Dr Sir John Whitman Ray Anniversary Message

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2011

Greetings friends.

April 21, 2011 marks the 10th anniversary of the passing of Dr Sir John Whitman Ray.  I had considered making this the last of my annual tributes, but as I look back on previous posts I see an important body of principle accumulating, and so it is that I will continue to post these each year while the need remains.  The need is certainly present at this time.

Before we begin, a reminder that the homage I pay is to the principles taught by Dr Ray.  As he would no doubt include himself in describing us as, “delightful deviations from the norm,” we would do well to look beyond our perceptions of his human being and actions in life.  Indeed, some have struggled to rationalise his humanity with his teachings and have essentially “thrown out the baby with the bath water”.

While we may benefit from having a spiritually enlightened master in our presence, to learn from by precept and example, the reality facing most of us is that we seldom knowingly have this opportunity.  So do we just sit around and wait, perhaps casting stones, or spend a lifetime forever searching, or do we get on with our life?

Of course, we are the ones responsible for our own progress and it behoves us to gratefully take the initiative with what we have available.

So, although we owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Dr Ray for taking the slings and arrows as we grappled with our own humanity, we owe our allegiance to the principles and, more than this, allegiance to the revelation we are all individually capable of receiving as an outgrowth of applying whatever we have to the best of our ability.  Christ said it of his own teachings, in the Essene Gospel of Peace, and I say it now of Dr Ray’s teachings – the teachings as words or as abstract principles are dead; what lives is the Spirit of God that is invested in them or that moves amongst us. 

If we apply the principles blindly or without faith, or with no conscious determination to be aware of and receptive to the Spirit of God to direct us in our application of those principles, there will be no understanding arising from the experience, no revelation, no illumination. 

All illumination comes from Above, that is, from the Spirit of God, and not from within our own minds, no matter how much effort we apply.  For all our intellectual prowess and experience that we may accrue over a lifetime (or more), we have nothing in the way of understanding the true Laws of Heaven and of Life if we do not receive this illumination or Grace.  We may understand the physics or science of a thing but this is no more real than trying to understand what it is like to drive a car by simply looking at a photograph of one.

Having spent 15 years as a Body Electronics practitioner teaching correct principle, as we were taught by John to do, I wish today to go one further step with you.  The time is right now.  This is the time, the year, the month, day, hour, minute and second to stop waiting, to put aside your idle intellectual desire to understand, and instead take matters into your own hands with a receptivity to the Spirit of God, even as you read this.  As John has often said, “You already know what to do,” so why not do it now?

 

You already know what to do

Okay, so you feel like you don’t know what to do.  But you do.  You’d like me to tell you what to do.  But I can’t.  Only you know what to do, and can do it, as little as you may want this responsibility or as little as you may believe yourself capable.

So today I present you with a simple two-step programme if you want to step up and be counted.

Step one – experience life just as it is.

Step two – take constructive action.

 

Step one – experience life just as it is

If we had experienced life just as it is, lovingly and willingly, we would not be in the compromised position we are in today, for as we look back with an honest eye we will see the wreckage strewn in the path behind us, the experiences we did not deal with constructively and their fallout. Similarly, as we look forward we may see the looming clouds, as the continuation of this fallout.

We have a choice in every experience to willingly be in it or to resist or try to push it away.  If we look at our track record we will see that in a large number of cases we have somewhat resisted our experiences or, at the very least, been quite selective as to which experiences we will embrace and which we would rather not have had.  In other words, we have evaluated each situation on its merits in determining whether or not to enjoy it.  We may think of this as our identification with matter or identification with yin energies, those energies relating to the outer world, or effect end of creation.  In other words, rather than choosing how we will be in a situation, we allow the situation to dictate to us how we should feel.  “He makes me angry,” “I am scared of that thing,” “I feel so tired when that happens,” etc.  In our own mind it seems reasonable that external events justify our behaviour, belief or feeling.  Thus we are at the mercy of our environment, first driven one way and then another, with only an illusion that we are in control.

Although experience may give us the benefit of hindsight, where we would have done it differently if we could do it again, we continue to suppose that circumstances dictate actions, just not the ones we took.  We have somewhat of a vicious circle, since our actions of yesterday become a potent force in creating our experiences of tomorrow.  No matter how well we manage to pick up the pieces of one mishandled situation, we find another one being created.  This is our karma, where a creation has been set into motion by us but never fully resolved or completed and so it circulates in and out of our awareness until such time as we consciously bring it to an end.  The problem is that we cannot end it if every time it appears we are more concerned with its outer appearance, or yin nature, than our responsibility for it and determination to love it unconditionally.  In other words, it is not just the circumstance of karma that requires completion, but the creative force behind it, its yang nature.  This yang aspect does not lie outside us in our environment or external experience, but within us in our internal experience.  It is not about “having all our ducks in a row,” as much as what our attitude to our ducks is, whether they be in a row or not.

