain of Life by Joseph Wood Krutch. In it is a sensitive description of the process of transmutation that a caterpillar goes through in entering its chrysalis state and then emerging as a butterfly.
Joseph Krutch wrote an excellent non-technical description of the process: the caterpillar munching away blissfully for weeks and then acting like it got too full at some point, attaching itself to a branch or twig, forming a chrysalis inside its caterpillar skin and then letting its external skin fall away; then out of the chrysalis some time later, somewhat crumpled but complete, emerges an adult butterfly. Having described that process much more thoroughly and beautifully than I just did, he says this:
“Anyone who has thus watched the progress from caterpillar to finished butterfly has seen incredible things happen... But a great deal has been kept hidden...what he has seen is merely a series of suddenly revealed transformations.”
He goes on to describe some of the internal changes going on in the caterpillar. As the time to form the chrysalis nears, the caterpillar gets sluggish, stops eating and looks sick.
“When our caterpillar looked sick he really was sick... His muscles and his organs were beginning to dissolve into what looked like a sort of pus. He had just life enough left to perform the final rites which accompany his entombment within the chrysalis before he was returned almost to death...
“Once the skin has been shed and the creature—or what is still left of it—ceases to move, the destruction of the original organs and the fashioning of new ones goes on apace. Free-moving cells, much like the phagocytes or white blood corpuscles in the human body, absorb and carry away the disintegrating material, and at the same time new organs begin to form. Ever since the day when the caterpillar was hatched from the egg it has carried within its body certain little groups of cells which were useless until now. They are the buds, if the term be permitted, from which the butterfly’s organs will develop, and these organs grow on the material the phagocytes have been carrying away from the parts of its dead self. From these buds a butterfly began to form as the caterpillar was dissolved. No new material save perhaps air and moisture is available any more than anything is available to an egg closed within its shell. What is more remarkable, perhaps, is that almost nothing is left over. The material in one caterpillar is just sufficient to make one butterfly!”
Here life’s marvelous working in an insect may give us insight into the processes of change and how they work in our own experience and awareness, both in occasional dramatic metamorphoses and as continual changes in consciousness. To paraphrase the author’s pleasant description: entering the chrysalis state, the caterpillar form is willing to become pus-like mush and then out of that material the butterfly form is drawn together. Life is the constant throughout. Life reveals itself in caterpillar form and then as living mush within the chrysalis and later as the emerging butterfly. The shape, the form, that life takes changes utterly, but life itself is constant throughout. A butterfly is not at all a caterpillar with wings. It is a totally transmuted creature, formed out of the substance of what went before but totally new. Life fashions an entirely new creation out of the living matter provided by the caterpillar.
You may be familiar with the book of Martin Exeter’s addresses, Beyond Belief. In the chapter entitled “From Caterpillar to Butterfly” Martin utilizes this archetypal metaphor, equating the caterpillar state with a condition of earthly identity in a human being and the butterfly state with spiritual identity. He emphasizes the necessity that the metamorphosis in this day be a collective one for the whole of humanity, and he also emphasizes the necessity for at least some of us to willingly let this process of internal change occur without undue resistance, thus leading the way in an experience of a profound change of identity for all. Only by willingly participating personally may we understand what life’s deeper urgings are within the whole of the body of mankind.
“We are not expecting to sprout wings tomorrow and fly away as butterflies. No, this process is happening through the whole, and there is that which is left behind from the standpoint of the chrysalis and there is that which emerges as the butterfly. This is the way it works.
“We may see our responsibility in the matter possibly with a clearer vision because of the use of this analogy. Factually we are not caterpillars, or entering into a chrysalis, or becoming butterflies. But these words are useful to convey what is really happening, and we can be quite confident that if we let it happen it will happen just as easily as that process with the caterpillar transformed into the butterfly.”
