Home, not Homesick

Home,  not  Homesick

John Gray  July 22, 2018

I’d like to begin with a story.  A certain colleague and I in a business executives’ group have known one another for over a decade, gradually becoming friends. “Murph,” as he’s known to many, chairs the group. He has a career reputation as a hard-driving chief operating officer of publicly traded companies and is known in this area as a successful “turn-around” guy. He is also a life-long, devout Roman Catholic. Last year, after a long period of study and preparation, he became a church deacon. Murph and I meet for lunch from time to time, outside the executive group context. Sometimes he will have been pondering something from his church studies or from the Bible and want to talk about it. I am, of course, attentive to his religious convictions, but with careful word choices our conversations have been known to flow around obstacles in the stream and gently wash over more profound, or, perhaps I should say, more elevated, topics.

The last time we met he related something his mentor in the deacon program had said to him, talking about Jesus and the end of his ministry. It was, in essence, this: “The Lord came to be with us in person, and we killed him.” That Jesus died on the cross to save humanity from sin is an unquestioned tenet of Murph’s religious upbringing. His Roman Catholic mentor, in this off-the-record moment of personal insight, sent a seven-point-five tremor through Murph’s foundation. It left him rattled and wondering. He wanted to talk about it. I listened. At one point in the conversation, a gem of Uranda’s logic came to my mind, and I risked gently saying it into the opening of the moment. Paraphrasing Uranda, I said, “If it was really true that Jesus had to die, wouldn’t Judas Iscariot be lauded the greatest saint of all time?”

After I said this, Murph blinked. I immediately started feeling something between “Ooops!” and “Oh, well...” It was as if I could see his neural synapses shorting out and overheating. His eyes glazed, he looked away, and after a pretty long pause he asked me how my grandkids were doing. Notwithstanding internal earthquakes and fires, this won’t be the last time Murph and I get together. We already have our next lunch meeting scheduled, in fact. But this interchange with him left me thinking, too.

What was it that took place twenty centuries ago and still, today, remains humanity’s door to salvation?

If we recognize that Jesus the man embodied the divine being who is the Lord of Lords, the apex of God for this world and more, then in the individual human body of Jesus were essences of the whole of humankind and all of creation in this portion of the solar system. Given this, then what was done to Him, humanity was, in fact, doing to itself. If the body of Jesus had been killed, it would have been curtains for humankind. Billions of individual people have lived and died since—and here we all are now—but humanity lives. It suffers, but it still exists.

Holding that question on the drive home after meeting with Murph, my thoughts went to these words: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” (Luke 23:34) Some assume Jesus was speaking about just the couple of guys who were to take his robe as he was being crucified. More people see these words as signifying a transcendent attitude of spiritual magnanimity and divine blessing toward all human beings. I think this latter interpretation is accurate as far as it goes but is incomplete. I also see it this way: At this crucial point and under what had to be extreme duress, the only One who could do so forgave all of humanity, present and future, for rejecting Him. This act is what left open the way to what may be called salvation, which occurs today as the Lord of Lords is received into His one collective body, whenever and wherever and in and through whomever that actually happens.

Some of us, maybe most who are part of this phone connection today, were associated with an organization called Emissaries of Divine Light, often abbreviated “EDL.” On more than one occasion Martin Cecil likened EDL to a spiritual university. Within a university there may be a variety of colleges and diverse fields of study available, but the point, at least eventually, is that students graduate into the real world. The individual’s student identity then passes away, replaced by someone more adult. Back in the day, most of us on the phone now and a few thousand more first met in this school. We have a common alma mater. That Latin term translates literally as, “bountiful, nourishing mother.”

What Uranda, Martin, and others with them, provided so clearly and beautifully, and what formed over decades around them and us, certainly was and is bountiful and nourishing. I’m not promoting some sort of an alumnae association here but expressing my deep appreciation for all that’s been accomplished in this current era. It is truly a privilege to be here, to play a part in it. There are some who miss those old college days and even long to get the old gang back together. Many have pleasant memories. Nostalgia, it’s called. Looking up the Greek root of that word, we find it literally means, “home sickness.” But I cannot be homesick if I’m home! Those nourishing student days are long gone.

