27 Various Chapters From Walter C. Lanyon Books
THRUST IN THE SICKLE
THE TIME OF SEEING
TO PONDER
THE TOUCH
TOUCHING
TRAILING CLOUDS OF GLORY
THE TRINITY
WAIT
THE WAY OF THE LORD
THE WELL OF LIVING WATERS
WHAT ALL THE WORLD IS SEEKING
WHAT THOUGHT CAN DO to YOU
WHEN A MAN
WHEN YOU PRAY
WHERE THERE BE PROPHECIES
WHO ARE YOU?
WHO BY TAKING THOUGHT
WISDOM
THE WORD
YE DO ERR – NOT UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
YON SYCAMINE TREE
YOU SENT THAT LETTER, DIDN’T YOU?
YOUR DIVINE HERITAGE
YOUR HERITAGE
YOUR PROBLEM
YOUR TALENT
YOUR UNIVERSE
THRUST IN THE SICKLE
“Thrust in the sickle” — the command carries with it the idea there is something into which the sickle must be “thrust.” In one fleeting moment you are swept past all human thought taking and meandering of human thought, and are faced by a command emanating from the Source. The word thrust incorporates no hesitancy, no speculation, no wondering, thinking or trying to devise a way. It is a decisive, definite gesture and carries with it intense action. It is suddenly the harvest, as indicated by the word sickle. It is true the harvest is ripe and plentiful but the laborers (lovers) are few. There is little difference between “Come to me” across the water — and “Thrust in the sickle” — both of them set aside every human thought and automatically cause one to act from the inspiration of the Almighty.
When this gesture is made, when the thrust is made, the results appear. No command of Jesus, when obeyed, can do anything other than reveal the infinite fulfillment. The ground whereon you stand is Holy — why worry? That ground is a place sanctified. Can you imagine any human force or power able to pass over the “Holy Ground” without being utterly destroyed — cut to pieces, confounded, scattered in ten directions? When you follow the commands of Jesus Christ you are on sanctified ground, holy ground. When these commands are obeyed and the beautiful gesture of accomplishment is made, the “Look Again” takes place.
Manifestation appears automatically. Few believe. Do you? If so be still, very still.
“Come to me” is another command. No one can help you; there are no instructions — there is no waiting. It is culminated by your ability to “without thought” make the gesture. “Stretch forth your hand” is a beautiful gesture of consciousness. Who, by taking thought, can do it? Who by reason can accomplish it? Who can help but do it, if he hears the COMMAND and knows that in the command is the infinite power of fulfillment. It is wonderful — filled with golden wonder. We are only emerging from the Red Sea of ancestor teaching. Suddenly we begin to HEAR, and are as the Arab who folds his tent and steals away from the man who breath is in his nostril. Alone we make the gesture, we run onto the point of the sword. We see Excalibur float upon the surface of the waters, we begin to experience that which cannot take place. It has already taken place in the Mind of God.
“Thrust in the sickle.” What a command to contemplate for a moment, an hour, or until you have the brief encounter with the Father. Then you RISE and GO — where? Into the consciousness of the COMMAND, and find yourself entirely equipped with everything necessary to do that which you formerly could not do. So much is hidden from the wise and prudent in the words of Jesus Christ. Remember the command is freighted with everything necessary to accomplish. “Thrust in the sickle,” when heard, instantly places you symbolically in a field of golden grain, ready and waiting to be garnered.
Will you Arise NOW, or will you go through a thousand other manifestations, before you come to NOW, and “Thrust in the sickle.” You are told “ye shall gather where you have not sown.” “Thrust in the sickle.” Do you hear? Time after time you have been right “THERE,” almost at the very point, and the old ancestor teaching came in and absorbed the oil, and the bride-groom entered without you. But when you actually hear the command you will make the gesture and find out that the Commands of Jesus Christ, when heard, “Pass through the land like a river.” You shall reap. You shall be silent, secret; awed by the magnanimity of it all. Like the rushing of mighty waters shall the Power of the command pass through the temple. It is wonderful. Not many believe. Put the coal of fire on your lips and let it happen to you. “Thrust in the sickle.” Do you hear NOW?
That sudden movement in “Stretch forth your hand” comes automatically from pure acceptance of the fact that God is greater than the highest accepted beliefs of man. “Thrust in the sickle” — Do you hear? Go ahead!!!
THE TIME OF SEEING
“And it came to pass as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known to us.”
The day of “seeing” the thing which the Lord (the Father within) has made known to us (the Shepherds who have been faithfully waiting) is at hand.
You too shall arise and go unto this place of seeing, when you Recognize that what the Lord hath made known unto you is something more than imagination.
Bethlehem means “House of Bread.” Let us go, then, to the place of materialized substance. The leavening of the Truth has been working in and through the meal of life, and at last the substance, the finished manifestation, has come forth. Let us go to this state of consciousness where reality can be seen and felt. Let us go to Bethlehem and see. The world is crying out for this very thing. We have had long years of talking of and about the Thing which is come to pass. Now we desire to see and behold it, and handle it with our hands, and know that the word has become flesh and is dwelling among us.
The Resurrected Jesus Christ made a fine and lasting distinction between the imaginary Spirit idea of Life and the resurrected body, which had flesh and bones and partook of the food. “Come and see that a spirit hath not flesh and bones,” was a thrilling statement of the reality of the Christ power, which does not exist in a heaven of imagination, but which is made flesh, and which at the same time is resurrected above the laws of the human kind. It is Wonderful!
There is something rather glorious about the decision of the prodigal, even though he was feeding among the swine at the time. There is daring and abandon – a recognition of one’s rights – in his statement, “I shall arise and go unto my father.” It is this very state of mind which will also arise and go into Bethlehem and “see this thing.” There enters no question into the mind of the Prodigal of the condition he is in, and the mass of mistakes he has stacked up against him – no; suddenly he drops off that lying human consciousness of a life apart from the father, and then he arises and goes to his father. It is interesting to note that the father, seeing him a long way off, came towards him.
Who will dare to rise and go to “see this thing” which we know so well has already been born in Bethlehem? Who will have the courage to rise and go to his Father, even if he see on the way there ten thousand fall at his right hand and as many at his left. Who will be able to put the fiery coal of silence on his lips and “Salute no man thou passeth along the highway?”
He who tarries to salute the man he passes will be asked; “Where are you going?” and when he is answered he will stack up so much against the idea that your heart will faint and you will turn back and again find yourself among the swine. Keep silent before Me and let the earth renew her strength.
Sacredly and silently the manifestation will come to you – as a thief in the night, when most unlooked for. Only when the attention is taken away from the appearances does it come into being.
Deep in the secret garden of his Soul man is beginning to sense some of the “feel” of what must take place when he is told to “look again, the fields are white.” The Power of the word is QUICK, we are told, and is sharper then a two-edged sword turning in all directions. This very “Quick” is something that transcends all human measures of beliefs, and its infinitesimal capacity to search the joints and marrow and to divide them asunder gives one but a vague idea of the majesty and grandeur of this mighty Power, which has ways that are past finding out. The wonder of it all awes us, and yet its approach must be as simple, as direct, and as natural as when the Prodigal (Irrespective of his past life) suddenly made a decision to go unto his father, and carried it into fulfillment without comment or further ado.
Thus must the Shepherds Finally decide to go to Bethlehem and “see this thing which has come to pass.” If it be true that the Kingdom of Heaven is given to the child, why should it be so terrifically difficult and impossible for us to actually experience a little of it here and now? “Arise and shine for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon thee,” is a matter of self-discovery and not something that is worked out by a system of ideas. The Light came with you when you came into the World of Expression, but it has been long obscured by the human education and belief. It is good to contemplate this, for it relieves you of the monotonous duty of creating the Light. The Light must be Let, and in order to LET you must arise and go and see “this thing which is come to pass.”
TO PONDER
Each successive state of existence gives man more freedom from matter. Compare the caterpillar, who laboriously covers every inch of ground with his whole body, with his next state as a butterfly, who floats off without coming in contact with matter but ever so rarely; his silent work in the cocoon, though unseen by the outside world, was productive of huge results to himself. So it is with man, who is working diligently with thought; he may seem to have entered a cocoon state of existence, but anon he soars up higher, having cut through the walls of Jerico which bound him.
* * *
What will dissipate criticism quicker than the question which the Master traced in the dust, “He that is without sin among you, cast the first stone”? If this be your motto, sitting in judgment on your brother will be unknown.
* * *
Withhold not from me the roses of your love and well wishes until I have passed the portals of the great beyond. There – scatter not scented rose leaves of memory, fragrant with love, on my grave, but give to me the dew-covered petals of your appreciation and love while they are yet fresh and fair that I may drink thereof and satisfy my soul.
* * *
Why do I call you friend? It is because your voice when you greet me calls for something from within which sends dull care and worry back into its nothingness. It is because the steady gaze of your eye searches through the mass of chaff and finds the few grains of wheat and looks well at them. It is because your love is like a mighty well that shields me from the shafts of criticism and hate. And, lastly, it is because you understand.
What more restful melody could come to you at evening after a long, long day than these simple words, “I have called you a friend”?
* * *
On grey days take out your jewels of gratitude, for in them the sun of happy hours is yet shining.
* * *
When the storm is upon you, “stand fast”; there is another in deeper water than you who is looking for your light. Unself yourself by helping the man farther down to get up to your level, and God will lift you both up.
* * *
When the day is sunny, fortify yourself that when the storm breaks you will find yourself protected against sudden shafts of wrong.
* * *
Remembering all the while, if you load seems hard and heavy, that the place you find yourself in is the place you have made by your own thinking. Think yourself out of hell by knowing “If I make my bed in hell, there is God,” knowing that where God is heaven is.
The bird singing on the bleak February bough has caught the message that spring is coming, and in his heart it has already come. So man who is spiritually alert catches the messages of Divine Intelligence long before the ice of materialism melts into the sunshine of Love – and he, too, sings of the completed Word, “Father, I thank Thee that Thou hath heard me.”
* * *
Why feed on the husks of hate, jealousy, envy and wrath when you might be feeding among the lilies, love, peace, calm and harmony?
* * *
Worry is like a cat chasing its tail – it never gets anywhere and at last drops exhausted within the tiny circle it has trod.
“What Went Ye Out for to See?”
Few there be who can accept the inspiration without taking the superstitions and limitations of the Teacher. The purple and fine linen are so obvious by their presence or by their lack.
“Blessed art thou when men shall curse you and revile you.”
Do you believe that? Then what are you making such a fuss about all the evil stories and things said about you? If it is an indication of a blessing then you should rejoice. And that is the trick that suddenly bursts the shell of the cursing and releases the beautiful full-feathered Bird of Paradise.
More Blessings
“The wrath of man shall (not maybe or perhaps) bless you” – well what’s the matter? Why don’t you demand it, if that is a law. Rejoice and be glad for your redeemer draweth nigh.
“No (not any) weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper” – pretty hard on the poison pens of anonymous letters – and the violent wagging tongues. Wait and see. If you know this, you – will see. So Rejoice.
Because he has placed his Trust in ME – Isn’t it wonderful when you ponder it all? Can you do it? – “the gates of hell shall not prevail” against you – and so Because –
“I bring not peace but a sword” – to all this evil thing which tries so unceasingly to destroy you. And so –
I am the Avenging Angel – and vengeance is mine. Well, forget the hurt all the accounting is done on the other side – and statements are sure to be sent out on the first of the month.
THE TOUCH
“At the moment of the TOUCH, there is no power whatever to make the affirmation, there is no leisure. REASONING on the Vision is for afterwards. We may know we have had the vision when the SOUL has suddenly taken LIGHT. The LIGHT is from the Supreme and is the SUPREME. We may believe in the PRESENCE when He comes bringing light; the light is the proof of the advent.
The Soul unlit remains without Vision.
LIT, it POSSESSES that which it sought.
And this is the true end set before every SOUL –
To Take the LIGHT,
To SEE the SUPREME by the Supreme
And not by the light of any other principle –
To see the Supreme which is also the means to the VISION.”
Plotinus
At the Moment you TOUCH the principle by recognition “virtue proceeds out of Me.” The agreement is established. The signs follow. There is no time, nor yet need for feeble man-made affirmations. It is like declaring “Let there be Light,” after the Universe is flooded with the effulgence of it. There is no time for thought taking, no leisure for human reasoning, only contemplation and revelation which are pouring over and through you.
At last we begin to comprehend that the “Light is from the Supreme and IS the Supreme” (One) “heaven and earth are full of thee.” We begin in some degree, at least, to Move in HIM – in the LIGHT of the Supreme Being and find that this very recognition absorbs the limitations of human thought. We can “run and not be weary” by reason of this LIGHT. The Temple of God is operated by LIGHT and not by human thought and intellect. Presently all machinery will be operated by light and be freed from friction and wearing away. Aging that is known to man, under the “curse of the law,” will cease, literally.
As this LIGHT is first recognized as coming from the Supreme and being the SUPREME, then will man begin to rise through the decaying flesh of human belief, and shall finally be freed from the grave clothes into immortality.
And so he sees that the “Soul unlit remains without vision.” There is nothing but surface appearances that can be seen by the “unlit soul” – just as there is no “LIVING” in the man who is not yet inbreathed. Once he is “inbreathed,” he becomes a LIVING SOUL; he moves into realms beyond all human sense and discovers reality back of shadow. At this point of consciousness, he is able to project by his recognition the Picture shown to him on the Mount, and automatically change the shadow of belief cast into the realm of matter. “None of these things (made by human belief) move me” – because none of them has any reality except the human thought, and will disintegrate the moment human thought is taken from it.
Witness the disintegration of value which takes place when a so-called masterpiece has been discovered to be a counterfeit. Although it has been accepted as real and genuine for years and been protected in every way – suddenly it is cast into the discard and no burglar, or thief, or vandal is guarded against. It “has no value” for no other reason than the thought of man.
“The soul unlit remains without Vision.
LIT, it POSSESSES that which it SOUGHT.”
When there is no LIGHT there is no vision, and “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” They cannot see that which IS and think to create it, or possess it, in some other way. They cannot find it, for they are not yet “LIT” by the recognition of the LIGHT within and without.