Thus in absolutely every experience of life, great or small, there is one thing to do first and foremost, which is to be in it fully.  If we resist it at all then we cannot fully experience it and therefore cannot come to a knowledge of it in every aspect or see beyond the yin energy being presented to us.  The yang creative essence that we must resolve cannot be exposed while we have, through any form of resistance, unawareness of the entirety of the yin. Thus, be immersed in your experiences, not merely from the position of an observer, but as a participant.

If you assume the position of observer alone, you again perpetuate the karma or yin manifestation of yang energy by falling back into the pattern of your actions and feelings which you allow to be dictated by outer experiences. To lovingly and willingly endure an experience requires us to go beyond passive observation to determined active faith that the experience is Perfect Divine Order.  In this way we begin to see beyond the outer appearance alone, towards the creative energies behind it.

This attitude or activity of being in your experiences lovingly and willingly as both observer and faithful participant is particularly poignant as we consider the string of catastrophes that have occurred on the planet over the last year – it seems barely a month goes by without a major earthquake, flood, fire, tsunami, tornado, hurricane, or volcanic eruption.  Even when there is significant loss of life, if we cannot take a position that all is Perfect Divine Order and be in the experience, insofar as it is presented to us, then we are defaulting to the position of observer and perpetuater through our resistance to experiencing the creative energy behind it.

Okay, so we have feelings because of what we observe – I guess we’re yet human afterall.  Although our goal is to choose our feeling (love) we can in the meantime be realistic that we may not be in this place immediately or every time.  Certain experiences are beyond our current capacity to lovingly and willingly endure, at least that’s how we may see it and perhaps this is so.  In this case we should take one step back and instead of fooling ourselves that we can love the “unlovable”, choose to look at our less-than-love feelings as their own experience – can we be in this experience of our feelings and love them? Thus we can be in an experience to the best of our ability and, as part of that external experience, realise that we are having a reaction and then be okay with that.  It is putting the cart before the horse to think we can be in an experience while simultaneously “stuffing” or ignoring our feelings about it.

Therefore, can we allow ourselves to be in a position of hating or grieving or feeling like giving up, being fearful, etc?  What is this feeling like?  Can you love it?  Yes you can, but will you?  If and when you can do this then you may become a far more perceptive observer as a steppingstone to being a faithful participator, that you eventually become aware of the yang inner creative essence.  Of course, you must then also know how to encompass duality, which is a conversation for another day, to completely bring that creative cycle to an end, but even without this you can at least stop being the effect of your environment.

So much for step one.  We could of course expand on the principles and practicalities of this indefinitely, but there is already enough here to go out and put into practice.  Start now – what experience are you having right now that you are not properly in?  Begin to be in it now; stop holding it at arm’s length.  It won’t really go away, no matter how much you resist; quite the opposite.  Stop trying to make it or wanting it to go away – it’s here so be in it and love it in every way that you can.

 

Step two - taking constructive action

Now for step 2, taking constructive action.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, we must also make deliberate efforts to put order into our life.  This is the means by which we remove the clutter of simple but incomplete items so we build our capacity for faith and love, hence making us more effective at step one.  We won’t need step two nearly so much when we do a better job of step one.  However, here we are, so let’s do it.  This, of course, is all about The List; not a list, The List.

The moment you determine to be in your experiences (that’s right now, remember?), you begin to become aware of all sorts of things that become a mounting list of reasons not to be in the experience, thus we become entrapped as the effect of the world again – identified with matter.  Wouldn’t it be great if, rather than constantly being on the receiving end of “sneak attacks” from our karma, we could instead clear a path ahead of us before having to walk it?  This is exactly what The List does.  It’s a kind of “karmic trailblazer”, clearing all the little obstacles or potholes on the path ahead, which gives us less “reasons” to give in to the appearance world. 

After some good experience with The List, it isn’t just the little obstacles that you deal with, but some quite substantial ones also, and in this way The List becomes part and parcel of your path, both showing the way as well as making the way clear.

It’s all about constructive action focussed on the most simple of things, those things where we are so confident of our success that we can apply Faith in its fullest extent most easily.