I suppose we could argue that the caterpillar does not have the ability to object to change, but human beings can and usually do. We have will. We like to think of ourselves as free agents, capable of determining the direction of our openness. Theoretically that is true, but factually speaking most human beings are virtually always controlled by mass-subconscious factors and don’t make any more choices, really, about what is going on in their lives than a caterpillar does about its. Personally and collectively we feel that the process of change which we are all very aware of both within and without is moving toward some point of culmination. Martin’s concluding words of the chapter are:
“As we trust [the creative process], as we free up in ourselves, and are content to be nothing in the human state, we discover what it means to be something in the heavenly state. We cease being earthbound creatures and rise on the wings of spirit in the fulfilment of the restoration of man.”
Those two sentences put in vast perspective the experiences of internal personal change over which so many in our world today anguish. When we take a small view of what is transpiring we tend to be emotionally involved in it—how it affects me personally, whether I am made more or less comfortable by what is transpiring; whether I like it or not. But if I fall into that habit of narrowness I will invariably misinterpret life’s signs and misunderstand what is going on in my life, in the lives of others, and in our planet as a whole. The profundity of the change that is required is difficult for our minds to fathom. It is one of becoming nothing, “no thing,” just as the caterpillar going into the chrysalis state becomes nothing. It is not a caterpillar any longer; it gives its life in order to find it.
The caterpillar does not have any choice in the matter. It doesn’t question whether to trust the creative process. We can brush that off lightly, saying, “Well, it’s just instinct,” without understanding what is going on. How about us? How deep does my trust in the creative process go? In an internal, personal way that question is posed by circumstances numerous times every day, and we prove by the way we behave where our trust actually is. Sometimes we willingly move with the flow of life as it is moving; at other times resistant habits prevail, we dig in our heels and “would rather not”—and usually then don’t! Who is willing to become nothing? A frightening prospect! Remember that metamorphosis takes place in the external form of things; life itself is ongoing, ceaseless. The presence of life is the one constant. The external forms of things—my body, my consciousness—is where the changes unfold. Who is willing to become nothing in the outer sense?
People may have experiences which at the time seem severe, traumatic, difficult, when dramatic changes in their status quo take place. These are generally labeled as stressful experiences. Among common ones are loss of a loved one, a change of career, moving one’s place of residence, a serious illness, things like this. Such changes can come unexpectedly. Some people go down under the pressure; others find an inner resilience and in retrospect would say that the experience was one of the most important of their lives—and it seemed that they were becoming nothing at the time!
All of us have had the experience of at least one total, dramatic, irreversible shift in our lives—probably more—but at least one. Everyone in the room this evening is physiologically adult. So, somewhere back along the way we all went through puberty. That was a metamorphosis, for sure! The child, the boy or girl we were, passed away. You can remember the child you were but you are not the child you were and you can never again be the child you were. Many young people find puberty, that period of profound transformation, de-stabilizing for a time. The change is utter, complete. Feelings and thoughts one never had before are suddenly flowing in all directions. It is wild and wonderful, exciting, scary, even sometimes boring. Wide, sudden swings of emotion and experience can occur as the capacity to express feeling takes on new dimensions and the ability to think develops.
What is occurring during this time is a change in identity. The child identity becomes nothing and an adolescent identity emerges, a personality-self takes shape. All too often of course, young people decide that this is what they are, and that decision is aided by a vast population of people in older bodies not acting any more maturely than adolescents. So the general model is immature, and therefore many, many young people, taking their cues from that, settle into a mediocre identity as a personality-self. That would not be the end of the process by any means if life were allowed to have its way. Sometimes, of course, people awaken to this fact years later. Maybe twenty, thirty, forty years later they wake up and say, “My gosh! All these years have gone by and there are so many things I haven’t done.” Maybe they are ashamed of what they have done or not done. Or maybe they have really become somebody and now it doesn’t seem to matter so much. If you have achieved some goals—personal, career, financial—now what? This can be mid-life crisis time! A finite lifespan stretches ahead. At age fifteen life seemed eternal; now, not so much remains over the horizon. It may be scary again; there are again unfamiliar feelings, invisible urges. Ah! Life is providing another chance to continue maturing—a “second puberty.” This time it’s a change in experienced identity from the personality-self to a spiritual self.