It is TRUE, then that “IF any man hear my Voice” – he will leave all (the shadows and beliefs) and follow ME into the place of realities, past all the images of belief back to the Holy of Holies where he will converge with GOD – The SUPREME LIGHT.
Words are merely signposts that point to something – but never take us there, nor go there. Unless we leave the signposts (the words) and accept their instruction and proceed toward the new City, we will never reach it. And this very thing is true of all of the words of Jesus Christ. Unless we hear them and automatically become them in consciousness and leave the letter, we shall never know them as realities – only as dead letters – sometimes beautiful, but of no value.
When the recognition is made of the ONE, then the moment of the TOUCH takes place, and you are filled with the VIRTUE of the CHRIST. A sudden invasion of LOVE has taken place and the belief in hate and evil is absorbed into the ONE. You are in the realm – where a never failing POWER operates – the Power of LOVE. “Love NEVER faileth” regardless of all the beliefs of the human mind. To enter into this realm and become love in action is to be clad in an armor of LIGHT that is literally and figuratively impervious to all human so-called forces and powers.
“When I behold HIM I possess all that I want to have and want to know, and I see an abundance of all riches. It is impossible for me even to imagine that this treasure might be separated from the soul or the soul from the treasure, and all the delight it accords.”
Angela of Foligno
“Behold” is a fourth dimensional word which beggars all definition. It is something that happens when all the senses have suddenly reached their outer bourns and exploded, as it were, the bondage of human thought and reason. When we learn to see FIRST the Kingdom (consciousness) – we find that all things are not only added, but are discovered as being there, and we see that it is impossible to separate the soul from the treasure or the treasure from the soul. Hence do we begin to Live and Move in the ONE. As we “Behold” we see the hidden mysteries and treasures merge into the LIGHT of day.
TOUCHING
“Two shall agree as touching anything and it shall be established on the earth.”
“I WAS glad when they said unto me, let us go into the House [consciousness] of the Lord.” It is impossible to get into this consciousness of the Lord through the human foreshortened senses, since we are told that we are not using any of the sense organs correctly, and that all the wisdom gathered therefrom is foolishness in the eyes of God. The consciousness of the Lord is not a place of demonstration. God is not concerned with making impossible things come into manifestation. The action of Spirit is natural to Spirit; it is only unnatural to the three-dimensional mind which sees miracles happening, if it sees at all, being separated from this consciousness-self—-separated, it is true, but nevertheless separated.
“Oh, that I might find him,” is the wail of man looking among the husks of human wisdom for a power which will offset evil. It is stated that “Ye shall find Me when ye feel after Me.” We “feel” with the sense of touch. Until this sense is extended it is merely concerned with surfaces. We touch a thing which is soft, hard, wet, dry, hot, cold, etc., etc.; but who is going to “touch” spirit on the surface?
Thousands of people are busy trying to “feel” after Me with their human hands; and with their limited sense of touch they run into statues, shrines, charms, glorified leaders, organizations, places, things. A modicum of help may come from their belief in any of these, but finally it fails, and finally the hopelessness of any definite “touching” Me in any of these makes them all worthless.
Yet it is certainly stated, “Ye shall find Me when ye feel after Me.”
Of all the crowds that milled up and down the narrow streets of Jerusalem it is recorded that but one woman “touched” Jesus. Strange, since owing to their narrowness practically everybody who passed him came into physical contact with him. Yet it is recorded that this woman “touched” him. It is interesting to see the attention being so definitely called to the true sense of “touch.” The Master asked, “Who touched me? For I perceive that virtue has gone out of me.” It is to be recognized, then, that whenever you touch Me something takes place. “Virtue” goes out and an embodiment takes place, and the woman is healed. “If I could but `touch’ the hem of his garment I should be healed.” There is an important healing factor in the sense of touch. It is worthy of a little consideration.
The hem of the garment has no more healing power than the statue, and vice versa; but the quality of “feel” or “touch” that accompanies the gesture causes “virtue” to come forth—causes that something which is necessary to imbue the form with life and activity.
“What went ye out for to see,” a person or a principle? What went ye out to “touch,” and where did you go, and why? The “touching” of the Presence in which you live, move, breathe, and have your being gives you the ability to “feel” your way about in the Kingdom. Every one of the senses as they are extended gives you a new method of moving about in the God Atmosphere. It is wonderful to contemplate the infinite avenues of expression which open to you when this great oneness of the Presence takes place in you. You begin to feel the Presence, here, there, and everywhere. “I will never leave you”; yet, “It is expedient that I go” is understood when the “touch” is understood. The going of any manifestation takes nothing from you as the spirit, which you can always feel, cannot depart. The symbol of money may depart (in fact, unless you let go of the symbol it has no power), but the “feel” of the substance is always with you in this awakened consciousness, and can and will come forth in whatsoever manifestation necessary.
“You shall find Me (the all) when you feel after Me” does not mean a feeling after things on the outside. Many a bank clerk feels or touches money all day long, and in the course of his career may “touch” millions of dollars, yet he may experience a distinct “feeling” of lack during his life. To be associated with symbols does not indicate the possession of them. The banker may rarely come in contact with great masses of gold or silver pieces, yet he can “touch” the money at any time. The richer he is the less contact he will have with the actual symbol and yet the more use of it. “Awake, thou that sleepest, and Christ shall give thee light.” Back in the dark ages of metaphysics, people were very often taught that the possession of symbols made for riches. Visualizing courses by the hundred told you to see yourself handling vast sums of money. Others recommended that you move in atmospheres where the so-called wealthy lived, and to assume the pose of riches. But all of these have produced nothing but more acute poverty, and it was because of the trying to “feel” after Me in the symbol. It is perfectly true that I AM in the symbol, but unless you “eat my body and drink my blood,” and throw away the skeleton of demonstration, you do not experience the “touch” of substance—you have only the “feel” of hard, cold metal, none of which may belong to you.
The sense of “touch” when freed from its surface limitations extends right into the idea of Agreement, one of the great words which every man must take and return with to Jehovah.
“Two shall agree as touching on any point, and it shall be established on the earth,” shows the importance of the sense of touch.
The Agreement which is made with words may be broken, distorted by the inability of the human mind to carry out; but when it is “touched” in the Atmosphere of Spirit, then it is as impossible to change, set aside, or misdirect as is the arrow which has sped from the bow. Once this “touch” or “feel” is made, the whole process moves on into the place of “establishing” itself on the earth. It begins to draw from the unseen the “substance of the thing hoped for and the evidence of the thing not (yet) seen” by the human limited senses.
There is something interesting about the word “established.” It has a fine sense of solidity and realness about it. “God does not bring to birth and not bring forth.” The Power of Agreement when this touch is made does not fail to establish.
The development of the sense of touch or feeling does not produce the super-sensitiveness which some people attribute to Spirituality. You can easily determine the amount of Spirituality developed or recognized by the sense of ease, poise, and balance present. Hyper- or super-sensitiveness may be a glorified emotionalism, but it has nothing to do with the harmonious, rhythmic movement of the Presence. Hence the penchant for “taking on” conditions (and more especially “evil’ ones) which some people imagine is Spiritual development, but which is nothing more or less than a renewed belief in evil. Hiding behind the mask of mental tricks, the “feel” becomes so degenerated as to sense the perpetual coming of evil. This has nothing to do with the “touch” of which Jesus asked, “Who touched me?”
You are invited to be “absent from the body and present with the Lord” and at the same time told to “live in the world and be not of it.” You begin to see that all manifestation is the Presence in its most transitory state.
When you are absent from the body and present with the Lord you are exactly as the banker who is absent from the symbols but present with the power back of them, and hence in immediate control of them. “Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust and thieves,” etc., does not mean that you shall not have possessions, but it does mean that you are absent from the “body” and present with the Lord. It means that you are not to be possessed by things, but rather are to possess them for your expression of the Power. A miser grows, to all intents and purposes, poorer and poorer, as he hoards more and more of the symbols. So with the Spirit; if you are feeling after it in a human way, you are not finding it. If you are watching the demonstration, and not the Power back of it, you will suddenly discover that you cannot find Me, and that you are in the desert without bread. “And He laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips, and thy iniquity is taken away and thy sin purged.” The importance of “touching” the Presence through the agreement cannot be over-estimated. In the quiet place of understanding, though the body be moving through the crowded streets of Jerusalem, you will touch Me and virtue shall go out of Me and you shall be healed. It is wonderful to contemplate the functioning of man in the temple embodiment. Whatsoever you touch within the temple shall be established on the earth, regardless of the enchantment of human belief.
“Then touched he their eyes”—the sense of “touch” extended into its new and divine dimension may open new vistas to you in all the other senses. “You shall find Me when you feel after Me.” There is no question about that; and when you have found Me you have entered into the Kingdom here and now. It is wonderful! The sense of touch and the agreement of life are revealed through the “Feel after Me.”
When agreement is made the touching takes place and conception is. From that moment the idea gathers its body for manifestation.
TRAILING CLOUDS OF GLORY
“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The soul that rises with us, our life’s star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting
And cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home;
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!”
-WORDSWORTH.
TRAILING clouds of glory, sweeping the great horizon of your new heaven and earth, follow after you, Son of the Living God, in great swirls of light and illumination. No more can you withhold this wondrous light than day can stay its coming. No more the conscious effort to know the truth ; to make others see the truth ; no more straining to have people listen to your chatter about what is or is not–no more anything, but simply BEING. Why do you try to be? A thousand eager souls have gone down in defeat trying through every possible means to be that which they already were. “They have taken my Lord away,” is the cry of a personality-worshipper—one who looks to mankind for his salvation instead of looking to the only possible source of such power—that within his own consciousness.
Trailing Clouds of Glory follow after you, and the great illumination of their brightness goes before you. Are you afraid to accept such a glorious picture of your True Self? Then you are yet playing with the colored pebbles in the shallow waters of metaphysics -disobeying the command, ” Launch out into deep waters.” He who has the courage to “launch out” into the freedom of his soul –not asking of those beachcombers who hang, around the shores of personal ideas– will find nothing wanting. The rough sea will be smooth, and the calmness shall be there that deep stillness of being alone, and for the first time being actually free from the soul hunger and loneliness that nothing’ of the human mind can satisfy.
Many who read these lines perhaps you who are reading now—will be self-revealed, and will find it natural for the Son of the Living God to have Glorious Trailing Clouds of Attainment follow after him—-no matter whither he may go. The signs shall follow they shall not precede. Why look ye for a signpost-when I AM the way? Salute no man that thou passeth along life’s highway, for lie may turn you awry. Salute the Soul of your True Self and be not turned aside. “It is I ” —eternally I—-and when you begin to see Me in everything you will call Me out into expression—and that which flies at you in mad fury trying to destroy you shall be in an distant transformed into Me. This whole process lies within the scope: of you who read this page. I have said to you, “Agree with thine adversary quickly,” and the agreement is made through calling the name of the Living God out of the dead Lazarus. “It is wonderful “-everything is wonderful; the only thing that is dispelled at such a moment is your belief in evil. Even hell is made into heaven when you call upon Me. Call upon Me and I will answer. Do you hear? I said, “I will answer. “Believest thou this? Or are you going to argue a little, and try to prove that it is so with a reservation? Go thy way ; the bridegroom passeth, and you have no oil because you have not learned yet to accept your good. You are still with those who want to make it happen, and who are looking for personal aggrandizement.
But one day—-perhaps to-day, perhaps right now—-you will shed the filthy rags of argument and of personal teaching, and rise and go up into a high place, and descend again, not to work out problems, but to reveal the God within you. As much as ye will, that give I unto you. Do you hear?
“Acquaint now (right while you are reading is now) and be at peace; thereby all good shall come unto you.” How very simple too simple perhaps, because you have been hypnotized into believing that long, hard study was necessary to attain the Kingdom, and that you were full of sin that some sin cleanser had to take out of you by special instruction that he could give you. Yet shall I call again and again to you: “Acquaint now thyself with Him, and be at peace—thereby all good shall come unto you. “Do you see how utterly impossible it would be for you to explain the glorious feeling of “It is well” to anyone who was trying to think it out?
You are impressed with that which descends to the plane of human, thinking from the place of Christ-consciousness, the fourth-dimensional realm. Do you not see what is meant by “Acquaint now thyself with Him and be [find yourself] at peace; thereby all [the whole] good shall come unto you. “Can you understand, then, that your expression of healing, of whatever belief comes before you, is merely the light of the Trailing Clouds of Glory which automatically emanate from your being? When you see this, that All (the whole) Good shall come unto you ; then will you know that you have the hidden well of living water and the exhaustless substance of the manna that cometh down from heaven. Do you see that you will be self-sufficient, and that your giving will in reality be only the coming of your presence? On whomsoever your consciousness rests pours the infinite blessing and possibility of a perfect revelation of health, prosperity, or happiness. Should they but accept it, either consciously or unconsciously, the transformation will take place, and they will shout, “Whereas before I was blind, NOW (right NOW the ONLY) I can see”—-and one blindness after another shall be healed in every man. New fields of illumination and light shall be made visible to him, and each time he shall exclaim, “Whereas before I was blind, now I can see.”
Do you see that the mere acceptance of this makes it possible for you? Until you believe it is possible (not from a standpoint of credulity or blindly), it can never be possible to you, however much of the letter you may know. You believe in the true fashion of the Word when you have accepted the Finished Kingdom as here and now, and possible of expression. Then what matter if a thousand say to you, ” It is hard”—“There is much work and difficulty in attainment.” I said to you many times—-and I AM saying to you (you who read this page, do you hear?)—-at this instant saying to you—that the Kingdom of Heaven is given to the Child, not in years, but with the capacity that can accept good as real instead of endeavoring eternally to make My Kingdom over or set things right by first believing in evil.
As soon as you take away the personal nature of evil you have it in a place of understanding, where it can more easily be seen nothing but belief. The thing you have been working on is your personal devil, and he is fed by the substance of your thought. Taking your attention away from the body—- being absent from the body or embodiment of your problem and present with the Lord— is another way of putting it. When you are present with the Lord the Trailing Clouds of Glory sweep the horizon of your universe and find nothing there which needs to be destroyed or killed-but find the great, glorious realm of attainment opening wide its portals to you. Enter.
