Click here to read the introduction to the series of posts relating to Decision-making Structures.

(The following is an abridgement, with interpolations, of the transcript of a talk given by David Spangler to the Community in late November or early December 1973. This version has been edited by Gordon Cutler. In its original form it is part of ‘The Seventh Ray’ in the Original Series of Study Papers.)

One of the lessons the Community offers is how to come to creative terms, both as concepts and as ideals, with the energies of “authority” and “power” and how they relate to both the growth of the individual and that of the Community.

A question before us is: “How can we best serve our own indwelling God-source and the God-source of the whole within which we might be functioning at any given time?” In looking for an answer or answers we need to consider the following points.

Freedom and disciplined action taken in harmony with the whole are interrelated terms. For example, I have more freedom when my being is enhanced through the energy that is invoked by synergistic co-operative work with others than I can attain by myself. Movement (or action) is never carried out in isolation. Even if alone in a room or a forest, one moves in relation to the walls or the trees that surround one. Much of the joy of movement comes through the awareness of this relationship.

Dance illustrates this very well. I am sure many of you have experienced the pleasure and joy of dancing with another, blending not only your movements, but your partner’s into an interweaving wholeness which you could not achieve singly. Life is a dance and its enhancement, glory and greater freedom come through both our relationships within ourselves and with our “greater” selves as represented by the people and other kingdoms of life that make up our environment.

In order to achieve this freedom, I need to have awareness; I need to know how to blend and how to move in harmony. If someone enters the dance who is stronger and more graceful I must find how I can blend what I am in the loving respect that is due to what I am with this stronger force that has entered my environment. Perhaps I will feel threatened, will seek to alter the dance, minimise the steps this stronger dancer can take or even leave the dance itself. But none of these options solves the essential challenge of how to relate to a stronger force on the one hand or a lesser force on the other. How do I relate so that I do not become a satellite orbiting the stronger force? How do I relate so that no satellites orbit me?

The idea of personal liberty is a divine idea; but if it is glamorised, it can become an illusion blocking the way to true freedom. But as an ideal it is still very potent, so we struggle for liberty and freedom. We struggle against what appears to represent authority and which appears to be telling us what to do. Sometimes we get so engrossed in the struggle that that is all we live for; and if we lose it we lose our reason for being. Thus before a person can clearly perceive the new cycle and the possibilities it represents, s/he must be clear about these concepts of strength, identity, power and authority.

My response to a strong dancer should be to move in strength to that person and try to grow from that strength and to recognise my greater capacities to dance. But I may feel threatened, and so I may shrink form the dancer; or I may feel submissive, so I simply submit and provide no creative direction for that dancer to work against.

When we deny authority in another is really denying it in his own being. You cannot have authority and deny it at the same time. My authority comes only when I can recognise a strength in others which I must be strong to relate to. Otherwise what I have is not authority but illusion, the glamour of separation, of being different than, other than, better than and stronger than other beings. Thus authority cannot be dealt with or resolved on the level of reaction to form.

Since power, like money, tends to have bad connotations in various quarters it is time that we deeply examine what is meant by it. Humanity has a right to power and at some point in our evolution we have to learn to embody it with wisdom. There may be some question as to the form of expression used in the Aureolis soul-scripts[1], but what they say, in essence, is very true. I am power; and the sooner I recognise it, the sooner I’ll be able to move in harmony with the power that resides in others. We think of power as a force that dominates, but it is also a force that serves, and without it we have no capacity to serve. There must be power within me before I can grow, some kind of vitality and surge of life before I can accomplish anything. If I shy away from power then I may not be able to fulfil my part within the dance. If I glamorise power and assume it is most important and I enjoy its exercise over other people, then I am not expressing true power. I am expressing my ignorance and have caught myself in a trap. Many people refuse to invoke this particular energy of their divinity except in ways which might be comfortable for them or their environment . . . but God never said that he was here to make us comfortable; only to express what he is and what we are.

God is infinitely small and infinitely large; but wherever he is, he is with power, with the authority of identity and of being. It is for this reason that the Community is founded on, not guidance from St Germain or an angel, but guidance from God. This brings us face to face with a concept which must be resolved because every new cycle revolves around a change in man’s identification of God. Peter and Eileen have a responsibility to help this identification change and the Community does as well. I have noticed quite a number of times that this change is viewed as one aspect versus another. i.e. How can we be free of the domination or presence of guidance or someone’s attunement? But the challenge is not to be free of Eileen or Peter’s or anyone’s attunement, but to be strong and aware and centred and clear; to be balanced and powerful, loving and wise in one’s own attunement, to discover one’s own authority. With authority comes responsibility which is nothing more than the ability to respond with power, with sensitivity, with awareness, and with an appreciation of the whole which is the dance in which one is participating.

The concept of freedom is not freedom from something, but freedom to be. If you think something in your environment is keeping you from being, then you are operating under illusion, the illusion of your essential powerlessness and your lack of divinity. The spiritual life imposes an incredible discipline, but one that leads to freedom, the freedom that God expresses. That is a freedom which most people have yet to comprehend because they are thinking in terms of personal, separated self-freedom, a freedom from that which would limit them when they are that which limits themselves. I will grant you that what I say can be taken as a justification for domination, but before a person can move very far along the path they must learn essential spiritual honesty which is giving up the freedom to justify one’s actions by another’s words or by thoughts and feelings which are not in tune with the whole, with the dance, with the Divine.