Those who feel this stirring going on in themselves and elect to move with it find themselves sooner or later facing the challenge of becoming nothing. Like it or not, sooner or later everything we’ve brought along goes to mush! What we thought we knew, things we were sure of, everything that we thought was stable and infallible, unchanging—it all seems uncertain again. It is as if the rug is pulled out from beneath our feet and we come face to face with the fact that there is only “me.” That realization is the pivot point of the metamorphic process. It seems like a low ebb: “All is lost. I give up.” Immediately as there really is a giving up—the willingness to become nothing—the emergence aspect of the transition phase becomes predominant. Rather than the disintegration of what was, the “going to mush” of the caterpillar form, now the formation of the butterfly-to-be becomes predominant in experience.
The “little groups of cells” which were present in the body of the caterpillar but served no apparent purpose during its caterpillar stage now become the starting points for the development of the differentiated parts of the butterfly. They were present in bud form, as Joseph Krutch put it. I think this is a beautiful illustration of something in us as well. The starting points for all that is to unfold are completely present in us already in undeveloped seed form. It is said that within seeds, whether of an animal, a human or a plant, the whole design and pattern of the mature living form-to-be is invisibly present in essence.
There is in everyone the in-built capability in the very substance of our bodies to let dramatic metamorphic change occur safely. We have personal proof and precedent of profound change in our lives: everyone in this room survived puberty! Maybe we (or our parents!) didn’t think we (or they) would survive it at the time, but we did. We are living examples that we can go to mush and come out the other side as something else.
I think a lot of people feel themselves either in or on the edge of this kind of experience. Some dig in their heels and resist it, and others are more enthusiastically welcoming of it. Again, how deep is our trust in life’s creation process?
How deeply do we trust what has brought us to where we are, to such awareness as we have now? Are we willing to let that continue to develop? You might say that is all that life is asking: just that there be those who are so willing. For such ones are like these little groups of cells—buds—within the larger body of humankind, the foci of the differentiated parts of the larger body which is in formation and yet to appear in adult form. As I said earlier, wherever we observe the way life works we can learn something about ourselves—not just ourselves as individuals, but ourselves as a collective body of human beings. Do we know to the depths of our beings that the secure, controlling hand of the One Spirit is in fact on this metamorphic process that we all observe and know?
The caterpillar-to-butterfly analogy also applies to viewpoints, opinions or thoughts that we tend to have on this or that. Sometimes such things are pretty fixed. We may feel that we have considerable evidence to support a certain point of view: “This is the way it is.” Well, it may be somewhat like the way it was once, but nothing stays the same. Life moves on and if the structures in consciousness do not, the life processes themselves bring pressure to bear to turn that substance to mush. It is time to change! If we resist, trying to maintain our structures at all costs, it will prove to cost all, because we either relent, let go, let the process work, or we get out of the process. Getting out of the process is to die, whether it happens soon or years down the road. Getting out is an option that many take, but I think it much more sensible to yield and say, “Okay, so maybe the way I see everything isn’t exactly, entirely, one hundred percent totally the way it is forever.” Life needs only a little bit of willingness—and a sense of humor helps!
But then comes the change. The way we thought things were, our understanding of them, becomes uncertain. It goes to mush: “I thought I knew that.” There have been people, for example, who perhaps attended a spiritual education class back along the way, and came out of it with a lot of enthusiasm to willingly put themselves in the middle of life’s stream one hundred percent. The metamorphic change in consciousness keeps working and as a natural and unavoidable aspect of that process the point is reached where everything comes into question. And what we thought we knew, we didn’t really know because we only heard and accepted it, which is quite different from knowing, “Yes, I buy that. It rings right.” If we were open-hearted when we received whatever training we did, we probably had that wonderfully accepting attitude. We FELT as if we knew it because we were vicariously experiencing in the substance of the class setting the One Spirit as expressed by Uranda or Martin or perhaps a faculty member. But it was not fully our own experience yet. For our individual consciousnesses, the class experience was like those little groups of cells in the caterpillar—something life would activate as personal metamorphosis continued. Deeper changes must work out later, because in order for real personal transformation to occur there must be a lot of living consonant with the tone of what at first we just accepted open-heartedly but theoretically.