“Where there is no vision the people perish”—were there is no vision which is beyond the thought process, the people finally fall by the way, full of dead letter and earnest effort. The glorious Vision of the Son of the Living God is yours. You are dream-drenched with the joy of it all–they pass before your gaze as lovely realities, instead of phantoms and ghosts of dead hopes and wishes. Deeper and deeper you go into the treat clouds of light ; more wondrous are the revelations made to you as you go your eternal way of aloneness and attainment. Nothing shall be denied you-and no one shall say ye nay. Do you hear? Can you talk this glorious thing over with one who has but a mind full of thoughts or trite statements, and a house full of evil that needs attention? You shall learn the glory of silence which is golden by its light of revelation. Stand still very still-stiller than any human mind can imagine.
Everything you touch shall be filled with the Spirit of Light. Everything you look upon shall be illumined with the glory. And all this not in the impractical way that most people look upon these wondrous words, but in a way of concreteness.” Even in my flesh shall I see God.” Do you begin to see the impractical teaching is that which shows you how to get things when there is the great “Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven [within] and all things shall be added unto you”? Do you go any further until you have decided within yourself whether this is a lie or the truth—why continue the self-hypnotism any further? You are on the path of attainment-attainment of greater things than can possibly be set down in black and white.
Trailing Clouds of Glory shall follow you as you go about your Father’s business-and the pygmy personality will fade out of the pictures as the new creature moves into the plane of expression From out the invisible will come new ideas and impressions that will cause you to know that the way of attainment is not fraught with difficulties, but is easy and beautiful, a way possible for the childlike consciousness which believes in its good and accepts it.
Out of the invisible comes the manifest. As a smile out-pictures a state of consciousness, and is instantly reflected by all who come in contact, thereby making the increase infinite, so the idea which wells from the Inner Lord will come into ample expression and be reflected back to the giver in endless ways. The whole concern is not how to make it reflect back with increase, but to release it without thought of return. A smile is given, not to get a smile in return, but because it is an automatic expression of the state of consciousness at that time. A grin will not accomplish the same results. Few are fooled. Few are those who respond. The deep, smiling consciousness of good shall be reflected back again and again in countless ways.
“Ye are the light of the world.”
What world? And who is referred to as “ye”? All these glorious promises and statements of absolute facts must at length be overtaken by the Son of the Living God; he must finally come to cause everyone to yield its full measure of substance. It is only when the grape has been pressed in the winepress that the hull is thrown away, and it is when the inspiration has been taken from the letter that it falls by the way.
When will you rise and leave the tatters of human reasoning and former attainment for the open road of the Son of the Living God? Dare you-you who read this page-remembering that taking the open road does not of necessity mean a physical voyage? He who recognizes any of the attributes of the Christ consciousness as so and real will see them into instant manifestation, as Peter, realizing the substance of freedom, could sing in a material prison and cause it to open to him. I AM the way-if it takes an earthquake to do it, what of it? And those that put you in will invite you to come out so they may be blinded by the Trailing Clouds of Glory that follow after you. And finally you will realize that the everlasting rising to heights and falling to depths is a matter of human belief, and that it has nothing to do with the real, the lasting, the eternal, but is merely an emotional reaction. The Son of the Living God does not ascend to heights and get cast off into the depth, for there is no height, depth, breadth, or length in the ALL—and yet there are all of these as long as they are necessary for Jesus to operate within their boundaries. There is the glory of the risen Lord gleaming through you—and the fashion of your continence shall be changed and you shall be revealed in a glory of light. Do you hear? Do you see? Do you look between the lines and grasp the hidden meaning that is there?
Go into all the world, preach the good spell. Speak of the good spell-the wonder of goodness that is everywhere-and go not out again first to point out the evil and then hunt in your mental satchel for a remedy-one thing for headache, one for a mortgaged house, another thing for an inharmonious home, another for how to find money and a job. How long will you cast lots for a part of my garment? When will you see that to know ME is life eternal? Life eternal is not subject to disease and limitation, neither can it be made unhappy by the lack of anything. Can you see now?—you who read this page that, a thousand years being as a day, and a day as a thousand years, you can make the hypnotism of yesterday a thousand years old and out of your way?
You shall do all these things, and the mists of earth-the beliefs of the human limitations -shall vanish away in a cloud of light and beauty. And suddenly you shall walk untrammelled and free-a new door shall open unto you, and you shall enter, and as you do so it will close, and the past, with its limitations and fears, will be vanished away. Do you hear? You who read this page? You?
I speak to you-the new order of things is at hand and it is the time of its appearance. It will be very much as the wakening from a dream that you fully intend to remember, but about which is spun such a mist of forgetfulness that only the merest fragments remain. And this is the translation from one mansion to another in the universal consciousness. Newer and fresher capacities shall be yours; you will find yourself in possession of wisdom necessary to perform that which you formerly thought impossible of attainment, and, strange as it may seem for the moment, you shall presently find that it is quite natural. The moment you overtake a truth or become conscious of it, at that instant you also realize that you have always known that truth, and that there has never been a time in your life when you did not have it actively into expression.
When you go by the Way, be sure you leave the false modesty of the hypocrite behindbe not afraid to assume and take for granted the power of the Son of the Living God. You are acting within your own precincts when you realize that the power of the Christ to accomplish that which it will is a natural thing, and not something for display. It is wonderful-and, even as you have been reading this word, your fear and problem have melted away, dissolved by the Light shed from the Trailing Clouds of Glory that emanate from the Son of the Living God. It is all right with you now-everything is all right-now. The fig-tree that cumbered the ground has shriveled up and disappeared the fig-tree that did not obey the law to bring out the whole manifestation at the instant is also pulled up by the roots. The slow process of birth, growth, maturity, and fruition is all swallowed up in instant recognition of the perfect whole-the flower before the seed. He that hath ears, let him hear. Do you hear? The whole in perfect manifestation, not through the slow human process of time and space.
Feeding among the lilies–considering the lilies-the effortless, unlabored action of the I Am moving into a constant stream of expression. Rest, beloved; it is well with you. You are the glorious Being of Light in a Universe of Light-you are lost in the immensity of it all. As the candlelight is lost in the sunlight and yet retains its individuality, so you are lost in Me-in the Spirit. of the All-and there you find nothing wanting or lacking And there you find no shadows. And there your soul is singing the song of the Son of the Living God in the eternal Now and Here, in the eternal joy of Life, Life, Life complete and filled with an unspeakable joy. It is so. Do you hear?
Remember, then, as you go out into your Kingdom of Heaven about your Father’s business, that the Trailing Clouds of. Glory are about you, and that it is well.
THE TRINITY
THERE IS JESUS, – John Smith, the body-temple. There is the Christ, – your permanent identity, created in the image and likeness, the eternal, the Soul. And there is God, – the Universal, ALL-Present Power, from which everything springs into BEing.
It takes all three to fulfill the Trinity, – the three in ONE, to bring out the perfect manifestation. Jesus without his Christ, struggles against an avalanche of false teaching and doctrine, witchcraft and hellish inventions born of Adam. Christ without a body or point of manifestation lives in a symbolic world of substance which remains forever unembodied and hence non-existent to all practical purposes.
Many people who are seeking the Light live in this divided world. They live in a Heaven of symbolic wealth while the John Smith (Jesus) feeds on the crumbs under the banquet table. They know and iterate, “I am well”, “I am rich”, “All that the Father hath is mine”, – but what good is wealth and health if not materialized? Yet, what they say is the Truth, but not factual. Until a thing becomes literal, with an embodiment of manifestation, it remains in the dream realm of the unborn.
When we see that God hath joined the Soul and body together, not to be separated, but to function as a Temple through which He can be stepped down into manifestation, then the merging of the body and Soul takes place, – the substance of flesh in its right interpretation comes into BEing and the Invisible God is stepped down to the realm of the manifest. God, the Universal, All Enveloping Substance of Life everywhere present, without a channel through which to express would remain unexpressed.
And so the Trinity, – the three in ONE:-Body (Jesus or John Smith), – Soul (the Christ), – God (the Universal), – and the merging of the three into the ONE is the “rebirth”.
Then it is that “All things are possible with God”, – and “I (yes, YOU) can do ALL things through Christ Jesus”, – through this union.
All things thus far in manifestation have always existed. Until this is recognized, they remain unembodied. The aeroplane was just as possible at the time of Noah as the dove which was sent out on a reconnaissance voyage, – – but unrecognized and hence it remained in the unseen, awaiting birth. As soon as it was recognized, one hard, fast law after another which had been operating for so long in the world of John Smith, gave way,, and the unborn thing came to have a body, – and a constant stream of improvements are still being brought forth.
The idea you have, whether of health, happiness or prosperity, lies in that same realm of the impossible so far as your John Smith is concerned. At best, you can only dream of it in a symbolic world until you awaken to the purpose of life and cast off the old limitations and condemnations and LET the Power of God pour through your Temple-body.
Then things happen which could not otherwise take place. You “taste and see” that the teachings of Christ Jesus are beyond the pale of speculation. There is no question concerning the working of the law the moment it is given an opportunity.
Jesus stated definitely that through this merging with the Father He could raise up an apparently destroyed Jesus. He said He could “pick it up and lay it down”. He went from one degree of Temple-body raising to another until He raised His own Temple.
In the world of symbology, awaiting recognition, awaiting acceptance and understanding, is this Law of Resurrection. The manifestation of God in what has been called “demonstrations” is not a special dispensation to a few, – but a natural, normal action of the Power of God through all. Through the thick veils of human thought these wonders seem impossible, – and yet, “He, every man that thirsteth, let him come to the Fount of Life, – let him drink of this Living Water, which when he drinks thereof, he will NEVER thirst again’).
The possibilities that await the prodigal when he is sufficiently sated with humanism to arise with his True Dignity and return to the Father, are infinite. There is no condemnation, – no judgment, – no paying of the old accounts. True forgiveness carries nothing of the cringing sinner attitude, groveling before a tyrant. Forgiveness brings NEW BIRTH, FREEDOM, – SELF EXPRESSION!
And so you arise in “righteous indignation” to the beliefs under which you have been all these years, and you go unto your Father and release that wonderful manifestation which belongs to you, – which God is more desirous of expressing through you than you are.
What is the “substance of things hoped for” if it is not that out of which the manifest thing comes into being;. Yes, Faith (recognition) is the substance and the evidence that it is so. There is a reason for the hope that is in you, even when, to the human thought, you are yet a long way from your Father’s house. You have the recognition, the evidence, the precious “lump” of substance within, – and it is casting its rays through the darkened corridors of the temple which has so long been filled with money changers and dove sellers.
If we are to take Jesus at His WORD, we must be “born again”, – we must enter a new degree of consciousness. “In my Father’s house are many mansions”, – many degrees of on-going. We live in one degree of consciousness until we have exhausted all “degrees” of that degree, – and then it becomes a “pig-sty of prodigality” to us, – and we again ARISE and GO.
During the time of Jesus’ ministry on earth, He was one against the world of evil, – but now we are beginning to see that the Power we have thought so peculiar to Him is within any and every man, when recognized.
We are told to “Call no man upon earth your Father, – but ONE is your Father, who is in Heaven”. This recognition is the “NEW birth”, – and we enter the NEW day, with its NEW mansion (manifestation), – and the former things are remembered no more.
Then “Go not back nor become a sluggard in the race”. The race is not to the swift, – nor to the priest in the high temple, – nor to the learned one who can cite Scriptures to his purpose, – BUT TO THE PRODIGAL, – (YOU), who suddenly awakens and goes, disregarding all that has gone before, – dropping off the old habit-pattern of judging from appearances, – walking over the obstacles, the fire, the difficulties, through the crowds of jarring-sense testimony, – into the ABUNDANCE of your FATHER’S HOUSE.
Then it is that you understand your body IS the Temple of the LIVING God, and that that is the only reason it was created in the beginning. And you become a Light set on a hill which can no longer be hidden. “This is My Beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” is the benediction pronounced over you. God is pleased with every opportunity to express through His Temple-bodies. To give you good gifts, to shower you with the glorious manifestation, is the urge of God.
The stream of pure LIFE pouring through the temple will cleanse it of a thousand little thieves who have been hiding in the recesses of human teaching. You are a NEW creature in Christ Jesus, – -a NEW Light set upon a hill.
If you tell of it, no one will believe you. Too often have they passed by your darkened temple and have seen it falling to pieces with disease and limitations. The Master said, “Do not tell-but SHOW”. When they SEE, they will tell.
Then YOU, the Temple filled with emanating LIGHT, can and will heal anything that comes your way for healing, – for the LIGHT is impersonal. And the only reason anything comes to you for healing is because it sees the Light in you, – and the healing is automatic as it was with Jesus. When the woman touched Him, virtue proceeded out of Him. She had come to the level of acceptance or agreement, – He was always there. The “touching” caused the thing to be established upon the earth.
Such wonderful dimensions of invisible-visible Light are now coming to the earth, – so near it is almost like the swish of Angel wings. The “peace that passeth all understanding” is enfolding you, and you relax your human thinking, – and rest. And such showers of blessings, – so many they cannot be counted, even as the sands of the sea.
Do you believe? If so, then from NOW on, the descent of all that is wonderful and lovely will take place. Or are you afraid? The galley slave, so beaten and punished by appearances, shrinks from anything so beautiful, while his Soul hungers for it. “Oh that I might find HIM”! Well, now that you have found HIM, let go of all the former things. They are passing away and shall not long be remembered, – nor come to mind any more.
“Oh taste and see that the Lord is GOOD”, – not a merciless tyrant imprisoning you in a pit of torment.
Yes, today this subtle, invisible-visible Light is descending as never before. The rarified ethers of the Presence have actually pierced the outer walls of human thinking. Given the least recognition, it will burst into manifestation.
You are to stand and SEE the salvation of the Lord. That is something you have to do, – not through the offices of another, but through your own Temple. Then when the terrifying waves of belief strike, they break OVER you as against a rock, and run back into the sea of nothingness.
And so the Trinity, – BODY, SOUL, GOD! And the union which no man can again put asunder, takes place, – a wholeness, – a HOLINESS.
“And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, – and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”
WAIT
“Wait patiently on Him and He will bring it to pass.” Does not say perhaps – or maybe – it says “He will bring it to pass.” That is where the teeter-toter goes down on the other side – your side, if you can wait – because it is going to happen.
