Posted on 24 September 2018, 9:47

Stephen: In what way may I best assist?

Michael:  The point of unfolding, in each of us.  [I am asking him where we are at, in our spiritual journeys.

Stephen: The unfolding, and the point of unfolding [in each of us]:
how can I best describe the seed in the ground,
which will grow into a great tree?
Each stage of the unfolding is essential for the tree.
The object of unfolding is the tree.
Each stage in itself is of the greatest importance at the time of that stage.

Is it your wish to know the stage of unfolding
at which you have arrived?
Would a seed, as the first sprout reaches from the ground, from inside the earth, and sees the light and feels the heat of the sun for the first time, not say to itself, “Is this the object, or is there a further purpose?”

Would it not maybe recognise or perhaps associate with other trees, from what it can sense, what it can feel of the vibrations that come to it, and say, “This is what I wish to achieve, this is what I feel I should achieve.”
The concept of unfolding is [in] the now of this moment.
The importance of knowing what was before for that seed
is only of relative importance for the understanding
of what is now:
not what it may be, nor what it shall be,
nor understanding the desires or the instincts.
The salmon that returns to the same spot
from which it had come away as a fingerling,
that is the object.

Each mile of the journey is of importance.
Is there something that you can ask through my mind that will help me to make this clearer, Jeremy? Feel and probe…
Jeremy has nothing to say yet.
Has this in itself prompted a question, or are there other questions that will help me make it clearer? Feel my difficulty, if you please. How can a leaf tell, through the branch, the seed that is yet to come, of the unfolding after it arrives and it has fallen to the ground?
Even though the leaf knows, what concept for a comparison   can it use to explain to the seed yet to come, except
when   the seed begins to come, to tell it that it is a seed,
and as the seed begins to grow to say,
“Do not worry seed, you are progressing well.”
When the seed is due to fall, to say to the seed,
“You will live again, do not worry, you shall unfold.”
Can you see my problem?
You can say to the seed, “You shall one day be as the tree.”
Believe this, for each thing that happens to you
is for that object.
Each belief that you have ever heard, and ever seen,
or can ever conceive, has the same object.
Each seed has been told this object even before it was a seed.
To explain whilst things are happening, what is happening,
becomes a simple task for the leaf
that has been through these experiences
and then finds itself only a part.
The concept, even though experienced, and the unfolding,
even though the leaf came about through this unfolding,
are hardly explainable.
But the leaf does know that it is a part of the tree,
that it was a part of the seed,
that it did unfold, as the coming seed will unfold.
In this way only can I help, to say,
“Think of yourself as this seed.
The stage of the seed is immaterial.
Unfolding you may be, as is the case with what I am
and what I am connected to has unfolded in a manner,
has unfolded not to become the tree but to produce the seed, which produces the tree.”

Michael comments now 45 yeas later.

After all this time I still find Stephen’s words helpful even as subsequent experiences have much widened ny spiritual horizons. Every new experience reinforces my awareness of participation in a boundariless interconnected spiritual-physical whole. “In God we live and move and have our being.”

But when I focus on myself, almost 90 years old, in the city of Christchurch, in New Zealand,  I still see as helpful the image of myself as a sprouting seed in relation to Stephen’s tree.

This tree. I now think, can be equated to the ancient and universal symbol of the Tree of Life.

On the internet I stumbled on the following piece about the Tree of Liffe:

“The Metaphysical meaning of the image of the Tree of Life is simple… You are a child of the Universe.
•You have the right to exist
•You have the responsibility to grow to be yourself

“The meaning of the Tree of Life as a spiritual symbol is well known and, like the tree itself, many branched and deeply rooted.

“The Tree of Life can be thought of as your own Cosmic Family tree, telling ancient stories of your shared roots which link you to the past, showing your connected struggles and aspirations; your desires to reach for the Light.

“The Tree of Life crosses all cultures because the Ancients could see trees close up all of the time… the symbolism of the sprouting seed, growing into a trunk and branching off, sending out smaller branches and little twigs, to see what they may accomplish… was not lost on them. The Tree became a common symbol, then, of life, ancestry, mythology, lessons of the spirit, history, lineage, and hope for the future… and climbing to the heavens.”  Read further.

Revelation, the last book of the New Testament, shows the Tree of Life was central to Judaism at that time. And devotion to this picture of things developed into the more formalised Kabbalah Tree in the late Middle Ages.

In Revelation 22 we read “Then he showed me a river of the water of life, clear as crystal, coming from the throne of God and of the Lamb, in the middle of its street. On either side of the river was the tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations:”

In the previous chapter there is a picture of the heavenly city of God cubic in form being let down from heaven like a bridegroom coming to his bride. It is talking of the union of spiritual with the physical. The concept is of “squaring the circle”, “cubing the sphere”, uniting of spiritual and physical..