The right that I have is the right to invoke and be Divine. That does not mean we all have to think the same thoughts, feel the same feelings, be the same being, because we are not all the same. We are individual manifestations of divinity and we have a uniqueness to respect and to manifest. Where does this freedom lead us? There is no freedom without awareness. If I am part of a group, if I am being nourished by a communal ritual, then I owe it an awareness. I owe it a sensitivity and the responsibility to fulfil it and myself. By fulfilling it I am also fulfilled. This means walking a fine line of balance and subtle awareness. I am sure that in seeking this line, in seeking to embody this principle, the Community will have its challenges.

People are asked here to embody something which they thought they could not embody or that they did not wish to embody. When serving as focalisers they have to learn how to express authority and responsibility. When not serving as focalisers they have to grow into their responsibility and authority; so that we become partners in a dance and not marchers in a military formation or workers in a factory. There is no simple solution to this except awareness and love and understanding.

Quite often people who end up in focalisers’ positions are people who have little desire to be there, but it’s a point of growth so that is where they got stuck. They may feel uncomfortable learning to express authority because they don’t want to be a boss. They may not have discovered what true focalisation means; how to reflect the energies in a way that they become clearer and more easily worked with, so the tune is more easily heard and we can dance in greater harmony with it. So in this process extremes may be expressed; there may be uncomfortable moments, but these are a part of a growing organism and this is a growing organism.

As a growing organism the Community often incorporates patterns it later may have to reject because they cannot be integrated. Yesterday I talked about how we have to learn not to judge, but we also have to learn to discriminate. To judge means to put a label on a situation or a person which is absolute, which is somehow indicating that this part of an individual’s nature. But to discriminate is simply to say that this person, this event, this thing is not in the right place in the dance; therefore this person is stepping on everybody’s toes and having his own stepped on. This is uncomfortable and unfulfilling so let’s find where the right dance for him is. In any community that is organic there must be this process of attunement, rapport, resonance, and discrimination so that the whole ritual is fulfilled; not just the community’s well-being, but the well-being of the entire operation. This may require an ability to perceive that the true and proper place for an individual is in Timbuktu or California, Kent or Germany or wherever. If this process is understood it can be worked with creatively.

Obviously discrimination can slip easily into judgement, or appear to do so, unless awareness and understanding are exercised and they who have responsibility for the dance of the Community can perceive beyond the level of the personality into the level of the movement for fulfilment of every person.

It is easy to look at the forms of expression and to say that someone who does not fulfil them is not New Age or part of the Community; its easy for a vegetarian to say a meat-eater is not with it; it is easy for a meat-eater to look at a vegetarian and say he is protein-starved. All these dualities are possible; all of these conflicts are possible if we make them possible. But that is not the level on which we will find our power or our authority or our growth. They can be found only on the level where you can recognise that if you are fulfilling the dance, then you are part of it. If you are not, then you are not, and find out where you can fulfil it. If a vegetarian has to dance with a meat-eater and they are dancing in step it does not matter what their diet is.

It is the essence that we have to look at and not get hung up on the levels where traditionally humanity has battled for freedom, power, and authority. If you deny or resist authority in another, then you deny and resist it in yourself for it is not through conflict that you discover who you are; it is by affirming what you are, rather than affirming another’s power over you, that you begin this great epic of discovery. It means you have a responsibility to the organism that you are participating in to be whole; without wholeness there cannot be the kind of growth required.

If you encounter what could be negativity or a lack of wholeness, you may find plenty within you to respond. Don’t. Be true, not so much to what you feel, but to what you can perceive as your responsibility to the whole. That simply means that if I want to find what’s negative about the Community, I can do so very easily because there are a lot of things about it that are not perfect. Because it is an organism in a process of growth struggling against the imperfections we have been creating for the past centuries, it is not going to change overnight. I have to find how I can blend with it before I can find how I can change it and give it a living, growing vitality. I cannot do this if I have separated myself. Does this mean we never utter a negative word? No; let’s not idealise being positive; let’s not idealise anything, let us act with awareness. Be prepared to listen as well as to talk; it is in communication that you will grow together.

Help the organism to grow, for thus your own abilities will grow. You will experience the taking on of responsibility which brings authority, the awareness which brings true power, and the love which makes all these things possible, and without which there is no authority and there is no power. This is not just a community. It never has been. It is something beyond that. It is not a place where people can come and live and hope that it’s better than the suburbs they left elsewhere. It is a working organism seeking to accomplish what no group has yet accomplished in the history of mankind. Perceive deeply the splendour and magnificence of what you are involved in. Embrace it with awareness, wisdom, and the kind of love that is not sympathetic, but rhythmic, harmonious and attuned to the dance, that wishes for each person that freedom and joy that comes from being in the right dance, in the right movement, and the ability to grow as the dance grows.

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[1] Aureolis was the spiritual name of Peter Caddy’s first teacher. His teachings stressed such positive thinking that one feared outcome of their practice was terminal megalomania! For example: “I AM POWER. All power that I need is already mine . . .” is one of the first affirmations in the series.