The native Australian throws his boomerang which describes a circle and falls eventually at his feet. While all illustrations are inadequate to express the wonders of this God Power – yet in a way that is what happens to the spoken WORD. When it is actually spoken from the consciousness instead of from the human thought and returns to its sender.
Yet again, it is as if a charged electric wire ran out and encircled all the evil manifestation, and when it came back again to its starting point and short circuited, burned up all that it had encircled. This may take, to the human sense, some time, but remember that God is NOT (no matter what the human belief says) mocked – it says is NOT – and so Wait – Wait – Wait “patiently for ME.” I am that wonderful Power which is gathering in the whole harvest so that the tares may be burned.
At the very moment that you may be wondering why something doesn’t happen to heal the disease, to destroy the enemy, to bring out the harmony – suddenly it comes into being – and the entire manifestation of evil is destroyed – burned to a crisp. Do you have any idea what happens to a person who touches a high voltage wire? It doesn’t just sear the flesh – it burns it to a crisp. And that is the way this wonderful Truth acts on the evil manifestation that has been cluttering up your life. “Wait for ME” – give ME a chance – stand just one split second after you cannot wait any longer. That is the “Hour” you failed to wait with ME before. Now wait – I will not fail you.
And such wonderful other commands, “Having done all stand and SEE (actually) the salvation of the Lord.” There isn’t anything (not anything) that can withstand this Power. Hang on just a split second longer than your human mind can stand it and you’ve done the trick.
THE WAY OF THE LORD
“Every valley shall be exalted and every mountain shall be made low. The crooked places shall be made straight and the rough places made smooth.” The highway, or the path of materialization, will be made easy and natural. No longer will the neophite have to climb high “mental mountains” in order to contact the Lord. He will suddenly realize the Presence here, there and everywhere, and will learn the instant availability of the Lord.
It is wonderful when release has come to you from all the metaphysical tangle and jargon in which you have become enmeshed. All the ways and means and systems, all the mental, emotional trying to reach God in “high places”—and all the strange practices used to know God, will pass; and the way will be made smooth and natural and easy. Then you will know what it is to “go unto a high mountain” of consciousness.
It is not reached by a mental path, but is a quick recognition of the Presence here, there, everywhere—in the lowest dive—in the highest temple-in the midst of a brawl of mortal mind—in the midst of the sickly sense of peace and religious chatter—in anemic metaphysical talk. The Presence with its WAY of expression is yours, and your recognition will bring its flesh embodiment.
“My ways are not your ways.” Suddenly, you are through with all the symbolic ways of Truth and come into the natural, normal way that the child can and does appropriate and use. To the child, Father Christmas is a real, live, flesh-and-blood being—an actuality—but to adult wisdom he is just a symbol.
This same thing is true of the resurrected Jesus Christ, the “Word made flesh.” It is no more a symbol; it is a reality, something which can be handled with the hands, and something which eats and drinks and spreads about a joyous sense of all being well. Something which fills the world with a spirit of light.
Benedictions fall like refreshing April showers, powerful enough to penetrate and soak the hard, parched soil. “These blessings I rain upon you,” saith the Lord. This making the Word flesh, actually and naturally, is only possible to the one who believes in GOD. Again I repeat that almost every one claims he does, but immediately shows you that he believes more strongly in the Devil. Evil seems to manifest itself so much more easily than good, and that is because Christ in the flesh has not been accepted.
If we are going to appropriate the gift of Jesus Christ, we cannot do it with the thinking-mind for we have already tried every possible way by that means. We will have to accomplish it from the place of recognition. The how, why, where, when, must take care of itself. How it is to materialize and take unto itself a body is none o f our business. Our business is to accept it, not only as possible, but as already completed.
Now all this WISDOM of God as revealed to us through Jesus Christ is utter foolishness to the human mind, and likewise all “the wisdom of man is foolishness in the eyes of God.” So what possible good will it do to try to appropriate with the limited human mind the unlimited gifts of Spirit? There is no possible way for this to happen.
Turn reason on the teaching of Jesus Christ and it all melts into thin air and posits itself in a future state, after death. Turn reason on the Santa Claus fable and he melts, too, into a myth. He turns into an actor and is not real, and ever after that He becomes a mere symbol. But just once again believe in what Santa Claus stands for, and you will know your Father Noel to be flesh and blood. The “temple of God is with men,” and the temple of God is the “stepper-down” of the gifts of Spirit.
That is why the habits formed in your consciousness through years of thought-taking metaphysics are all cast into the fire and consumed, for they are nothing but limitations. The instant you become conscious of ME, there am I in the midst of you; and it does not require any mental rushing to some “high mountain.” Before you can scale the peaks of the metaphysical high place, the WORD has gone out and the results are there—that is if you can SEE.
But the question arises always whether you can receive your good. So few can. Everybody “thinks” he is able to do so, but when it suddenly precipitates itself into his presence he usually denies it. Perhaps he has not actually wanted it. And so the opportunity passes by. And if the person who turns away his good is not smart enough to cast the whole thing out of his consciousness, he will spend some time, maybe years, explaining how he was justified in not taking when it came the good for which he had asked.
Rest assured that what you ask for is coming by the way of God and not by the way of man. It will come through when the Power is ready to make it a reality to you. “My sheep hear my voice,” and you have to come to the place of being alert and ready to move with, or accept, the good which you asked for, no matter how or when it comes into visibility.
“Watch, for you know not when the Son of Man cometh.” He cometh “as a thief in the night,” in the silence, and when least expected, for again I say, the unexpected always happens. It is wonderful that all the things you have asked for, and can really take, are yours without reservation, without limitation.
“Watching,” is not looking for the manifestation. It is watching the “one hour” which is so important in the fulfillment of the big thing to be done. “Could you not watch with Me one hour?” Stand fast in the consciousness of the IT IS DONE, and the thing which the world calls miracle will take place.
“Refuse old wives’ tales” is the advice of Timothy. Refuse the old, gossiping, human belief that chatters about the Truth but knows nothing of the New Revelation. What would they do with the Jesus if He were actually to come to them through the clouds? Crucify Him again as a fake, no doubt. The old mortal thought that prates so much about the second coming of Jesus would put a short end to Him if He were to come again. He would have to be sponsored by some material organization to which He subscribed, or else He would be an “impostor.” Consider the words of Jesus; they are laws, fundamental and true. They can all be made manifest when you come to the place of recognition of the Presence. “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee,” is a statement of something that will actually take place if you can understand through the new Light how to keep your mind stayed on HIM. It is so wonderful and so simple that in the midst of the confusion of material warfare is this peace possible and probable to him who will keep his mind stayed on the Father within. You have first to be convinced there is such a thing as -the Father within. Are you satisfied that there is something in the universe bigger than your own pigmy intellect? And aren’t you glad of it? Or are you?
“The old wives” are busy always telling tales of failure and lack, sickness and death; and the idea of a “peace” which passeth all understanding is so abhorrent to them that they will do anything to make it impossible. The mortal mind is afraid of anything it cannot understand, and immediately tries to destroy it. So all the lovely revelation of Jesus Christ was virtually wiped out by just this same group of “old wives”—which grouping, by the way, does not confine the “good” work to the feminine gender.
The leveling of all this pseudo-teaching which enters into the mental realm and builds up all sorts of fantastic things to be done before God can be reached, is taking place in the individual. You will presently throw away all the old ideas that one must “work” or do his “work” in order to speak freely and naturally with God. This will become more apparent as you are able to recognize the Presence of God in everything and everywhere, and as indivisible. There are, then, not two of you, one matter and the other spirit; there are not two voices, one material and the other spiritual. There are not two lives, one healthy and the other diseased. All this separation is passing away as the Word becomes flesh, that is, as Spirit permeates Matter and the two become one, as yeast and flour become one in a third substance called bread. Then are you Flesh, and you are experiencing ONENESS for the first time, and then your voice is the God-voice which “speaks and it is done,” because the transmutation has taken place, and you are free.
All the “trying” to make this happen will only cause a greater separation between you and your soul, or between Matter and Spirit, for the mental, trying, knows at the outset that it is not true. And it is not true to the mental side of life. Nothing is true to mortal man but that which he can “handle with his hands.” He believes nothing that he cannot dissect and examine with his limited human knowledge. So in order to “Know Me aright,” you must follow closely the simple instructions of Jesus Christ, and be willing to cast away all human-thought doctrines. Presently you will actually find yourself truly believing in God. Much protest will arise over such a statement, but nevertheless, one day you will experience the “feel,” you will actually BELIEVE in God, not because you were taught to do so, or because you read the Bible, but because you have become conscious of this Presence.
All the fantastic teaching of the mental which tries to make this difficult, or slow of acquisition, is swept away by the Master, Jesus, when He deliberately and with abandon declares to mankind, “The works that I do, ye shall do also, and even greater than these shall ye do.” Do you believe Jesus, or do you prefer to consult some High Priest or Priestess, or to refer to a thick book, or to some old papyrus found in the tomb of a near-heathen king? What do you prefer to believe? Do you believe Jesus or do you believe the John Smith of this century, who has a system of Truth that would try to put Jesus out of business unless He first prefaced His message with full credit to the same little John Smith. Is Jesus a truth-sayer or a liar?
What I want to find out is whether you believe in God or not. I keep asking you this because I want you to see this simple “oneness” of it all. How suddenly everything that Jesus Christ said to us is possible, and real, and true, and done—at the point of simplicity! When He spoke, He spoke with the God voice—that was all there was with which to speak.
The double nature departs from your consciousness the moment the Union of Spirit and Matter has taken place. And this mystical union is just as natural as the coming of dawn. It has to be accepted as possible and natural. Easy, natural, simple, and away from the emotional metaphysical labors that bring forth a child, or manifestation, with great acclaim, and with loud voice “tell the world” something is done that has never been done before, and probably never will be done again. When in reality the birth should be natural, normal and in order. Everything in the Kingdom of Heaven is natural, normal, balanced, and in keeping with the Law of Harmony.
Make it all natural, pull down these high mountains on which you have perched in emotional metaphysical unconsciousness, and do away with these valleys of depression into which you have cast yourself every time you have perched as long as you could on the mountain. Make the Highway of our Lord level, make it ONE, and speak with the One voice and act with the One Power and stop trying to use Me. I AM you and you are the medium — “flesh” — through which I manifest.
Lo! when the mountains have been leveled and the valleys exalted, and you travel the plains of peace and power, then shall you be able to come to the real Mountain of Transfiguration and Exaltation. Then shall you know heights which have no corresponding depths, for in this new order, things do not go by pairs of opposites. There is no corresponding evil for the good you experience. But the human thought cannot take ‘ this in; there shall be elevations so wonderful and so high that the imagination is lost in fields of Light.
THE WELL OF LIVING WATERS
“GIVE me to drink” – the Spirit tries in myriads of ways to start the flow of substance through man. He is so busy he cannot possibly understand that the moment he makes the gesture of “giving” (in the true sense) he can then ask and receive the real substance underlying the symbol he has given.
“Give me to drink” is answered by the limitations of the conscious-thinking, or is drowned out by the constant cry for substance by the one who is asked, “Give me to drink.” Can you begin to sense in a vague way the power back of “giving” instead of getting? It is like opening a doorway into a vein of molten gold. With the door closed, nothing can get out or in. Still the insistent cry of Spirit, “Give me to drink.” Break your half loaf with me and you shall see it increase. Share your three drops of oil, your handful of meal, your limited life; and suddenly the deluge of substance will overwhelm you. You will not have place sufficiently large to hold it. So is it with Spirit.
“Give me to drink.” When you do, you will suddenly become aware of something.
“If thou knewest the gift of God [which is within thee, waiting to be stirred up, recognized], and who it is that saith to thee, ‘Give me to drink,’ thou wouldst have asked him, and he would have given thee living waters.”
The moment you can free yourself from the symbol or the affirmation you perceive the reality back of them. Giving of your substance, however small it may be, does not mean the giving of a handful of gold. It may be all of that; but it means giving, letting go, loosing the bonds of fear and taking the power away from things and placing it where it belongs.
The conscious thinking has been so busy getting that it has failed to consider the doctrine of Jesus. The command to “consider the lilies” is charged off as a bit of poetical talk. Why consider the lily? What will that lead to? At best a botanist can only make a meager living. Yet there it stands in the path of hardheaded reasoning.
When you consider all nature, you find it is in the process of giving of itself constantly. It is eternally throwing off its manifestations, leaves, buds, flowers, fruits, seeds. It is this very activity that makes room for the outflowing substance to come forth. The moment it stops the giving of itself, at that moment it ceases to exist. The conscious-thinking cannot understand how you can give out of your want, and yet that is the very thing that is demanded of you. And what are you giving when you give from your want? It amounts to nothing anyway; and yet the gesture to free yourself from it results in the overflowing manifestation of substance.
Could you in reality give anything to God? Only a symbol at best. Do you begin to see the path of the awakened one? He has discovered that getting is not the prime object in life. Giving is recognized as merely a gesture which is making ready for something larger and finer to come into place.
“Lay not up for yourselves,” has a reason back of it.
“Signs follow,” naturally. If you are looking for a sign you are given one, but without a blessing. The blessings are reserved for that one who does not need a sign. What is a gift without a blessing? What is a gift without the giver?
Until you have arrived at the consciousness of being able to give, even though you have nothing to give, you are in no position to receive anything lasting or worth while. It is true that from time to time you may happen in the desert when someone is giving out bread and fish; or you may occasionally find some crumbs under the tables of Life. You might even get a glass of wine made from water. But all this passes; the source of it is all so vague. A wall is thrown up in front of you and you hear, “Ye seek me after the loaves and fishes and cannot find me.”
So long has value been placed on things instead of the Power back of them, that the very mention of giving makes the conscious mind freeze up and hug its tatters close about it. It is certainly not true from the standpoint of conscious thinking that giving will enrich you, and if it is done from this consciousness, with the hope of increase, only loss and disappointment will follow.