What if a really important part of the spiritual university experience for us was simply to meet and connect with one another in person? What if the “old gang” is together and has been all along? Despite our personal bodies aging, the “old gang” isn’t old. And now, however many years later it may be, it’s vital how we hold and regard one another in our hearts. All kinds of things may have happened back in school days—and not all of it divine, not all of it nourishing. Some people may still hold grudges and nurse old hurts! Now, though, being identified in the spirit of the body, the whole body, the Lord’s body, how I regard every member of it—and especially those I know in person!—matters, I think, beyond words. Let us love one another. Nothing of that past matters. Forgive. Let’s express the purifying spirit of love through our own hearts, without reservation.

In 1987, in one of the last services Martin gave, he spoke of EDL, the organization, as being a door. His primary point, as I recall, is that doors are to walk through, not to be admired or worshipped. Doors, as universities, are ways to get somewhere new, into a new state of consciousness and experience.

I’m deeply grateful for the guidance and training offered to me in my youth— university guidance and door passage training, which all would mean nothing if I never moved through the EDL door or graduated from school. It is nothing short of miraculous, in my view that Uranda came into his own at a young age without the aid, apparently, of an external spiritual mentor. Martin had Uranda for some fourteen years as an external point of spiritual focus, as we used to put it. In a missive to friend David Barnes not long ago, I wrote, “When Martin's external point of focus returned to the invisible, the externally responsive part of Martin's expression became internalized as he assumed the radiant, positive role in and for the ministry as it had formed at that time and after. The building of a nuclear collective body was the task in focus at the time. Now here we are, these years later, with the same responsibility. For many of us, our external point of focus was Martin. When that being returned to the invisible over thirty years ago, it likewise required of each of us the internalization of response and the externalization of positive radiance. For some of us—and I include myself—it's taken many of those thirty years to make that transition! Now, the expression of the Lord’s spirit through His body is the task in focus.”

When Martin was physically around, he endeavored to dissuade people from looking to him to somehow be it all. He said, “How much do you, as an individual, still glance around to see if you can spot, somewhere or other, a spiritual leader of some kind who is going to achieve great things? A few thought they had him spotted in me. I have been at pains to disillusion those who have this view, because he who comes in the name of the Lord is not one person. The coming of one person was done nineteen centuries ago. All that could be accomplished has been accomplished by one person; and that one person was, indeed, a Supreme One. But no matter how Supreme He really was, and is, He could only do so much...”

And further, “...there is One who comes in the name of the Lord on earth, not one person but One Unified Body and Consciousness, by reason of which the spirit of God is in action within the body and consciousness of mankind. This is the One who has the authority. This is the One who provides the leadership. While we may see that that leadership, to be effective, must be a composite body, nevertheless it is a composite body because the individuals who compose it have taken responsibility for their own spiritual authority.” (Spiritual Leadership and Authority  Martin Cecil  October 7, 1979)

God speaks and acts on earth through His one composite body. The conscious members of that body share a consciousness of archangelic identity. Individual consciousness is the seat or place, or maybe we could call it the container, of personal identity. It is where we experience who we are. If the place is occupied by a usurper, the identity container is held hostage by an imposter. This is limiting terminology, however, because consciousness is living and dynamic, more of a verb than a noun. Although not the etymology of the word “devil”—the usurper, the liar, the adversary—I like to think of the word “devil” as a contraction of “do evil,” emphasizing that devil is a behavior rather than an entity.

What I respond to with my mind and heart is attracted to and fills my mind and heart. Sounds like a law! And whatever fills my mind and heart tends to convince me of who I am. If what I respond to is fake, then I’m filled with fake news instead of the good news! Humanly speaking, the consistent direction of my response determines the sense of self that inhabits my conscious experience.

