from a talk by Martin Cecil
« May 1967 »
Human beings have been very successful in embodying lies. They have done a tremendous job, and now have the opportunity of enjoying the results. But there is wide-open opportunity for embodying the truth, the truth of love as it finds specific individual focus in each of us now. It is not going to be more present tomorrow than it is right now. It is no more present now than it was yesterday. This business of accepting the truth in the present moment has seemed so impossible to the human view. The human being assumes that he is the result of a historical process which has produced him—all this which has derived out of the past—and he sees himself as being trapped in that state. But that state is the lie insofar as his true identity is concerned, so if he merely embodies that, he makes himself a liar; and he tries of course to impose this lie upon everybody else. We have all been busy trying to do this to each other. But in the present moment the truth is, the truth of love is, for each of us, and there is no other moment that it can be accepted but in the present. We know something of the nature, the character, of love, the truth of it; so we can, if we will, embody it now, embody the spirit of God, the spirit of love, truth and life, that we may be the seed sown in the world producing a harvest accordingly.
…Spirit has no meaning on earth except as it is given form, except as it is embodied. Spirit has no influence or effect upon physical substance. There must be something connecting spirit with physical substance for physical substance to be influenced by spirit. We have recognized this basic factor and given it a name, pneumaplasm. Without this essential substance spirit has no means of affecting physical substance. Where there is life there is pneumaplasm, there is the evidence of spirit affecting physical substance. There is this pneumaplasm present with all of us, and it is the means by which spirit may be embodied in form…. The embodiment of spirit in form is our responsibility if the true seed is to be sown on earth…
The sixth spirit is designated by the word womb—the spirit of the womb, the spirit of the secret place, the spirit of the holy place, the spirit of enfoldment. What is your attitude toward your own physical body and the environment which is beyond your body? Do you blame your physical body at times for not being what you think it ought to be, or do you enfold it with this spirit, this aspect of the spirit of love? We could call it the spirit of enfoldment. And what of your environment? Do you object to that? Do you struggle with that? Do you fight with that? Do you judge it adversely? Do you condemn it, saying to yourself it should be different? Or do you enfold it in your love, receive it just the way it is? We recognize that the divine attitude is one of service. We sometimes call ourselves servers. If someone comes to you for help, what do you do? Say to them, “Get the hell out of here; I don’t want to be bothered with you”? Or is there an enfoldment? It is more or less obvious if a little child comes running to you for help; you are going to do something to help that child. I trust so, anyway. You are not going to say, if you are any sort of man or woman, “I just cannot be bothered with you.” And yet every day we have needs presented to us in our environment, in our own bodies. What is our attitude? What spirit do we embody? Is it the spirit of enfoldment, so that there is a welcome to all that responds? And we are not going to judge immediately and say, “Well I don’t like the look of that person’s face; I don’t think he’s responding. I won’t have anything to do with him.” Some human attitudes are just as ridiculous as that. People say, when they meet someone, “Oh I know immediately whether I am going to like that person or not.” Well is it so important whether you like them or not? Or is it important to serve? Is it important to be right? Is it important to be divine? Is it important to embody the truth of love? If it is not important to a person, well he can behave any old way, I suppose; but any old way will always be destructive; it will sow destructive seeds and will bring a destructive harvest.
The spirit of the womb, the spirit of enfoldment: this is the first spirit moving out in the differentiation of love. All that comes within the range of our field of service, which is our environment, must rightly be enfolded in love, no matter what it is, if we are to embody the truth of love. This is an aspect of the truth of love. If we have any other attitude we have rejected the truth of love… We have rejected God, and nothing constructive can come out of that. The spirit of the womb the first moving out in the differentiation of the spirit of love…
What a great reminder. The spirit of enfoldment has no judgement or expectation, just the truth of love.