Jesus could do nothing of himself – give, receive, change, or bring forth – neither can you. With the new consciousness of the Inner Presence he could do all things, even give when he apparently had nothing to give, and could ask for out of the want of another. “My ways are not your ways.” As soon as you find this out you will stop trying to do the works of God through the limited conscious thinking. You can neither give nor receive through this limited sense. When you do give you are at once decreasing your substance, and you expect something to be given in return. When you give from the Father consciousness, you immediately experience the increase taking place. The value of the manifestation is determined not by anything in itself, but by your relationship to it. A piece of coal and a diamond are equally precious to the Mind of God. You determine just what the value of them will be in the man-made markets of the world. Do you begin to see how it is that the value has been wrongly placed, and that just as soon as you see where the credit, honor, and power belong you will find yourself at the beginning of wisdom?
However, you cannot give until YOU can give. You cannot give until after saying “Silver and gold have I none (for you), but such as I have give I unto you.” Until you recognize that YOU can give, and why, you will be trying to give, and at the same time waiting for the increase. I say, “Look again.” Reaping where you have not sown does not seem exactly right, and neither is it to the conscious-thinking mind. “Look to Me, all ye ends of the earth, and be ye saved” – from the limitations of your human thinking.
“Give me to drink.” How often it is said to you, but you are so busy getting that you cannot “give me to drink.” And quite naturally you cannot “ask me for living waters,” because you know that the well is deep and that I have no means of getting the water for you. There always has to be a visible way for the human mind to travel. It must reason everything out before it can do anything. That is why it can never “come to Me” across the sea of unbelief.
“Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again; but whosoever drinketh of the waters that I shall give him shall never thirst.” Are you beginning to see the difference between grabbing at demonstrations which you immediately consume, and coming into conscious at-one-ment with the Power back of the manifestation? “Shall never thirst” is very inclusive, and final, and wipes away the intermittent appearing of something and nothing.
“The water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.”
Think what the Christ is offering you – a well of water in the midst of you, gushing up through the body, the embodiment – watering the garden, flooding the whole of the earth with the life-giving substance and power.
Right now, as you are reading these lines, this well which has so long been sealed by human unbelief is beginning to waken. The urge of this fountain in the midst of you is pressing against the thinning walls of resistance. The waters are even now ready to break forth and flood your very being with such a purifying force that the stagnant ideas of a lifetime are carried out of the consciousness. Right now, as you read this, a well of living water is bubbling up within you, seeking to fill all the empty measures of your life.
We are always called upon to go against the human senses. To ask a man for a drink when he has no bucket or rope is only a minor detail. You have finally to come to the place where you will ask, nothing doubting. The more impossible it is to you, the more possible it is to Spirit.
“Ye worship ye know not what; we know what we worship.” This is a clear statement of the unenlightened conscious thinking trying to worship something, and the awakened soul which knows just what it is worshiping. If you do not know what you are worshiping, how can you definitely ask for anything? The uncertainty of it all baffles you at the outset, and you fall back on the shifting basis of hoping something will happen for the best.
“God is a Spirit; and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.”… “I that speak unto thee am He.”
The ambiguity of life disappears when you begin to recognize the presence of this Father within you, and to acknowledge the Voice as His Voice. What need of a mediator?
“I that speak unto thee am He” – do you hear? I am speaking to you through the thousands of temples you call man, and if this be not sufficient I shall flame forth in the burning bush. The height, depth, breadth, and vastness of the Presence lifts you into the infinite spaces of rest and peace. It is glorious to contemplate the Presence, untrammeled by the words of man. “Be still and know.”
Having ears, we hear not; and even when we have been spoken to by the Voice, many times we rush about saying, ‘”Come see a man who told me all things that ever I did.” No mention made of the offer of the Living Waters of Life.
Finally, experiencing the well of Living Waters within is not only a symbolical thing; it is possible to you actually. You can have your thirst quenched by the Living Waters in the midst of you, literally and symbolically. You believe this, don’t you? It is one of the things that is possible to God.
WHAT ALL THE WORLD IS SEEKING
The one thing everybody is seeking is heaven (harmony, happiness). All are headed for the same goal. All are trying for the same objective. There is only one way to attain this heaven. The law states: ‘Except ye become as a little child, ye shall in no wise enter the Kingdom of Heaven.’ The law must be fulfilled, for we find that ‘he who tries to enter any other way is a thief and a robber, and shall be cast out.’
Since it is necessary to become as a little child to attain our heaven, we examine into the nature of a child and find the most obvious thing about it is the absolute faith. It would seem, then, that unless we have absolute faith, free from speculation, we cannot enter into our divine heritage.
The location of the kingdom, we are plainly told, is within ‘Look not lo here nor lo there, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand , it is within you.’ There is only one place for it then, and that is within.
‘Suffer little children to come unto me, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.’ We see that a little child can attain the kingdom by faith, while man with his wisdom utterly fails. Why ? Because ‘the wisdom of man is foolishness in the eyes of God.’ Inspiration born of absolute faith transcends intellect and reason.
‘Thy Faith hath made thee whole,’ is in direct opposition to the testimony of personal sense, which pronounces a thing incurable. That which is impossible to the intellect is divinely possible to the inspiration of the Almighty, for ‘all things are possible to God.’
We begin to see that life is a matter of joyous co-operation. If you do not co-operate with the school teacher, you will be kept after school until your lessons are learned. Yet it is an act of love which keeps you there; it is for your own ultimate good, though it may seem to trouble you while you are kept there. The lesson must be learned, and if you will not accept the simple way of co-operating with life, you will come under the rod of the schoolmaster.
Personal sense does not quickly accept the working of an invisible law in the visible world. Every man comes under the effect of state and community laws, which he obeys, and although he cannot see, hear, touch, nor taste them, he is immediately made conscious of their existence if he attempts to break them.
Going back to the requirements necessary to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, we find the words ‘in no wise.’ There is absolutely no chance of attaining it in any other way. Faith is the ‘Open sesame;’ it is the key that unlocks all doors.
Before you can have faith in anything, you must believe there is something in which to have faith. You must first acknowledge the fact that the kingdom does exist now, or you can never have faith in its ultimate appearance.
After the faith step, we are given some light by a second law which says, ‘ Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven and all these things shall be added unto you.’ Man has tried to reverse this law. He has sought out ‘things,’ hoping to assemble them and create his own heaven; but he has failed, for the law says that when we seek first the Kingdom of Heaven, the things necessary to that state of consciousness will be added. Heaven could not be wanting in a single thing.
When you begin to realize, in a small degree, that the Kingdom of Heaven is here and now, and that You are dwellers in it, you experience peace. Peace is heaven itself. You have arrived at the desired destination when you have come to a state of peace, and all things will fall into natural and normal harmony–into law and order. You are not concerned about conditions, for your whole attention is on the realization of peace.
A state of peace is an open acknowledgment that ‘all is well.’ It brings with it a joyous abandon, a divine indifference. You become indifferent to the changing conditions in the relative world, for you are one with the changeless Power –God. When you come to the understanding that you are a changeless spiritual being, in a changeless Kingdom of Heaven, the conditions in your relative world assume harmonious proportions.
What seemed chaos before, is now revelation. You realize that the re-birth may bring the cracking of a shell of custom or race belief; but this breaking away only releases you into larger and finer fields of accomplishment. The butterfly cutting through its cocoon, the tadpole developing legs, the dragon fly rising from the mud and mire of the river bed to the glorious sunshine of freedom, man putting off the ‘old man and his deeds’ (dropping off the conditions which caused him to worry, to fret and get excited, along with the race belief of age, decrepitude and death)–these are the signs of the Kingdom of Heaven within.
This being true, you learn, working from the high basis of the Finished Kingdom here and now that you can be indifferent to changing conditions by holding steadfast to the facts of Being. What is true of the Father is likewise true of the Son, for the Son can do nothing unless he seeth the Father do it.
A child is completely indifferent as to how the law works. He has faith that it will work, and it does. He does not argue about it. He does not know theology or occultism, yet he attains the thing most desired, that which man spends thousands of dollars and endless years trying to attain. Simplicity is the keynote of life.
Since God is good (in many languages the terms being synonymous) and God is infinite, all is good. In a universe of all good there can be no evil, and man learns the lesson of pronouncing everything good, regardless of the condition manifested in the relative world. The chestnut burr may seem to offer contrary evidence, but it holds its good which appears in the divine order of things. Man learns, then, to pronounce everything good, for on the absolute side of life it is good.
Keeping his attention on the facts of Being , man is not concerned with conditions, knowing that ‘ all things work together for good to them that love God.’ The universal good (God) is also all powerful. It follows, then, that good is the one power. Here we see the necessity of having the faith of a child, for the evidence of the senses would say this is false reasoning.
Since the law states, ‘ A man receives nothing except it be given him f rom heaven,’ there is only one place in which to look for help or succour, and that is within, where the kingdom is. Heaven is a state of unchanging good.
Records show that everything was created in six days, and pronounced finished and very good. What can be added or taken away from that which is complete, perfect, and infinite? A thing that is already full cannot be add to, and since the kingdom fills all space, what could be taken away from it? And where could it be?
Man learns that he is not a creator. Everything has already been created. Man is simply becoming aware of that which is. Because anything is not visible to you at your present stage of advancement, is no indication that it is invisible to everyone. In your line of unfoldment you may seem to create a thing, but you merely come upon it in the divine order of its appearance. You do not create the rose in the garden; you merely become aware of it; in other words, it becomes visible to you.
‘There is nothing new under the sun.’ Man cannot change the eternal verities. ‘Who by taking thought can add one cubit to his stature?’ You can only become aware of that which already is your divine destiny. You are fatalistic to one thing only, and that is the divine decree of good. Everything that belongs in your Kingdom of Heaven to make it a place of complete harmony and satisfaction, is already there, waiting your coming, your acknowledgment of its existence .
We hark back constantly to the Master and his works. He stated clearly how everything was accomplished. He left us the promise that we could duplicate his works, and even exceed them–‘The works that I do ye shall do also, and even greater works shall ye do’ But we fail to make the connection with the most important point of his teaching when we overlook the statements: ‘The Father within me he doeth the works’ and ‘I and My Father are one.’ Repeatedly we are brought face to face with the isness of life in all its perfection, the isness of the Kingdom of Heaven here and now.
‘Now are we the Sons of God’–not we shall be at a future date, but now. We reverence God; we pray to him; we acknowledge him as the Supreme Power; and yet we, as the sons, are anything but representatives of so glorious a heritage.
It is all too simple, too good to be true, that I should suddenly find myself in the Kingdom, that I should find myself out of my difficulties, that I should experience the freedom and abandon of God’s other creations.
Beloved, the light is breaking and we are beginning to realize the fulness of our heritage, our oneness with God. Little by little we are beginning to realize that the Truth we are to know, which will make us free, is that we already are free .
Away–from the appearances of things and conditions–away–from the world of related things–back to the primal cause that is good! If it is good and unchangeable, then we are certain of one thing, and that is that the moment we contact this realm we are en rapport with all goodness, because it is infinite, a universe of Spirit.
It is by faith–the absolute faith in the Creator of the universe–that we contact this perfection. Of whatever we become conscious when within this realm of perfection, we envisage forth in the realm of related things. Since we can only become conscious of perfection in the realm of the real, the projection of this must be perfection. Giving this a little thought, man realizes that he lives in a perfect world or if he seems not to, it is because he is looking at conditions instead of realities.
You are the centre of your own universe. You determine whether it shall be a universe of harmony or of discord. You determine whether or not it shall be peopled with sick, sinning, and poverty-stricken folk. You realize that as you drop from thought the negative conditions, and let your meditation rest constantly on the Finished Kingdom, that you no longer see conditions of discord manifested, either in your own or another’s world. I sent my Soul through the invisible
Some letter of the After-life to spell;
And by and by my Soul returned to me,
And answered, ‘I myself am Heaven and Hell.’ OMAR.
Man finally realizes that he cannot become one with anything, and remain separate from it. As he becomes aware of his oneness with God, the Father within, he co-operates with the Father, and all power is given to him in heaven and in earth.
Michael Angelo said, when gazing at a block of marble;’ There is an Angel in that marble.’ One need not add that there was a devil also in the same block, had he seen fit to draw it out. Whatever he saw in the marble, he first beheld in himself .
When man through absolute faith accepts the inspired word, and knows that God’s work is finished and complete, he becomes desire-less. You cannot conceive of heaven as a place where the least thing is wanting. It is a place where every desire is instantly fulfilled. And this is the state that actually exists within us here and now when we understand life as changeless.
Keep constantly before you the fact that it is the nowness of life that counts. The time element does not enter into your realization, because all that is, or ever will be, is now.
Faith is the opening wedge, the ‘ Open sesame,’ to the kingdom. If you have doubts as t o what it will accomplish, read Hebrews II. Little is left over to be added to the accomplishment of absolute faith.
‘For without faith it is impossible to please Him,’ that is, it is impossible to get into harmony with the law. To be in harmony with the law, you must come to an acknowledgment that the law actually is.
‘When you pray believe that you receive a thing and it shall be so.’ How could you believe that you receive a thing if it did not already exist ? It would be impossible. Yet this is the law, and in no other manner shall we gain the rich reward that is ours. We cannot take the Kingdom of Heaven by violence; we cannot coax it down to us by affirmations; but by the acknowledgment that it exists–here and now–finished and complete, we automatically take our place in the divine scheme of things and function harmoniously along all lines.
The ability to attain the kingdom is given to the child. Think about this. Do you know any child who has studied material sciences, theology, occultism, and religion? Yet it is given unto the child. This would indicate then, that our struggle to attain harmony through the intellect is wholly wrong.
A child is not able to enter into an argument in defense of his faith, for in reality it needs none. Truth needs no champion. The child is not able to couch his faith in words, but can show you ample proof by works. No one knows how the law works, but it works. We are not concerned with the process of transmutation that goes on in our stomach when we have eaten; it is sufficient to know that it takes place. We have absolute faith that it is going to take place or we would never dare to eat again.
Ninety per cent of our living is done by faith. We post a letter with faith. We do not worry or wonder about its delivery. We drop the whole matter as completed and finished. And so it is with thousands of things. The seed undisturbed in the ground will grow, but if you dig it up every few days it will make little progress. The prayer of realization works the same way. We do not keep wondering about the outcome.
During the war pigeons were carried to the Front, and when necessary, messages were bound to them and they were sent back, and then reinforcements would come in answer to the message. Suppose a string had been tied to one of the bird’s legs and it was only allowed to fly twenty feet, then jerked back to see if everything was all right, and this was repeated before it started on its journey–the result would be that the bird would be exhausted and would probably die; the enemy would advance; and the day be lost, because of the failure to let go in faith.