Stephen’s overall message if that of the Perennial Philosophy. Spirit and the physical are one and holy.  It is our lack of awareness of this that constitutes sin. 

The present globalisation of the world, where all nations are inextricably connected by internet, trade, and tourism, can be seen a step towards a wider and more universal consciousness, But of course human frailty is also pulling us in other directions.

But in sum, I find still find Stephen’s picture of the Tree very helpful,  in relating my little life to the wonder of The All. Then he showed me a river of the water of life, [as] clear as crystal, coming from the throne of God and of [b ]the Lamb, 2 in the middle of its street. On either side of the river was the tree of life, bearing twelve [c]kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations

Michael Cocks edits the journal, The Ground of Faith.
Afterlife Teaching From Stephen the Martyr by Michael Cocks is published by White Crow Books and available from Amazon and other bookstores.

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Posted on 04 September 2018, 8:51

During the seven years of our conversations with the spirit of Stephen the Martyr, through trance medium Tom Ashman, we experienced numerous striking synchronicities with UFO manifestations, each of them helping us to see all of humanity at all times as participant in universal spirit. St Paul said of this Spirit, “in him we live and move and have our being.

A very persuasive book in this regards is Leslie Keen’s UFOs, Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go on the Record.

When one of the group asked about UFO’s, Stephen responded with a beautiful Song of Hope which I named “Love that is the Flood”

This particular conversation with Stephen went as follows.

Olive: Now I have received [intuited] quite a bit on UFOs and beings from outer space coming soon to help humanity. Others in the group have received this too. So is this true or is it just something we are imagining?

Stephen: Should we be surprised that in the whole of creation, the whole of that creation that is the parched land, love is the flood that shall make the parched land fertile.

As the parching becomes more than the flood from the whole of creation which is the well of love, and the well of love should not increase, then from the depths, and from the sides of the well, Love will flow forth.

We are in danger often of minimizing our vision of many of these things, as man has always done.

These things that we see and hear in these days, in days when I would need not to use Thomas [when incarnate as Stephen 2000 years ago]  They would have seemed stranger than these [present days] that cause you wonder.

There are many things yet that physical man will need to experience and will need to know; the greater the need, the greater the parching, the greater the growth, or the greater the flood of love that will come, and it will come from greater depths, from all that has been created.

We might, as a particle on the parched land, look at that one drop of water and say that this has come from a great distance to help humanity, where in truth we have only become a little moist.

The flood that will come to quench the thirst of us all is yet to come, and there will be no misconceptions at this time for we will not be in need just then for we will be moist and fertile.

It does not always need the water from a distant part of the world to moisten or dampen us, for close to us, each day of our lives, there is moisture enough that we might breathe and not crack.

Maybe we think it is that the moisture that comes from the place furthest away will dampen us better, therefore we forget what is nearestand look for that which is distant, when all we need to know is that when the well springs forth and growth has come and we are saturated, we ourselves will blossom forth.

I say this: neither deny that moisture that comes from a distance nor attach to it greater wetness than what is yours already, for both are for the same purpose and none greater than the other.

If we stop drinking what keeps us from cracking, in order that we might wait for the distant droplet, then we will shrivel and become hard.

For in the distance is the imagined sweetness which we already have in sufficient quantity.

For when the flood is come, all that love from the distant and the close will be with us; we will not lose one to gain the other, nor gain one to lose the other.

Take what we have.

Should the other droplet come to us then be glad that the well of life is the same and comes undisguised when the need for growth is the greatest.

I have said to Michael: Be a good husbandman and sow your seed. Do not be concerned that it will perish through the lack of the flood of the Saviour.

We are here now and we plant our seed for growth.

The soil is open, that it might receive the seed, and the flood of living water will come upon that seed. 

If we have planted well in truth it will flourish and the growth which we came away from the Source to achieve, will be great.

For as you can see that each thing that was created, it was created in the image of what truly is.

As man is in that image, and represents what is the Father, so all things represent and are in the image of what is.

Each day, before our eyes, each month, each year, each season, unfolds the story of the order of things.

We can see when we plant our seeds, we have the sun that dries, the water that nourishes and makes to thrive. We know that to feed ourselves in order that we might grow we must care for and plant our seeds well and till that soil. This then is the order of what we must do for the Father does not leave us without a book of reference.

He does not leave us with a great mystery that is insoluble. He teaches us that wherever and whenever we rest, having everything with no effort, what is remains.

But with our so-called achieving, what we call “knowledge” has created barren land which nevertheless the Father can use to make the garden, that was indeed perfect, much larger, so in the end we have not one garden of restricted boundaries but a continuing one that will flourish.

(If you are interested to read more about Stephen and UFOs, see my book Into the Wider Dream.}

Michael Cocks edits the journal, The Ground of Faith.
Afterlife Teaching From Stephen the Martyr by Michael Cocks is published by White Crow Books and available from Amazon and other bookstores.

Paperback               Kindle