In this quiet, tranquil, substance-filled moment, we know that God being and human being occupy this same space and time, here and now. Being isn’t over there or up here and the human separate and apart. Divine and human being occupy precisely the same space and time, in me, in you. “Someday” and “elsewhere” are illusory.

“Know ye not that ye are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?" Those who compose His body, know. The Lord is in this holy place. The Word resounds through these words: The Lord is in this holy place.

johncgray@aol.com

The One Language

 from

 The  One  Language

Martin Cecil  March 21, 1982

We might well be reminded of some very familiar words, cast however in the present tense: “In the beginning,” this beginning, the beginning of each moment, “is the Word,” the expression of Being, “and the Word is with God,” with Being, “and the Word is God”; the expression of Being is inseparable from Being.

We have experience of something of the transcendent state of affairs; but there is always more to be experienced and it is our concern that that more which is fitting in this hour should be known. It can only be known because we all provide what we are here to provide according to our several fields of responsibility. I certainly can’t do it all; I can extend the welcome but you have to receive it and to offer, therefore, what is natural in the place and setting into which you come. We would share this, and what I have to provide I will provide according to what you provide. Being, and the expression of Being, are rightly inseparable. It is the human habit to impose, as a rule. I have nothing to impose upon you; I have no desire to impose anything. But there is something which we may all share which may be allowed to find expression in this hour. I have a certain responsibility to give it expression but the expression is not mine alone; it depends upon what is moving in everyone who is here present as to what it is that is brought forth. So we have the opportunity of sharing this bringing forth this morning—not only in this group of human beings here present but in those who are present in the other places, but nevertheless have the connection in spirit.

In the beginning, indeed, is the Word, is the expression of Being, in all of us. It is present in all of us. It may have been brought forth in our own experience in rather limited ways, but latterly I’m sure that there has been the increase, and something clearer and more pure begins to emerge into expression in our living and consequently in our experience. It is this that is of vital consequence insofar as the world as a whole is concerned. It all originates in the same source: In the beginning is the Word, and the Word is with God, and the Word is God. All things were made, are made, by the Word: and without the Word, without this expression of Being, nothing at all is. If there is anything it is because of this. We have some perspective which includes an understanding, somewhat, of these things: that there is something occurring in the world which transcends the human experience which is, and has been, known in the world. It is affecting everything and everyone. It is affecting everything because it is affecting everyone...

In the world these days, a lot of people are learning English as a second language. If one is a native of some particular country which speaks a certain language and then undertakes to learn English as a second language, one’s original language is always the first language. Right? One is trying to acquire a second language. I would suggest that our concern is to relinquish what we have thought of as our first language. I am using this as a symbol of something. I am not really talking about language as such but the character of our experience heretofore. This is obviously conditioned and colored by all sorts of background factors: personal ones, hereditary ones in the personal sense, hereditary ones in the larger national sense perhaps, and finally hereditary ones in the race sense. Well this is our language. It’s a very confused language. Scarcely anyone understands anybody else on the basis of this sort of a language. Occasionally we may think we have a mutual understanding; then we find out that we didn’t have it at all.

There is the need to awaken to our First Language. Most people want to learn the truth on the basis of their already existing language. It can’t be done. The already existing state of affairs must be relinquished in order for one to awaken to an awareness of the fact that one already has a Language; it’s already there; and all these other human languages can then be understood for what they are. But no one speaking those languages can understand this First Language. Here is a Language that is not understood by anyone who doesn't speak it. It can't be learned as a second language, which is what most people attempt to do. They’re going to stay in their own language but they want to learn about this other Language. It can’t be done.

Some have thought they had a very good understanding of things and could write all about it, but anyone who knows this One Language immediately sees that what is being said is not true. Nobody who does not have this Language as a First Language can understand it. This seems to those who do not have it as a First Language to be an insuperable barrier, which it is as long as they insist upon their present language. As I say, one can’t learn this Language—the Language of the Kingdom—one can’t learn this Language and then transfer over into it as a first language—“I’ll stay with my present language until I’ve learned this new language, and then I’ll step over into the new language.” It can't be done, because one can never experience this new Language as long as one is centered in the old language. One will be seeing everything with the consciousness of the old language and interpreting everything on that basis.