Why is it when we pray we become so anxious about results? Why do we keep on repeating our prayers? Is it not because we doubt the possibility of fulfilment? When we know we take up our place in a Finished Kingdom, and in that kingdom we become aware of everything that is necessary to make it harmonious and happy. Not a thing can be wanting. Not a thing can be lacking. Because it is.
Small wonder, then, that ‘a little child shall lead them.’ ‘All power is given unto you in heaven and in earth’ through your absolute faith, for ‘faith is the substance of things hoped for’– the very essence of the desired thing– and it is also the ‘evidence of things not seen;’ that is, it is the acknowledgment of the isness of the kingdom here and now.
WHAT THOUGHT CAN DO to YOU
FOR A LONG TIME I listened to a daily broadcast. It was perfectly set in the lobby of a tumbled-down hotel, peopled with a group of characters who met daily to solve their little problems, – the old bell-boy, a complaining lady guest, the manager and his assistant, and an attractive girl.
The moment I tuned in to the program, I automatically entered the dingy lobby as a spectator, the old elevator with its noises, the half-hinged doors and arriving guests.
Then one day I went to see the broadcast. At the stroke of nine the curtain went up and my hotel vanished with the same magic as did Cinderella’s coach and four at the stroke of midnight. There on a comparatively bare stage was a handsome young announcer and a few musicians. There was no elevator, no creaking doors, no adorable and complaining old lady guest, no old man so belabored with odd jobs. My lady became a man, my old bell-hop became the same man, my harassed manager the same man. Sitting there, I wondered what had become of the hotel I had builded, peopled and lived in each morning, – so very real and true to me. It had never existed except in my own mind.
Now suppose this picture had been some fearful condition of failure or disease or a wretched state of unhappiness. If we would likewise “go and see” the truth of the matter, – if we would enter into the center of it all, we would find it did not exist, – that it never had existed except in our own thought, – and it too, would vanish, having no reality. “Return unto Me, all ye ends of the earth, and be saved.”
The next time we tune into a station of disease, fear, evil, lack, or anything of like nature, let us remember this. The shape of human consciousness is filled with our thought substance, – and remains in that form with all its ensuing evils until we go in and see what is back of it all.
“Behold, I set before you an OPEN door” of attainment. Enter, and be saved from the human thought confusion.
WHEN A MAN
When a man is not guilty of that which he is accused – all that is necessary is to drop any effort in connection with it, and instead of taking further thought go to the Place of LIGHT. The place of LIGHT is the point of recognition. When recognition is made of the Presence then all other “presences” are as naught. The thing that comes at you in ONE way of concentrated force of human belief will flee in ten, when it comes into contact with this recognition. The heart that knows it is not guilty and has merged into the LIGHT – suddenly experiences a surge of power. He hears singing within the temple of his being
“YOU are NOT afraid”
of what man can do unto you. He can do nothing the moment you are at the point of SELF recognition. You put up your sword; the battle is not yours but God’s. That’s good enough for any warrior – and should instantly allay any belief in two powers. The more imminent evil becomes and the greater the ramifications – the nearer it is to destruction – it is Wonderful. Then can you “Praise God from whom ALL (not some) blessings flow.” There is a mental and physical relaxation in this contemplation. To be “Still” is to be STILL – and not a condition produced by taking thought – but suddenly to BE STILL. No noise that man can make with whatever instrument he may have, can compare with the “NOISE OF MANY WATERS.”
The Power of the Presence of purity, the roaring of the waters through the beliefs of human thought, silence forever the NOISE of man. So do you stand in the LIGHT -“though ten thousand shall rise against thee” – yet shall your heart be not afraid, for it is only ten thousand thought formations which have nothing to sustain them but your acceptance of them as real. The moment you rise to the ONE – the LIGHT will absorb, dissipate and utterly put to flight all that which is against thee.
“I will fear NO (not any) evil for thou art with me.” Appearances are for the moment; – the dust storm that obscures the sun is but a brief encounter with materialized thought which is soon blown away.
Recently a man shot at another, but the bullet hit a steel post ricocheted and finally passed through his own heart. When evil runs into Light, it has a Strange habit of returning to the point of its origin.
WHEN YOU PRAY
TRUE prayer is not demanding things of the universe, nor yet is it imagining that things can be had by begging or beseeching, or yet knowing they are yours. Prayer is merely recognition of that which is about to appear-provided, of course, you are willing to accept your good. “Thank you, Father,” was one of the most efficacious prayers ever said, and it was followed up by a magnificent explanation of the nature of prayer-“I knew it was already so.” This checks perfectly with the statement, “Before they call, I will answer; and while they are yet speaking, I will hear.”
When we get over the idea of praying to a man god, we shall see that prayer is merely aligning ourselves with the Power of that which is due to appear in our lives. In like manner, affirmations in their truest sense do not and cannot change the eternal nature of the universe; they are the words which are uttered because of the urge of the thing pressing upon the individual for expression. Hence, instead of any more of the prodigality comes the Sonship that, instead of begging for life, partakes of life as his inheritance, and names his statement of this fact as an automatic result, just as one who is sitting in darkness will automatically exclaim ” Oh, light 1 ” when a sudden shaft of light pierces the gloom. It is not said with an idea of creating light, but as a full recognition of the existence of light at that place and time.
The person standing in front of a mirror does not exist because of the reflection in the mirror, but vice versa. We have reversed the very processes of life, and have been working at them blindly and backwards. No wonder our results have been so meager and unhealthy. When the prayer is uttered out of a full heart, with a full recognition, you who read this page will take your good in this manner; your heart will almost burst with the fullness of this truth. Awareness of my presence and of all the things you have so long sought for.
“Come ye, buy, and eat; drink -without price.”
“Take no thought-are ye not better than many ravens.”
Do you not understand what you have been doing? When will you speak out of the full heart of recognition that there is such a thing as a God present here and now in all his fullness? The old order shall pass away
“A new heaven and a new earth shall descend out of the clouds” (of your belief).
A new heaven is not a heaven patched up and made livable; it is a new heaven; and the new heir comes to take his place-he is all new and glistening, all glorious and free. “Former things have passed away.” Do you hear? You who read this page? You?
When ye pray, the whole soul is at attention. It is so absorbing–this recognition of God within, without, everywhere-that man easily forgets his needs. He is swallowed up in the sea of All-substance and is content, and he becomes aware of his own. Be still, be joyously still. You are atop the heights of manifestation. Do you hear? You who read this page? You?
It is so absorbing, so radiantly absorbing, the glory of the God-Son and his Kingdom, that nothing matters, and therefore everything matters. In the Absolute Reality, when you lose your life you find it. When you lose the tiny limited personal sense of life, you lose all the irritating beliefs that go with it—-petty wants and its straining to be famous or great.
“Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?”
Where is the Father, and what is his business? Over and over this is called to your attention, for a moment’s consciousness of this fact will cause you to function in your right place-will cause great and mighty peace to surge over you. You cannot be out of place as long as this awareness is with you. “Your Father’s business” is the business of self-expression. When you are expressing the True Self, you are bringing in the Kingdom of Heaven, for you are, both literally and figuratively, giving water to the thirsty and food to the hungry; in other words, the urge of Spirit as a reality is gushing forth into conscious expression.
The Father’s business is self-revelation—you will reveal yourself to yourself, and no more will you sit in sackcloth and ashes wishing for that which is already yours. Do you hear? You who read this page? You?
Let go; be quiet; it is well; all is well; heaven is here and now. “Blessings, blessings, blessings-so many you cannot count them.” Did you hear? Cease from the argument. Seek peace and pursue it; thereby all good shall come unto you. All is enough. Why worry? I speak to you from out these pages and say to you,” It is well.” Do you hear? Then rest.
There shall be no sluggish waiting and imagining things; action is my name. I do -I AM. Be at peace. When the moment comes, you shall be fully equipped to run the race of certain attainment. You shall be able to write so that he who runs may read, and he who reads may run. Everything you give to another you increase a thousand fold, when it is given in love and not for gain.
“There is he that scattereth yet tendeth to increase -and he that withholdeth yet tendeth to poverty.”
All the human ideas are reversed in the truth.
“What went ye out to see?”
Do you go out to see a man with a reputation, or run after a book that is said to contain the key? When you realize that the I AM within you is the KEY to every person, place, and thing, you will begin to unlock the treasures of your own kingdom. You will then be able to release the hidden springs of inspiration in a book or within your soul, and see the new life fill everything.
Stop the condemnation of your beautiful Self. “If ye deny Me [Christ within], I shall also deny you.” In other words, if you find Me incapable of governing your life, then, no matter how you call upon Me, I shall not answer because of your “unbelief,” because you do not honestly believe that it is possible for the Inner Lord to rule absolutely and harmoniously in your life. If you have a house consciousness, divided against itself, it will fall-and so you will fall, and attempt to work out your problem by praying to a God afar off-a tyrant that may hear your prayers —a God of wrath and hatred.
Stop thinking of yourself as a worm of the dust; stop judging yourself; stop the everlasting talking about that which is past and dead. Arise, and let the dead bury their dead. Do not try to straighten out things get yourself lined out with the power within and you will find things automatically falling into harmony and order. The piece of steel follows the magnet-but you are trying to make the magnet follow the piece of steel. God cannot be made to do your bidding, but by becoming conscious of your point in the Universal Mind you will be happy in doing his bidding-you will someday cheerfully say, ” Not my will, but thine, be done,” and be satisfied that it is the only will, and is the door of freedom, not martyrdom. Be still nothing is hard to ME—-do you hear? You who read this page? You?
Dominion is yours through the recognition of the Christ within-dominion to do and to be. The Christ asks no favours to perform. He does not need the recommendation or veto of anyone. He is independent of such three dimensional rubbish. The dawn asks no permission to dispel the night ; it may not be in accord with many people’s desires to have it come when it does, but it is above requesting the favor to express. So you will likewise ask no privilege to speak the freeing word of truth—-nor to perform the works after the manner of Jesus.
“The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth ; so is everyone that is born of the Spirit.”
So, then, is every man, for every man is born of the Spirit when he arises to recognize this. He comes and goes and no one shall say him no, and no one shall know how he cometh or goeth, for the ways of Spirit are past finding out. ” My ways are past finding out “-but my ways are ways of definite accomplishment, effortless, untrammeled, and free-unconditioned and easy into expression-assembling instantly all that is necessary for the instantaneous expression of the Son of God.
Thus, when you are ready to let the Christ within take over the government of your life, you will find the upper chamber, the robe and the ring, the scrip and purse, always waiting for you. Are you afraid? Dare you accept such a wondrous gift? – Perhaps you plead that you are unworthy, and you are-unworthy because you are judging the Christ within by the standards of your limited human capacity. Having eyes, ye see not, and ears, ye hear not, and hence you judge from the blinded and deaf state of human reasoning and find such a glorious attainment impossible.
“In the twinkling of an eye” is the manner of his coming in-” the moment ye think not.” Who by thinking can find ME? Who by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? But at a moment when you think not-when you have done with the idea that you can force God to appear and do your bidding by merely thinking of him, and have come to the recognition of the Presence which is past all limitations and conditions-you will say, ” Whereas before I was blind, Now 1 can see,” and perceive a wholly new world about you.
Many are the seekers after truth who think that by affirmations they can call up God and order him to set things right, just as Aladdin is supposed to have done with his lamp. They fail to have the symbology of the True Aladdin with his LAMP-Light-but imagine that if they say it often enough it will work.
A new system is discovered ; it is tried with great avidity and then found wanting ; so shall it be-” I shall overturn and overturn, until he comes whose place it is to rule ” –until I am the only ruler of your universe, and every prop is kicked from under, and you stand revealed to yourself–a glorious Son of the Living God with healing in his wing, with light in his eyes, with his feet shod with the winged sandals of attainment clothed in Light. “Praying without ceasing” is the prayer of thanksgiving and recognition.
When ye pray, say “Thank you, Father,” remembering where Jesus told you the Father resided, and rest-and, having done all, stand and see the salvation, the coming into manifestation of the Power of God here and now. You who read this page, do you hear? You?
WHERE THERE BE PROPHECIES
“WHERE THERE BE PROPHECIES, they shall fail” But LOVE never faileth. Strange, then, how after we have left our own personal and private “Egypt” and have seen signs and wonders and proofs of God’s Love, that we turn aside to prophecies.
But you say they are interesting. Yes, very,-but mighty slippery ground to stand upon, – for the “interest” is a will-o-the-wisp which keeps leading farther and farther into the quick-sands of belief in a power apart from God. In spite of the statement, “No man knoweth what a day brings forth” there is the temptation to peep and see if something good is coming. It isn’t, – for it cannot come as long as you put the time element on it and turn it over to some other power than God.
Yes, “Where there be prophecies, they shall fail” It does not say maybe or perhaps, – it says they SHALL fail. Hardly ten per cent of all the prophecies, personal and national, have even vaguely come to pass. Of course, there is such a thing as stretching the event to fit the prophecy, – but that isn’t the danger. The real danger lies in the time element which is always interposed and the array of evil that must be endured before that “speck” of good can come into being.
But-“LOVE NEVER FAILETH”! NEVER is a long, long time, – and NEVER is ETERNALLY NOW.
Meditating along this line recently, suddenly a flash came through, – a beautiful radiance which spoke in terms of LIGHT, impressing upon me: the fact that man is born under GOD, – not under a star or a group of stars. In the record of creation, man was created above the stars. How then can he come under the malefic influences of that which is under him, unless he descends to the level of that belief?
He shall give His ANGELS charge over thee, not His stars. And you have the power to call forth twelve legions of ANGELS, if you will.
Yes, – “Where there be prophecies, they shall fail”. You live in the Kingdom HERE and NOW. Your waiting is only in human thinking.
WHO ARE YOU?
Who are you” And to what end were you born? You who read this book – to you I come. I ask you the question you read because, if you are willing, you shall see the answer written in fire over the portals of your universe. Slave! Arise from the pigsty of your prodigality, and return to your Father.
You have done a deal of talking and reading – taking lessons and listening to lectures. What is the final result of all this research in the material husks of reasoning but a few grains of truth? Do you believe one percent of what you say? Why prate about the healing influence when before you opens a door of no-healing? Who are you to be healed, and of what?
