Respect

The old Intensives of Wimpole Street days always contained a talk by the Master, generally on the subject of Respect. This was described as the ground from which all else sprang: our starting point. In many ways Respect is precisely the simple ground or still desert of Meister Eckhart: an acknowledgement that we are all of the same space and the same (divine) substance - no distinction. Spinoza proved in his Ethics, from a small set of self-evident axioms, in a manner analogous to Euclid's (a geometry of respect), that the universe contains only one substance. By all accounts Enlightenment happens when every cell within us relaxes sufficiently to connect to this Truth: when we stop fighting the Truth (intellectual understandings are of no real consequence in heartworld). The work we do, especially the Heartwork, and I suspect any martial art at its highest level, requires a feeling for a divine presence that permeates everything, and that certain entities and beings embody more than others. This is what your Master should be to you, not just someone with a clutter of techniques and secrets they may or may not teach, but a person who, through karma, grace and hardwork, is a little closer to the Truth than you. This is why Jesus was called the Son of God, not because God bonked his mum, but because he was remade, by the teaching he had received, in God's image. Respect is not an excuse for a cosy unheirarchical spiritual democracy or a lack of intimacy (the respectful distance), but an acknowledgement that we are all on the same spiritual journey and that evidence for this can be seen in all things.

The strongest sense I have had of this all-pervading divine substance was the time my Master's cat died last August. He was the most spiritually advanced being I have known, and as he passed away he somehow opened a door and the room was filled with what I can only call divine grace. The subsequent Heartwork was so connected as to be eerie and otherworldly: we were responding to the other's mind and intention before it had even become part of themselves. When you work with another person, especially in a Heartwork context, you should aim to touch a little of this. If you give yourselves a good two or three hours together, work from the teaching and from respect, and let that take you both, comrades in arms, into uncharted territory (the heartworld), then you'll succeed in bringing the connexion alive, not just to each other but to this divine grace.