There is a new Language, the Language of the Kingdom, and we awaken to it. We awaken to the fact that we already know it. I’m sure you have had the experience of articulating something to someone who is in the process of awakening and they have said, “Yes, that’s right. I always knew that to be so but I’ve never been able thus far to articulate it.” In other words they didn’t know the Language yet; now at last it’s beginning to come out and they’re able to articulate it. So our concern is to provide what is possible to assist people to awaken to this One Language—to the First Language. Human beings have all these languages now and they've lost the First Language, the Language which makes possible mutual understanding; there isn’t any other language that does. The only way one can have understanding is to awaken to this One Language. Then you can look at everybody else, no matter what language they speak, and you can comprehend; you can see what the state of affairs really is. But they, looking at you, can’t understand anything. They translate what they think they see in terms of their own language, which is not the truth at all and we shouldn’t expect it to be the truth. If that happens it is what will inevitably happen; we can’t make it be any other way. All we can do is to provide what is possible by our own expression of the Word, this One Language, to assist others who are ready to awaken to it to become aware of the fact that they already really know it.

There are those who have shopped here and shopped there and never found what they were looking for, because of course it’s not there. It can’t be found in any of the languages that human beings have produced. Those languages include national states, they include religious states, philosophical approaches, all the various ways and techniques that have been developed to expand consciousness or do whatever they are supposed to do. And all that is included in this mass, this confusion of tongues. But there is the One Language—and there is no way of getting it. One can't be taught it as a second language—one only knows it as a First Language. When it becomes one’s own First Language, then you know it. If it isn’t your own First Language you don’t know it. The tremendous thing is that when it is your own First Language then you understand all that is present in this confusion of tongues—you understand people.

So I rejoice that we have had this time together to share something in this transcendent place and setting. It’s really there; we really shared something: the truth. The truth makes free. As individually we continue in the Word, then we play our part in providing the invitation to people everywhere to awaken; and in their awakening the world keeps changing. We find that the elements of true value begin to stick out more and more because we are no longer giving value and weight to the things that have no value and weight. And behold all things are indeed made new. I rejoice with you as we allow this to happen, not only in this hour but in the continuing hours which are to come in our individual fields of responsibility. Then we find that they are not merely individual; they are part of a great whole, a whole which is much greater than the human world of imagination.

For this purpose we came on earth, no other purpose. It simplifies things, doesn’t it? Oh we have many fields of activity in which to move but there is only One Purpose, which makes possible the right use of whatever it is that comes to us in our fields of responsibility. Friendship and love, a fulfilling sense of satisfaction, comfort, is so freely available in the experience of all who are willing to awaken and discover the reality that is truth. The reality is discovered in one’s own living experience.

© Emissaries of Divine Light

Hearing and Seeing and Acting Are One

Hearing and Seeing and Acting are One

Martin Cecil  April 16, 1982  p.m.

We know that physical sound, to be heard, requires a medium of connection. The usual medium is the air. If we should be existing in a vacuum we would hear no sound. The sound waves require the substance of air, water or earth to be transmitted, so that those who have the equipment may hear. The same principle is true with respect to spiritual sound. There must, as we well know, be the substance of connection. That substance of connection is the responsibility of the one who is to hear.

The Word is constantly spoken—the spirit is constantly moving. This has been eternally so. Insofar as human beings are concerned, for quite some time they have been deaf. But the deafness is not because of the lack of a facility for hearing but a lack of the substance which would transmit what is to be heard. And we ourselves, individually speaking, are responsible for generating that substance. If it's not there we don't hear. Initially it is possible to hear a little by reason of someone else's substance; the Word may be heard rather faintly on this basis; but leaving the presence of the one whose substance has enabled the hearing to occur, the sound, the spiritual sound, vanishes. A person may be greatly moved perhaps on this basis but shortly thereafter it's all gone, as if it were a dream. So one is responsible for the substance oneself. To initiate the cycle it is likely that someone is required who may speak the Word, having the substance so that others may hear. There is nothing wrong with that as a starting point; it has probably occurred for all of us. Subsequently, if we have taken an interest in what we began to hear, so that we pointedly listened to hear more, this substance of connection with spirit began to be generated—we began to be aware of a changing atmosphere in our own experience.