Beloved, why will you wait longer for the realization of that which you have been telling of for years. When will you arise as the Son of God, of the Living; God, and assert the freedom that awaits you? – above all treatment; above all worry or wonder; above all trying to make it so. When are you going to accept what you are saying?
“I AM the Son of the Living God.” Do you believe this? If so, you are at this instant facing radical change in the outward expression which will be so far above the old concept that you will stand in amazement at the glory of it all.
Just what do you believe? Is there a God, an All god, in your universe? Or is the devil of your belief more powerful than the God who created everything? Are you still getting rid of evil? Do you still insist that evil is real and true? You say “No” to all this, but what do you do each morning? Do you recognize God as present and give thanks, or do you run to some person who is supposed to be ordained to speak the Word of Truth and see what he has to say about your problems?
When will you have the courage to jerk the curtain away from this hypocrisy and see that the “holier-than-thou” has left a home full of disease and unhappiness to come to his office to advise you how to live and be?
When will you come to Me? When will you open the door and let Me in? When will you thrill with the realization of the present – the now? Do you not see that man needs no mediator between himself and God? When will you awake to the sovereign truth that God Is? How much longer will you sit with the swine and ask for that which is poured out to you in abundance?
When will you awaken to the full truth that is here and now? When will you say within the courts of your own being. “It is wonderful”? When will you recognize the God Universe, and begin to live?
When will you realize that God is always present, in spite of the harpies who insist that you must have a special training to know this?
When can you arise and say within your soul, “It is wonderful”?
What is wonderful? Life is wonderful when you come to Me, the I AM – that which existed before Abraham – that which is and always shall be – that which cannot be sold, or preached, or put into print – that which is.
It is wonderful. Bless you – fear not – I have led you along the path – I have proved to you the folly of seeking help through man; you have finally been humbled before the stable of your own True Self. Take off your shoes (human understanding); you are on holy ground. Be still – very still – and bring your gift. You have arrived at the point where you do not seek Me for a gift, but seek Me to bring a gift. You bring the self and lay it at the manger of My birth (My realization), for in reality I was never born and never died, and I AM YOU.
When I come to you I come free – untrammeled and above all the petty cares of life. I AM – do YOU hear? – and I have no name but the I AM. I AM He that should come – and when I come you cannot but realize that all schools, names, persons, and places are wiped out of the picture. I bring a new day. Do you want to give up the old day, with your past wonderful achievements? Do you want Christ? Or do you want to impress people with the trifling thing that you did or that you left undone, but that you now glorify? Are you a glutton for praise? Are you afraid that someone will not remember that you did a good deed? Who are you, and what is the authority which makes your deed so glorious?
Be still, beloved! You have passed through all these states – you have told me ever so often of the wondrous deeds you have done. You have tried to write your name on the sands of time. You have paraded in my robes, holier-than-thou – I know you.
What matter? Beloved, I know you are tired. One system after another has failed – even your desire to destroy Me has failed. I AM and always shall be and though you would slay Me in one unexplainable way or another, rest assured, your efforts to destroy Me are naught. Bless you. You are tired. Why do you not let go of the prodigal and return to your Father’s house?
When will you come, beloved? – out into the sunshine of realization – the Presence of the God Power here and now?
Do you believe one-tenth of that which you speak? Are you a man of matter? Or Spirit? Who are you? What is the end of your appearance on this plane?
I come with light and healing in my wings, beloved. Why will you kick against the pricks? How much longer must I speak to you and have you turn aside? How much longer will you divide my garment among you? How much longer will you set yourself up as the holier-than-thou? When will you be the Son of God? When will you act like the Son of God? When will you de-hypnotize yourself from the belief that your knowing or thinking will do anything?
“Awake, thou that sleepest, and Christ shall give thee light.” Do you believe that? Or is it a fairy-tale? When will you begin to say, “It is wonderful – it is wonderful”? When will you begin to realize the Truth of Life?
All the pathetic ideas that you entertain about Me and My Kingdom will fall away when the light of the heaven here and now appears – when your soul automatically arises to the point where it can say, “It is wonderful,” and mean it.
WHO BY TAKING THOUGHT
You are asked a very pertinent and definite question. “Who by taking thought can …?”
Thought is like a rope tied to a captive balloon. An Idea is borne in upon you. You either accept it, or take thought about it. If you take thought about it – nothing but frustration happens. The energy that is used in taking thought is that which would have sustained the idea into manifestation.
All this seems vague and hypothetical until you become silent and see how true it is. “Take no thought” about the idea, and you will have manifestation in due season. You are told to “go” without thought, “carry neither purse, nor scrip, nor shoes,” what you shall eat, etc. The moment the idea is accepted and forgotten, then all the energy which would have gone into thought hastens the manifestation of the IDEA.
I stood once in a London Pea Soup Fog. Had I not been told that yonder in the fog lay London, Westminster Abbey, Trafalgar Square, and a thousand and one other well known places, but as far as I was concerned there was nothing but obscurity. Yet, there it lay, and as I stood there I remembered the account of the Mist that went up and watered the face of the whole earth and that the perfect creation lay there in all its beauty. Yet through looking at the mist, I had spent many life times trying to re-create a new universe which would have to be super-imposed upon the perfect creation, and this Adam creation would be constructed on a basis of judging from appearances, and finding everything in the last analysis wrong. Even man had finally invented an instrument which would take him and his kind out of the picture, and so he hurried to try to make an agreement not to use it.
Gradually, we begin to see that the LAWS as Spoken into being by Jesus Christ are actually the laws which operate one hundred percent, and when recognized produce the manifestation out of the invisible substance.
The Mist that went up covered the whole face of the earth and hid – not destroyed – everything. What a revelation to know this, for it again substantiates the law that Creation is finished and done and called very good and this also applies to you – created in the image and likeness of God.
Now a new dimension comes into view which we are beginning to discover, not create or demonstrate, and as the mystification in your mind gets thinner, then, the IDEAS begin to show through, and if we can accept them, we will be able to see them and experience them.
The perfect creation begins to project itself through the mist of belief and the balloon is free to ascend to the higher heavens of inventions.
Who by taking thought? You answer it, and begin to see how much energy and power is expended in thinking of and about, instead of being used to substantiate the IDEA.
WISDOM
THAT the wisdom of God is foolishness in the eyes of man is quite as true as the fact that the “wisdom” of man is foolish in the eyes of God. Yet thousands of people are trying to use the “wisdom of God” through the channels of the “wisdom of man.” This is impossible at the outset. Jesus found this out very early in life, and did not try anything quite so obviously futile.
For a long time after leaving “Egypt,” the human thought tries to fashion the Divine after its own design. Presently it leaves all and follows “me.” In other words, it comes by the way of God and not the way of man.
The old, trite, and hackneyed statements, which have been reeled off with such glib tongues until they have become little more than mockery, suddenly take on a glorious new meaning when you come by the way of God.
You have tried to come by the way of man and found yourself deep in a bog of relative thinking, from which there seems little escape. Still you ask of man what is best to do.
The command is, “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God that giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.” This must be taken literally if you expect to get anything higher than the advice of your own intelligence.
A radical quality enters into the life of the one who is coming by the way of God and is forsaking the wary of man.
You will note that the moment you ask for the wisdom of God it is given you, and there is no condemnation, upbraiding, nor any of the little human deceits which would naturally enter in from the standpoint of the “I-told-you-so” intellect of man.
Here is a clear case in point:
I received a letter which contained this paragraph:
“I am going to look for you so hard, you will just find yourself leaving everything, everybody and everywhere, and being right here.”
That is the way the human mind imagines the Power of God operates. There are thousands in metaphysics who are trying to demonstrate in the same fashion. Have you ever heard, “I am here, I am there, I am everywhere”? Have you ever heard, “I go before you to prepare a place for you”? Do you realize that the Principle which you are seeking is right with you, and has the ability to embody itself the moment you recognize it?
“What went ye out for to see – a person or a Principle?”
If you go out to seek a principle and recognize its presence, it will embody itself immediately, and you will understand the profound quality of the Wisdom of God, in contradistinction to that of man. The man wisdom seeks a person or a certain thing. The Wisdom of God shows how the Spirit is with you always, and at all times, and embodies itself the moment you recognize it. It is a wonderful revelation. The moment you begin to come by the way of God, all the old trite sayings burst into fruition and become something real and tangible and not something to be made real and tangible.
In the case of the letter above quoted, the writer thought that by holding firmly to the personal outline which embodied the message she wanted to hear, she would draw that body with the message to a certain locality. Had she known that the “I am here” was present, it would have found ways and means of embodying itself and giving her all that she sought.
Coming by the way of God is a new process. We are beginning to “flee from man whose breath is in his nostrils” for a very good reason. His wisdom is foolishness and yet he will insist on trying to work out impossibilities with it.
The deep, fathomless Wisdom of God says such contrary things as this:
“By humility and the fear of the Lord are riches and honor and life.
Many a Uriah Heep has tried the “humility” idea and found in the end it led to nothing. The human wisdom immediately thinks, “Well, if humility is all that is necessary to get rich, I can do that. I can be humble on the outside, at least until I get my riches!” And another hears that “the measure ye mete shall be measured to you again, pressed down, shaken together, and running over.” So he gives with the idea of getting. “It is safer than investing in uncertain business.” And wisdom of this caliber finds that what it has given has been entirely lost. You cannot mix the Wisdom of God with the wisdom of man.
The Golden Rule is true and operative if it be of the “Wisdom of God,” but if it be man, with his silly intellect, trying to profit by the words of God, he will soon find it wholly impractical – yea, even worse than that. He will find himself an easy victim for others of his kind, using the “wisdom of man” in a more vicious way.
“Awake thou that sleepest, and Christ shall give thee light.”
Yet there stands the Wisdom, telling you exactly how to become rich and how to have honors and Life. What are you going to do about it? Are you returning as the proverbial dog to his “vomit,” shouting to God, “Money, money, money,” or “Riches, plenty, abundance,” and expecting a shower of gold to drop into your lap?
“Come apart from among them and be ye separate.” Be still for a little while and you will know the Presence, and will follow through with the Wisdom of God.
You cannot but keep this revelation a secret, for it is so deep and yet so simple that it will be taken away from you by the cunning of man.
“Thou hast put gladness in my heart, more than in the time that their corn and their wine increased.”
The greedy human mind cannot conceive of any gladness which would exceed the getting of possessions. Once the Wisdom of God enters in, you see the gladness here referred to as not dependent on the increase of material things. The wisdom back of it all is a recognition of the Presence which makes it unnecessary to be excited about manifestation. In the “secret” place of understanding you know why you do not have to center your attention on the accumulation of things. It is wonderful !
You cannot be brought by “a way ye known not of” by the human wisdom. It cannot go by a way it does not know, and all the ways it has known of are impassable. What are you going to do? Make a way? Be still! “I am the way”; I need no pioneers to blaze a trail for Me. I make the rough places smooth and the crooked places straight. I make the desert to blossom as a rose, and cause fountains to spring forth in dry lands. I cause the harvest to come before the planting. I do not have to explain how this is possible to a “wisdom” which is so limited that it is foolishness.
Do you begin to see why the command, “Leave all and follow me,” is the opening door of attainment, wherein you find the all which you thought you left, plus the life-substance back of it?
All wonders come under the “Wisdom of God” and are utterly inexplicable to man. Far instance, “Ye shall decree a thing and it shall come to pass.” What can you decree that will come to pass with certainty? You must “knock on wood” every time you say anything good for fear it might not be true. Dare you to boldly and unflinchingly say that certain good is due to arrive, and will arrive in your life without fail next year? Will you preface it with the “God willing” or “I’m not bragging” or some other “charm formula? Seek within the recesses of your “temple” and find the “money changers” and the “dove sellers” hidden in the shadows – scourge them out of the Temple of the Living God.
“Get wisdom, get understanding; forget It not; neither decline from the words of my mouth.”
The mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. It does not say the mouth of another, but the mouth of God. Do you hear?
“Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom; and with all thy getting get understanding,”
THE WORD
What do you mean when you repeat the LAW – “Take words and return unto Jehovah.” What word? Where do you take it? Until we see that the WORD exists before it is uttered, we cannot see that the fulfillment of the WORD also exists before it appears – and that takes care of the strange statement “Before you ask, I will answer.” But how can a person think a thing like that through to a satisfactory conclusion? He is defeated before he starts, for all thinking proceeds from the three dimensional basis of life, and is finished before it starts – there is no permanency in it.
When the “thought word” is launched, it accomplishes nothing; when PEACE is called from the housetops with the thunder of the ages, nothing happens but confusion, wars, and rumors of wars. As far as the thinking man is concerned – because it is nothing but an inflated idea of the human mind which tries to do something by taking thought – even after he is told “take no thought,” yet there is the WORD.
What, then, is the WORD that you take to Jehovah? It is the recognition of the PRESENCE which discovers that within every word is the full energy to cause it to function. The moment that recognition is made, it is exactly like the air in a small balloon expanding until it bursts the shape of the balloon and takes on the shape and form of the atmosphere. It is wonderful when you begin to see this mergence – when you begin to understand how Jesus when He went to the Father simply melted or merged into the One, and then, nothing – it says nothing – was denied.
This is not some mystical performance – not something that happens when you have studied endless courses of how and why – not something that takes place when, like the heathen, you have used many words to gain the ear of the DIVINE. It is pure recognition first of your own helplessness “I can of mine own self do nothing,” and then the full recognition of the ONE who can do all things; you are through with ah the preconceived notions and ideas of any personal effort and you are at the point of action in in-action. You are ready to LET something happen. Your only part in this is complete obedience to the urge and the integrity that will not question and so the “before you ask” merely comes into manifestation automatically, and in the twinkling of an eye all is changed, or rather revealed. It is wonderful! Be still. The Energy of the word – the imprisoned splendor of it all – is a sort of pent-up energy that is in everything God urged, whether it be man, or the arts of man. It is the soul that, when recognized, will come forth. What makes a masterpiece as compared with the daubings of a rank amateur? What is this very pent-up energy that literally speaks to you?