If we understand these things, should we question the process? If we ever feel de-stabilized and confused, great! The former structures in consciousness are going to mush. Wonderful! However, when we’re in the middle of it, it may not feel wonderful. We may feel uncertain, doubtful, perhaps even despairing and depressed; we may feel alone, on our own, and under the necessity of sinking or swimming personally. At a dark time we can either remember the state of open-heartedness which brought us to the experience or we can turn away from what at the time we think is the source of our anguish. This is characteristic of adolescence, and something that any of us who have teenagers and all of us who were teenagers know something about.
At some stages most teenagers tend to react to and resist their parents in various ways. I think this happens in the “second puberty” too. Maybe there is a certain reaction to spiritual leadership known in the past. “Well, Uranda was around a long time ago and I love his voice, but how do I really know that ‘he was there’?” Martin’s been gone a long time too. My point here is that questioning is analogous to what probably occurred when we were fifteen and our parents suddenly became stupid. Structures in consciousness arise again to be handled clearly. This should not come as a surprise, and yet to many it does!
The cause of metamorphosis is invisible. It is a spiritual control well back of the cellular level, at what we could call a vibrational level. The caterpillar makes its total living substance available to the metamorphic process: it gives its all. That equates to complete open-heartedness in a person and the willingness to become nothing. With that yieldedness, that openness, then the One Spirit creates a new form out of the substance that was provided by the previous form. Life starts “butterflying” in the chrysalis before the butterfly form comes to the point of emerging from the chrysalis. There is the overlay of butterfly essence to which the mush responds, a pattern of invisible butterfly essence. The mush responds and forms itself along the lines of force in the butterfly essence, utilizing those seed cell groups as contact points in the material. Life “butterflies” first and then the form of butterfly comes around it. When the form is adequately together and mature, the chrysalis-womb can open and the butterfly emerges.
Living essence creates living structure. Essence contains the pattern of both form and function. This is an interesting thing to consider in terms of our own consciousnesses. For example, if I say, “A bird can fly because it has wings,” most people would agree with the statement because if you turn it around it’s clear that a bird could not fly if it didn’t have wings. But if what we call a bird is life “birding” and essence creates structure, then a bird has wings because it flies. Think about how the metamorphic process in consciousness can be released to operate more fully and thus the re-creation of the big life form of humankind may take place efficiently and effectively. This is what I feel we are responsible for.
It’s sometimes suggested that a first step toward an experience of new identity is to assume it, even though one might be still convinced of the old one. If we start acting like an adult, even though we may have an adolescent identity, an adult experience will be created. Our essence as human beings is divine, an aspect of the One Spirit. This is already present. It is the constant that is back of all change. We have forms because we live. We don’t live because we have forms. Let’s emphasize the source, the origin, of the life that is flowing through our bodies, minds, and hearts. Let’s identify with that, and the form, the structure, will change to accommodate that real nature. This is the way the door to transmutation opens.
Together, our invisible essences may create humankind anew. We can look at the transformative urge as it is appearing in ourselves and everywhere in our world. We can see it in any terms we might wish—social, political, economic, militarily, you name it. We know this process at a personal level, psychologically, emotionally, but if we relax in openness of heart we can accept the larger pattern in which it is all safely contained. Then the changes occurring in and around ourselves will be in accord with the divine design. That’s how it works. What could be more fulfilling?
© Emissaries of Divine Light