This atmosphere is there by reason of substance. This is the medium through which spirit operates and, where there is a facility of hearing, it may be discerned. We all have that facility of hearing—it is the heart. It has been very actively engaged in hearing throughout our present existence but usually involved in the hearing of the wrong things. So we began to hear the Word, the sounding of spirit, and took responsibility, in some measure at least, for maintaining the atmosphere in which this sounding might be discerned, so that individually we had it with us wherever we might go.

We discovered, no doubt, that when we were together collectively, as in a situation such as this, there was an increase of substance present, so that the hearing could be more distinct. To the extent that in that hearing we remained pointed in our listening because of interest, then we found an expansion of the atmosphere, or the experience of the atmosphere, in our own living. By reason of that atmosphere we discovered that there were those things which did not belong in it, not because anyone established a book of rules and regulations but because we ourselves discerned that some things did not belong in that atmosphere. According to the strength of our interest in maintaining the atmosphere we immediately would find that some of the behavioral habits out of the past could not be sustained by us anymore. We didn't have to struggle with anything. We found that such things as didn’t belong in the atmosphere were no longer welcome and simply passed away. This process is a lot better, isn't it, than the usual human device of establishing a whole lot of rules and regulations, do’s-and-don’ts, and trying to live up to this? It's not natural—whereas what we experience on the basis of a new atmosphere is found to be quite natural. The things that don't belong in that atmosphere are no longer welcome to us, whether it is in our own expression, in our own past behavioral habits, or whether it relates to what other people bring.

Becoming aware of the new atmosphere, heavenly atmosphere we would call it, we become aware that rightly there are those things that defile, work abomination or make a lie, which are not permitted to enter in. This doesn't mean that we impose anything on anyone else. Some people are so hardened in their behavior that they scarcely are aware of the atmosphere which we may be providing, and they trample through the pansy bed with their hobnail boots. But from our standpoint it isn't so, because we ourselves do not accept those things into our own experience, by reason of agreement with them or reaction to them, so as to spoil the atmosphere. We have the power to maintain the atmosphere. If we react to what someone brings, we will ourselves dissipate the atmosphere. The other person doesn't have the power to do that, but we do—and we do it because we react or because we agree with something that doesn't belong. I’m sure all of you have observed—I certainly have over the years—this process in operation. One may observe it with respect to others or one may have the experience of it for oneself, probably both.

The substance in which the sound of spirit is transmitted is the individual responsibility of each one to maintain. It is maintained by listening for the Word, for the sound of the spirit. In the initial stages of listening we may think of that sound, what we are aware of it, as coming from somewhere else. This is the state of consciousness of people, of all of us, more especially in times past perhaps, where there was this experience of separation. We are returning to oneness, not oneness with the things which should pass away but oneness with the truth, with the reality of things, so that we may be genuine, so that we may be real people and not phonies. Where there is oneness with the things that should pass away we are, in that oneness, imitations—we're phony. We only begin to experience genuineness as oneness with the truth is experienced. So our listening, to start with, may present itself to us as though we were listening to something separate from ourselves. There are lots of people in the world whose spiritual awareness is of this nature; they are somehow going to listen to God, imagining that God is somewhere else and the sound of His Word must come to us from somewhere else. This is the human behavioral habit, that, if oneness is to be known, must in season pass away. As the substance is developed individually so that we may hear the Word with greater clarity, and the atmosphere in which we dwell becomes supremely important to us, then we find an increased awareness of the sound of the spirit, which brings with it understanding.

