The  High  Point
 

Alan Hammond   May 1998

I don’t think it hurts from time to time to consider if we ever feel that our best times are behind us. Often as people get a little older they tend to look back wistfully to days of yore when their bodies were younger and more vibrant, when their memories worked better, and when they were able to dash around apparently doing a lot more externally. Certainly those of us who had decades of spiritual education, and association with others in that process, could, I suppose, look back and think the fuller, richer, more dynamic days were in the past. After all, were we not constantly inspired, encouraged and assisted in the Way? If we do yearn for the past, if we do see the high point of our lives as being somewhere in the past, that would indeed be a pathetic state, because we know that we experience what we express. So if we’re experiencing less quality of life today, there’s no doubt that it’s because we’re expressing less quality of life than we were back then. However, fortunately the remedy is so easy!

We’ve often said that external circumstances are not the determining factors in the quality of our life experience, and this is the truth of the matter. It is the quality of our life expression which determines the quality of our experience in a moment. So if the feeling or thought does ever cross our mind that the glory days are behind us, then all we need do is remember who we are in this very moment, give expression to that quality and we will find, as we always have, that the quality of our experience is instantaneously enhanced, and we know we’re doing what we’re here to do.

The true experience in life is from glory unto glory, because as we move through life we are constantly clarifying our own minds and hearts. Therefore the quality of our expression from the spiritual standpoint is increasing and expanding—so too then is our experience of life and service. It is more apparent that our spiritual responsibility is greater now than it ever was, the course of ministry requires greater consideration now, and the challenge is more immediately obvious than ever before. The glory days are here now!

It’s valuable to remember once again Man’s responsibility in what was called the garden: namely, to tend and keep it. We know that no matter how beautiful the variety of forms were in the garden, the apex of that place was the consciousness of Man, and this is still the truth in the world today. All of creation comes to focus in a quality of experience, and that happens in consciousness. People can be in a variety of external circumstances, but really the focus of any pattern of circumstance can be heaven, or the garden, if the individual can bring to focus who he or she divinely is, for they will find that this Presence creates the experience of heaven wherever, whenever it is expressed.

In fact this is the supreme art for which we are responsible: to utilize all the vibrational material around us—physical, mental, emotional and other levels which impinge upon our consciousness—and create an experience of heaven where we are, where I am. As I said, this is easily done by bringing to focus consciously who I am and the quality of that Presence, and releasing my expression as required in that circumstance. That creates automatically the optimum experience possible in those circumstances. In this way we bring heaven where we are. This is how we exercise our authority over our human consciousness and extend that authority into our worlds. I suppose people think that God is lucky because He’s in heaven. Where God is, heaven is. However, He/She does something that makes it heaven. They’re not just fortunate to be lolling around in some celestial holiday resort! God, male and female, knows how to create heaven. In fact it is naturally present as they express who they truly are. We know this on earth, and we do it here.

In the face of the challenge of creating the experience of heaven on earth I think most human beings feel very small, weak, impotent in the context of the world the way it is. And of course in human identity they actually are, so it’s only right they should feel that. However, part of our job in being on Earth is to reintroduce a different kind of experience—the true experience. Identified at the physical level human beings seek to gain some sort of security, stature and power by associating in collective bodies of people. They feel safer, stronger if they belong to a collective body of some sort. Now obviously there’s nothing wrong in belonging to a collective body—after all, the whole cosmos is one collective body and mankind should be a unified element in this vast physical context. However when the motivation is the alleviation of impotence and fear, that’s not a true goal or solution. So people feel stronger if they are identified with a powerful nation, or if they belong to organizations of various sorts—churches, for example.

Other people, more mentally inclined perhaps, tend to seek security and authority in mental bodies. They share conceptual views or beliefs with others, and they feel secure in that: “If ten million people believe this, it must be true”—which isn’t true! People feel more secure in a shared mental edifice, no matter how logically flimsy that body may be.

We’ve all moved through that progression I’m sure, and we’re not condemning it in any way because it’s the way things are now, and we understand the compulsions operating within the human psyche. However, if we continue in the process of discovering our true Identity and expression, we find that as we express the spirit of the Creator, our outer consciousness becomes integrated into this quality of spirit, that of the Creator. We discover that we are an aspect of the one power—Life. What else is there except this one power that’s animating everything throughout the whole cosmos? This is who we are, expressing through this little dusty form. Now here is the true Body to which we belong—it is the true spiritual Identity with its multi-dimensional cosmic body.