I will not dwell on The List too much here, you can read my other posts, you can read my book all about The List, or you can read Chapter 11 of John’s “Laws of Perfection” at another time.  Right now, let it suffice to say that the only way The List works is by doing it.  I know, you were hoping for a step two that only required you to read about it.  But nonetheless, here is the practical application of John’s words, “You already know what to do,” and the reason why I can’t tell you what to do.  Plenty of people claim to know (or at least have limitless opinions) what things are incomplete or in a state of disorder in your life, or what you “should” do, but only you know what seems like a simple matter to put right and only you know what seems right for you to do. 

Until you get them all down on your List – the impossible, the hard and the simple – and then order them from complex down to simple, you have no perspective.  If nothing else you can motivate yourself into action by saying, “Well, I can’t do any of that stuff over there but I better do something useful, so what here can I do?”  This isn’t the end game for your motivation, but it may well be the beginning and the means by which you will eventually be able to discern with clarity where to most constructively put your hand.  Don’t be surprised by your confusion of mind until this time – how can you see Right Action when you’re identified with matter?  This is not a reasonable expectation to start with, so be okay with it. So we have to differentiate the end game of the Law of Right Action from where we are right now, which is in our current experience, whatever that may be.

 

Instant sainthood

John spoke of our desire for “Instant Sainthood”. What is this?  It’s our desire or belief that we can or should act perfectly as soon as we learn of a principle.  So people try to enforce a principle into their life, which is not an act of faith, just blind compulsion and resistance to one’s current experience.  Don’t try this at home – you cannot jump from chaos, disorder and resistance into perfection without embracing things as they are first. 

This is not to take away from any spiritual practice, which may require us to do 50 saintly things before breakfast, just to put into perspective that we have a practical reality which isn’t in front of us for no good reason.  Our spiritual practice or application of principle is not meant to be an escape from life, but a facilitator of it so we can move through it into a higher life.  Instant sainthood is escapism, another indication of our unwillingness to be here now, which is where we are, like it or not. I hope you're starting to like it.

The irony is that if only we could be here now we would see that everything already is perfect; it doesn’t need to be made perfect.  What we are perfecting then is our ability to realise our inherent perfection and the perfection of all experience, by being in it, lovingly and willingly.

We don’t need to be instant saints and neither should we beat ourselves up over our inadequacies in various areas. What we do need to do is to work on our sainthood diligently and tangibly by first starting with something simple that we can achieve through faith, i.e. where we can see the end from the beginning.

So, the principles, as we understand them as words or concepts, are dead and as such nothing more than symbols in the outer yin manifestation. The best we can hope to understand through yin principles is the yin itself, but nothing of the true inner yang essence.  A teacher of such principles teaches not – he merely relates his partial observations of the outer world. 

A teacher who teaches such principles in faith, according to direction from the Spirit of God, teaches truly, for those who hear may receive (if they are willing and ready) not only the principles but the Spirit of God itself, which alone illumines the mind.  Herein the yin principles are invested with the yang essence behind them, which explains all cause and effect.  The written or recorded words of this teacher are also dead, in and of themselves, and but yin records, except to say, that being directed by the Spirit of God, the true Seeker may again contact the yang essence and through this come to a full understanding of yang and yin principles expressed.  There is no assurance this will happen, save the seeker truly seeks, asks and knocks from a position of faith, regarding the written or recorded teachings.

If we were perceptive, we would realise that to experience life as it is includes experiencing not just the yin manifestation, but the yang essence behind it also.

Initially, we will be satisfied with experiencing the yin as it is. But, as has been stated, the end game requires us to receive (and eventually recreate) the yang also – which indeed is why the practice of Body Electronics on the table is our training ground for doing the same exact thing in daily life.  If you have taken this parallel with a grain of salt before, do not do so now.  We must Observe, Receive, Recreate and Release every experience of life, both as a matter of re-experiencing memory as well as in the present moment of experiencing life as it happens.

But how will we ensure that all that needs to come to our conscious memory will?  This will be the effect of taking constructive action as guided by The List, for you will progressively and sequentially deal with your karmic considerations, which underpin the bulk of all traumatic experience.  There are exceptions to the rule of karma in our experience, yet even memories of trauma relating to those exceptions will more readily rise to the surface, as the distractions from all karmic considerations are constructively resolved.

There is so much more that could be said but this is sufficient for now in this context of reflecting on Dr Ray’s life and teachings.  Let us endeavour to separate the wheat from the chaff, the yang from the yin, recognise the tasks ahead of us, and embrace them.

Thank you once again, John, for helping us begin to understand and begin to observe and receive.  May we all recreate and release accordingly.

In Love, Light and Perfection,
I AM
Graham Bennett

 

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