We noted this morning the matter of hearing and then seeing. The seeing begins to put in an appearance as the sense of separation departs. What one hears of the spirit is coming from where? If we think in dimensional terms, the terms of the state of separation, we will likely think of it as coming from somewhere else, perhaps to us because of someone else. In the initial stages of hearing this may be all right. But gradually as there is true listening the understanding begins to change, because we have become aware of the fact that what we are sensing, what we are hearing and discerning, is the expression of the spirit of our own being. The true experience arises when it is finally realized that hearing and seeing and acting are one, not separate functions, because the experience of spirit is the expression of Being—the Word. And we are. We are! We begin to bring it to point in saying I am. It is the truth. I am is a statement of Being, isn't it? Well, we are. When we speak the truth in saying I am, this is an expression proceeding from our own Being, and the expression that proceeds from our own Being is the Word. The expression of Being is inseparable from Being.

So, as there is an increase of the substance in which the expression of Being may be accommodated, the facility of discerning that simply confirms oneness. Hearing, seeing, acting are all one—there is no separation between them. Initially the human idea has always been, “Well we'll hear if we listen enough. We'll hear, then we'll understand and then we'll be able to act.” This is looked upon with eyes of separation, as though these were steps, one leading to the next. It isn't so. There is no space in between—they are one. Hearing and seeing and acting are one. We begin to have this experience to the extent that the substance of our atmospheres permits it, so that there is nothing that defiles or works abomination or brings forth a lie ever allowed to enter in. This is our dwelling place—we go no more forth from this heavenly state. Then we discern momentarily what needs to be discerned momentarily, and our experience is that of the oneness of hearing, seeing and acting.

Now I can talk about these things. There may have been, in your own experience, those moments when this really occurred—something very expansive. Then perhaps some past behavioral pattern put in an appearance, and to that extent the atmosphere was dissipated and to that extent separation again put in an appearance, so that it became perhaps at times a strain to listen. It never should be a strain. If it is a strain it is because there is involvement with an imaginary state of separation, which brings with it sweat of the face. Ultimately it is fatal, because oneness is the truth. So there is a natural generation of the substance which may accommodate the expression of spirit to the extent that we listen, because we are totally interested in becoming aware of the whole quality of the atmosphere which is our dwelling place.

Many people struggle with what they think of as their shortcomings, endeavoring to overcome them by human effort of some kind. It doesn't really work. One may cover them up for a while but they spring out at some moment of stress, because they are still there. Well let's not judge such things anyway, because there are factors relative to what human beings consider to be shortcomings which actually belong. And there may be factors in what human beings have considered to be commendable traits that don’t belong at all. We never find out what belongs and what doesn't until we dwell in the atmosphere which allows us to become aware of it. We are not going to become aware of it because someone shakes their finger at us and says, “Naughty, naughty! You shouldn’t be doing that!” Or on the other hand, “Good. That is just wonderful.” We need to become aware of it for ourselves, and the only way is because there is a dwelling in the atmosphere of heaven. The atmosphere of heaven comes because we have learned to listen on the basis of our interest. That brings the substance which accommodates the spirit, and the spirit makes us aware, through that atmosphere, of what is fitting and what is not.

I am sure that if any of us had an opportunity to come into the presence of the President of the United States in the White House we would be very concerned that our behavior should fit. Well how much more so when we come into the presence of the Lord!—which is what it amounts to. And we discover what fits because we have a sensing of the quality of the atmosphere. Anything that doesn't fit immediately becomes obvious. Becoming obvious—“Well that doesn't belong here”—we let it go. We do that if we are more interested in maintaining the atmosphere than we are in hanging on to some crony habit that we’ve had out of the past. We discover that the stronger this atmosphere, and the substance in it, becomes, the easier it is to discern what doesn't belong and the easier it is to let it be dissolved, because more and more we discover what does belong. And we become more and more interested in what does belong, so that attention is taken away from the things that don't belong. It is only when, for some reason or other, they happen to put in appearance momentarily that we may take note of them and say, “Well that doesn't belong.” But it’s not the primary element of attention. When in that atmosphere, we're not looking around to discern all the things that don't belong; we are much more concerned with the things that do belong. It is only that, when we have an awareness of what doesn't belong, that enables us not to pay attention to it.