Intellectually, it’s easy to see what I’ve just said. I think it’s irrefutable since there’s only one life and it is doing everything everywhere, including speaking these words. But it’s one thing to see it intellectually and quite another to experience it. And we are really interested in letting the experience factually come in these human forms. It’s achieved, as I said, by integration—integrity. Integrity is expressing who we really are. As we express the spirit of the Creator, the outer consciousness is integrated into that Spirit, then I am present and in expression. And more than that, then all effort disappears because everything is being done by the one Body and power. As an aspect of this one vast body and power, anxiety and struggling recede because one has only one’s immediately local responsibilities in the creative process to take care of. The same one power is doing everything else everywhere else, accomplishing its purpose throughout the whole cosmos in this moment. The radiant action is happening, and all I have to do is express my part of it where I am. And that’s it. There’s really no need to worry about the rest of the cosmos. If we can feel and move with this current of the moment, it does begin to diminish how much we worry and struggle. We’re happy to let the whole do its thing, have its way.

I suppose one of the major considerations that may have caused some anxiety if we’re spiritually inclined, is the goal of the restoration. To the outer human consciousness the restoration of mankind, the world, and life experience, has seemed to be a very large project. We have felt that we have to exercise great effort to accomplish the restoration. But from the perspective that we were touching on just now, human consciousness is not even a pimple on a pimple in the cosmic whole. It’s virtually indiscernible. Of course it seems very large if you’re right there in the pimple. Also, evil seems very large to a human ego: “After all, look at all the suffering and misery and distortion there is in the world. We’ve got to struggle manfully and womanfully to put all this spiritually right and we know how strong wickedness is. After all, I’ve been fighting it in myself all my life!” But when we remember that evil and distortion is the absence of the presence of the expression of reality, then we realize it’s nothing, actually. So we’re not concerned to be wrestling around all our lives with nothing. All we’re concerned about is magnifying the Lord, which is making larger the expression of the Creator—magnifying the Lord where I am. As we genuinely do this with integrity, we become increasingly integrated consciously into the divine whole and our perspective of the situation changes.

The distorted human world is passing away. It’s in the process of passing away now. Distortion eliminates itself, so we don’t have to struggle to make it pass away. We have often considered the innumerable ways in which it might eliminate itself. T.S. Eliot suggested that it could go with a bang or a whimper. There’s no need for us to speculate as to the ultimate form of the demise of the distorted body of mankind and its world. Suffice to know that it is in process. It seems to have taken a little while, partly because the creative process in its merciful work has sought to gently remold and restore the consciousness of mankind, but thus far it hasn’t succeeded. It’s been met with enough resistance to delay the restoration but the process is still underway. So just a bit more pressure is constantly applied so that eventually it will move and change and be restored to the true design. This may be with a bang of some sort; it could be with a gasp; it might be accomplished through the release of different qualities of radiation from elsewhere in the cosmos that transforms substance and consciousness in a twinkling of an eye. Who know? Who cares actually? The point is that we know we’re moving towards that point. The dissolution of distorted human beings and their world could sound quite discouraging to most people, but it’s not discouraging if one is in true Identity. That’s the whole job—to eliminate the fallen condition from the world. That’s the goal of the truth of Love. May it be as painless and as quick as possible.

The human mind, intellectualizing about what we’re talking about could say, “Well then all we’ve got to do is lean back and let it happen, there’s nothing much for us to do. Let God take care of it, we’ll sit and wait for the end!” But actually, we are a part of the activity of the creative process which is accomplishing the goal and we have a vital part to play no matter what the ultimate form of the change is going to be. Our role, we find, is very exact in every moment. Generation of the finest possible substance and then meticulous action through that substance in feeling, thought, or physical action are the means by which we convey our aspect of the one cosmic radiation into our creative fields.

We have said that we seek to save some human flesh: this would be the most gradual route for restoration, however, this may not prove possible. Therefore, was or is our activity of seeking to express the Tone moment by moment a waste of time? Of course not, because even if the physical form of the body of mankind is eliminated, there’s a level then where the divine patterns are intact just above the physical level. Out of that would be born the next phase of creativity to be reintroduced into the physical level at some point in the ongoing cycles. Remember that the current physical form of human beings is neither of the true quality of substance, nor of the true design to embody restored angelic forms, so radical changes will be necessary in any case.

So just surveying all this is worthwhile inasmuch as the bottom line is that the forms of the outworking of things is secondary to the accomplishment of the main purpose of restoration. We have an absolute responsibility for releasing the quality of divine Being here and now, always. Then we know we’re playing our vital part in the overall outworking. And because we’re integrated into the whole, we know ongoing responsibility, opportunity and fulfillment in every moment of our living. This is part of the ecstatic state and we bring this awareness into the world. But of course, we only really know it if we actually do it! And as we do it the high point of our lives is not somewhere in the past, nor somewhere in the future—beyond the restoration perhaps!—but in this very moment of true, eternal Being.

© Archangelic Body