So, what a key this is: to listen, to listen to the sound of our own spirit, the spirit of our own Being. How wonderful for the human mind and heart and body to become reacquainted with this, reacquainted with what and who we are. Having the substance, of course, we find that an aspect of the spirit which is present and known, our own spirit, could be described as the spirit of welcome. It is the spirit of welcome to all that belongs in that atmosphere. Now we are well aware, in human beings generally, that there is a lot that doesn't belong in that atmosphere. But there is also present what does; and if we know what belongs we can become discerning with respect to others. We can welcome others on the basis of what does belong in our atmosphere. They may bring along some things that don't belong but, remember, we always have the control of the atmosphere ourselves. As far as we are concerned the things that don't belong are not welcome. We pay attention to what is welcome and this is emphasized then to those who are welcomed, while the things that don't belong are largely ignored—as far as possible at least. If there is present in the person something beautiful that does belong, there will undoubtedly be some sensitivity in that person, and he or she will begin to feel uncomfortable with respect to the things that don't belong. We would not wish that discomfort to get too extreme, so that the individual got out of there, but we let it recede into the background, shall we say, because the emphasis is upon the things that do belong. Then the individual begins to have more confidence in the things that do belong.

So there is this spirit of welcome. I might use a little example here. I’m sure you are all aware, some of you more so than others probably, of the spirit of welcome which is such a consistent thing with Bill Bahan. There is an open welcome, a spiritual welcome, to people. Now for years he lived in the external sense, one might say, nowhere. He had no external facility, of any great moment at least, into which he could welcome people. But that certainly did not prevent him from offering the spirit of welcome. Having offered it consistently over the years, finally a form appeared to clothe that spirit of welcome, so that there might be a larger facility for actually welcoming people in the external sense. Only as there is the spirit of welcome present can the facilities which would clothe that spirit appear. Generally speaking, most everyone wants to put it backwards: “Well let's get the facility here and we'll be in position to welcome everyone.” But to what? Probably nobody should be here on that basis. No, the spirit of the welcome must be there, so that such facilities that there are are welcoming, even if it's just one little room somewhere.

Spirit, as we well know, always comes first. Let there be welcome because we have a heavenly atmosphere into which to welcome people. We don't bring everybody and his dog into that atmosphere; there should be some discretion in the matter. And, in any case, some people would not wish to come anyway. But we find that there are those who do. Okay, let the welcome mat be out—the welcome that is present within our own atmosphere, so that people who come may feel welcome and may feel safe. They're not going to be put down; they're not going to be hurt because of the nature of the atmosphere that is there, the atmosphere that comes because we listen to the sound of the spirit. We are familiar with it; we know what it is. It is the expression of our own Being, and because of that the welcome is there. And because the welcome is there in spirit first, in atmosphere, the essential forms to allow it to happen in the external sense will put in an appearance. I have a notion that they are even now in the process of putting in an appearance because there has finally appeared a consistent spirit of welcome in the experience of a sufficient number, so that there might be the substance there, there might be the atmosphere, the heavenly atmosphere, which is the cause of the form which is to take shape.

As we well know, it is not a matter of having the form and trying to push the atmosphere into it. But let the atmosphere be present first. When it is, the form will appear in one way or another. The form may already be present someplace or it may need to be constructed. Whatever is right will come to pass, but it comes to pass on the basis of that sounding spirit, that sounding Word which brings forth the atmosphere in which we learn to dwell, going no more forth, and never permitting it to be dissipated. If it is dissipated we may know for sure we did it—no one else can do it to us. Each individual is the only one who can dissipate the atmosphere of heaven in which he or she dwells. Abiding in that atmosphere, allowing nothing to enter in that defiles or works abomination or makes a lie, the spirit of welcome is found to be there and all who will may come. And we fulfil this simple task that has been placed in our hands.

© Emissaries of Divine Light