“A work can have in it a pent-up energy, an intense life of its own, independent of the object it represents.” (H. Moore). That is as a modern statement of prayer, the prayer that Jesus advocated – the prayer which is before it is mentioned and is freighted with the necessary energy to come into being and take on a body and form. “Speak the word” is something more than a collection of dead letters. When the WORD is spoken, the dead letters which are holding the imprisoned splendor of it away from manifestation, break up and release the manifestation. All this which is mystical in statement is a literal, actual thing finally to be handled with your hands and experienced, so that you will know that the “eating of food” which Jesus did was only to make you see we are not talking about imagination or metaphysics in the ordinary sense of the word, but about the tangibility of spirit, which is unseen until recognized, and then becomes concrete by pure recognition. It is wonderful.
The same WORD which cannot return unto you void, once recognized and spoken is the word which you have with you always for recognition when the greed and egotism are drained from you. Why should you be greedy for possessions when you have all? You have all the air there is. What are you going to do with it? Try to hoard it? The Word takes all forms and shapes at the instant recognized, and it is “closer … than breathing – nearer than hands and feet.” It IS, and gradually this recognition will cause the false ancestor-thinking pictures to fall away – they will flee in ten ways. The moment you discover the pent-up energy in the word, and by recognizing the power, it bursts the limitations. You will see the Serpent, the wisdom of the LORD, eat up the wisdom of a thousand and one mystics and teachers of personal ideas. “Awake, thou that sleepest and CHRIST (within you) shall give thee light.” It is wonderful!
The picture you are to paint is already painted, and that sounds like so much nonsense to the intellectual fool who knows better by a thousand and one tests and proofs – but nevertheless it is so. The Masterpiece that is to take shape and form is already there and waiting to be thrown onto the canvas of life: whether this be LIFE, or wealth, or joy, or whatsoever. But you will not try to superimpose the masterpiece upon a filthy piece of newsprint, which has the record of your own hopeless and vicious attempts to make God do your bidding. You will make the assumption of the virginal mind, and let the perfection of the picture fall upon the clean sheet of your mind. It is wonderful! No one believes it – so tell no one – but later on let them look at the Masterpiece and draw their own conclusions. You do not care what they think, you have gone on to another, and still another. For the substance is everywhere present in every form and you are “about your Father’s business” which is the business of letting and not “trying” to let or make. Do you hear now? a little? – well then go in and shut the door. “This is the way, walk ye in it.” This is the LAW – abide in quiet and peace.
Like the vortex that draws everything to it – like a mighty vacuum surrounded with the Terrific pressure of the outside atmosphere – suddenly it happens, and man begins operating from a new level of recognition, and the former things are passed away.
All the evil buds that were beginning to shoot out their ugly branches of belief are crushed and dead. NOW. So is the fate pattern suddenly destroyed before it has time to take form and shape, because you have discovered the pent-up energy of the word and have, by recognition, caused it to break the thin walls of belief which held it away from the ONE. It is wonderful. So why not take words and return unto JEHOVAH? – by yourself – alone – and see what happens.
YE DO ERR – NOT UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES
SHE WAS weeping hot, rather bitter tears because she had lost a “friend,”- a lady who was in the throes of poverty and a thousand and one other problems, so she had taken her in. She had fed and clothed her, becoming her constant companion and advisor, – because it was such a pitiful case.
And then one day the “thing” turned and struck at its benefactor. “What ingratitude!” “I cannot understand why she should treat me in this manner, after I have done so much for her”.
Every Soul knows its own capacities. It knows the equality of birth and that it is entitled to all the wonders of heaven and earth, – even though the “John Smith” seemingly cannot bring them into manifestation with the same ease that another is bringing them forth. Daily it hears itself discounted by its benefactor, – who, feeling sorry for it, emasculates the person and makes it hopelessly dependent.
There is no friendship in pity or sympathy, – both are means of unconsciously inducing personal worship. True, sometimes this idea is so covered with human emotion that it does not recognize the bondage into which it has thrown another, – and it goes blissfully on, pitying and unwittingly discounting the so-called friend.
And so the lady discovered she had never had a friend. She had just taken something in, upon which to lavish her sympathy and pity. The human mind will accept anything it can get for nothing, – but the soul finally rises up against its “lord and master” and smites it in the only way it can to free itself. When you discover this, you will also discover that you cannot lose something which you never had.
Friendship, – that scarlet vine dropped down from heaven, – is filled with compassion, even as Jesus or the Good Samaritan, – but it will never descend to the level of pity in the human sense of the word, it will never bind the object of its compassion to it or cause it to pay tribute to a personal God.
The Good Samaritan bound up the wounds and sent the traveler on his way with sufficient to stay at the neighboring hotel until he recovered, – but he disappeared, looking not for the personal glory of having done a good deed. He received his reward elsewhere, – freeing the traveler from the ingratiating thing of fawning on the giver.
You must have a friend before you can lose one. Do not weep over something that is a fabrication of your own mind. The dramatic tendency is great in all of us, – but the curtain comes down and the “comedy (which you may call a tragedy) is finished”.
Since you cannot help doing good, no special effort is required to do it. There are plenty of instructions, – “Let not your right hand know what your left hand is doing”, – and so on. Give, – yes, and abundantly, – sometimes of gold and sometimes of “such as I have”. But FREE your gift, – -send it forth into life so it can find its proper place of lodgment. It will return to you, freighted with increase.
So the LIGHT dawned, – the tears stopped, – and the woman who had “lost” a friend discovered she never had a friend, – only a bond-maid who ran away from the slavery of fawning on another.
YON SYCAMINE TREE
IT DOES not take much, according to the words of Jesus; a grain of mustard seed, three drops of oil, a handful of meal. Not very much and within reach of all.
A handful of snow, if shaped into a ball and started downhill, will arrive at the bottom increased a thousandfold in size. It gathers as it turns. The more it turns the greater its accumulation.
Yet who would consider the handful of snow? It is so small, so worthless, so insignificant. The mustard seed and the three drops of oil are also negligible quantities.
Talk it over with the man in the street and he brands it as worthless.
Judge from appearances and you are frozen into the hard, fast limitations.
You with your oil, your seed, your handful of snow, judging from the evidence, find small possibilities of increase. With the possible exception of the “mustard” seed you cannot see any, and that exception is so small that it is worthless to consider.
Recognize what is back of all manifestation and, presto! something begins to happen. A gusher in its incipient stages starts in the three drops of oil: an internal earthquake starts in the mustard seed; a potential avalanche urges forth in the handful of snow.
Deep in the heart of you something begins to stir. It is the thrill of the unborn. Deep in the inner recesses of your being you are gloriously conscious of the life of the seed, the three drops of oil, the handful of meal. You are disregarding the appearances and are at the place of breathless adoration of the Presence. This very recognition is the “magnifying of the Lord” which will bring it into visibility. It is wonderful to contemplate that you – yes, you who are reading this line – have the seed, the three drops of oil, the handful of meal, symbolically speaking, within you, and this is all that is necessary to start the flow of manifestation.
Do you begin to “feel” what a glorious secret thing Jesus was saying when he uttered these words to you, “If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say to yon sycamine tree, Be thou plucked up by the root and cast into the sea, and it shall ;be so.” The words have been used so often that they have become hackneyed and trite; but suddenly they are all new and fresh, because for the first time you have found them within yourself.
“Ye shall decree a thing and it shall come to pass.” Can you do it? Have you heard a loud-voiced one hurling “decrees” at God, and expecting Him to fulfill them? The loud voice has nothing to do with the “Still small Voice” which sometimes speaks with a resonance deeper than thunder. Decreeing has nothing to do with will-power; it has nothing to do with “repetition.” Decreeing is the speaking into existence of that which is conceived as possible and natural to the Father within.
“Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
Not unless you have the faith, or the acceptance, or the willingness to move with God, instead of against Him, can you grasp the deep activity of the rest referred to. Many think that this rest is a rusting-out mentally, physically, and spiritually, a state of apathy. The rest of God is action, but it is not accompanied by fatigue. Neither is it bothered nor disturbed by expecting acclaim and recognition for everything that is accomplished. It is a rest from the paraphernalia of human thought. “God rests in action” – action that has no ulterior motive other than the expression of joy.
Do you begin to see that when the self-seeking ceases the self-finding begins? The things of the little, personal self melt into oblivion in the presence of “the things prepared for those who love the Lord.” Remember that “eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him.” No wonder you begin to see that self-seeking is worthless; it can only measure the glories it is seeking by a pile of money, a temporary sense of fame, a place in the scorching sun of human society, with the positive knowledge that all of these will turn to “dust.”
But what of the “things that are prepared” of which no man has even dreamed, You cannot touch, approach, or even sense them through the “grain of mustard seed” or the “three drops of oil.” The automatic power which moves not in accordance with human reasoning, does not have to employ the labored laws of the human thought to accomplish its ends.
“Behold the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with them, and be their God.”
Do you believe that? If you do, you will turn instantly from the appearances and accept your mustard seed and pluck up your sycamine tree and throw it into the sea of oblivion. It is wonderful what shall be revealed to you when you enter into this “tabernacle” -temple-embodiment.
“Every Spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God.”
Note the present tense of the verb. Note also that you recognize the Presence in something more than the imagination you will never see and know the capacity that lies within the “three drops of oil.” So many people place God completely in the invisible and the inaudible. They forget the commands, “My sheep hear my voice” and the “Mouth of the Lord hath spoken.” It is wonderful when you begin to see that the “Temple (millions in one) of God is with men.” You are the temple of the living God, and your body is the Word of God made flesh. When you begin to see this elaborate system of temples here, there, and everywhere, inanimate and animate, you can understand how the Voice can speak to you from out the burning bush and from out the man lying in the gutter. It is wonderful to contemplate the temple of God being with men.
When a man “confesseth,” just what takes place? He speaks the truth insofar as he understands it. He is not saying words hoping to make them so. He is speaking from the consciousness he has of them.
Do you begin to understand more clearly what it is in the “three drops of oil” and the “handful of meal,” etc.? To recognize the Presence even in the smallest thing is to instantly align yourself with the All Presence.
When you begin to sense the “temple of God is with men” you will also begin to understand why you know that the “upper chamber” is already prepared, and how it is that “I go before you and prepare the Way.” It is glorious to see this and to know that the Power that “walks in you and talks in you,” knows definitely where it is going and what it is to say. You do not “walk” yourself about, getting into all sorts of “wrong streets,” when you feel the Power in the midst of you walking and talking in you. The words that are spoken then are not yours, but are the words of the Voice within, and are right and perfect. It is glorious, this recognition of the Power.
Ah! but you cannot walk if you stop to “salute the man you pass on the highway of life”; he will begin at once to give you instructions, and directions, and tell you all sorts of things about ways and means.
Arise and go to your Father, and my Father, and our Father, and “see” what the Scriptures have to say unto these temples. Get your instructions from the Godhead. “If any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God”; not of John Smith, unless he wants to go the way of John Smith. “My sheep hear my voice” – it is so – and it is wonderful.
When the command is given, “Stretch forth thy hand” (the hand that is withered away), if you do this at all, you will have to do it outside the realm of conscious thinking, since you have already recognized in this conscious thinking that it is impossible to “stretch forth your hand.” Trying to fulfill the command does not bring anything but defeat and hopelessness. Yet the command “Stretch forth thy hand,” if done from the height of understanding, will in reality be a stretching forth of the consciousness. This consciousness will be accompanied by the perfect manifestation, with all the vigor and power. It is wonderful to contemplate this gesture of consciousness. “Open your eyes,” sightless from birth; this must be performed in consciousness, with a complete disregard of appearances and all the pros and cons. Stop trying to do it by the way of man and come by the way of God, which is performing it in consciousness and letting the manifestation take care of itself. “Verily ye shall be fed.” Fear not. “Stretch forth your hand” “are, do, and be silent. It is all written in the law, and not one jot or tittle shall be removed until it is fulfilled.
The roots of your “sycamine tree” are already loosening a bit. Do not try to pull it up. More contemplation on the “mustard seed” will so loosen the earth about its roots that one day you will “stretch forth your hand” and pluck it up, and cast it forever into a sea of oblivion, into a place of forgetfulness.
“Behold!” (that most glorious of words which defies translation, so inspirational is it in meaning). “Behold, the Tabernacle of God is with men” – in other words, “Behold that God is manifest on the earth now, and is right in your presence and in your midst.” Yes, the “Lord is in His Holy Temple” now. Do you believe this? Perhaps you have tried so hard to see Him in the Temple of your body that you have lost heart because He did not appear. Job tried this too and failed, but when he stopped “trying” on himself, and beheld it as something real and tangible in another, then it dwelt with him; he “stretched out his consciousness,” as it were, and the withered “hand” took form after the manner of the consciousness.
YOU SENT THAT LETTER, DIDN’T YOU?
YOU sent that letter this morning, didn’t you? You carefully wrote it, addressed and sealed it, and then you dropped it in the box. You didn’t have a string tied to it, did you? No, you just dropped it in the box and went on your way. You didn’t think that the box was especially burglar-proof, did you? And you didn’t wonder how it would get from the box to the post office, and from the post office to the train, did you? You didn’t spend all that morning worrying about whether the train would arrive with it, did you? No, you dropped it light-heartedly into the box and forgot it.
You sent that prayer this morning, didn’t you? You carefully made your declarations for right and offset the wrong thoughts. You addressed your prayer to the All Highest and only ONE. But what did you do after you had sent it? You had a string of worry attached to it, and kept pulling it back to you to see if you could not add another word, or to see if it were really “made.” All morning long you doubted, and the next morning you sent another prayer; but it, too, was attached by a string of doubt and fear and did not get far.
Several days after you sent the letter you received an answer which read: “I have your letter of such and such a date;” and you recalled that you had written a letter. Still you didn’t rush out of doors and stop every passer-by and say, “I sent a letter and got a reply,” and then elaborated on how you went through the whole affair, how you had hunted for paper and spilled the ink, or lost you pencil, etc. No, you accepted the letter, read it, got the benefit from it and went on you way.
And finally, in a half-hearted way, the poor little prayer which only half loosened, came back to you with a ray of light and you rushed to you nearest neighbor and said: “I had a demonstration – – you see it was this way, etc.”
“O ye of little faith!” Why don’t you cut the strings of worry that are attached to you every thought and “loose it and let it go?” Have the same faith back of your prayer that you have back of the letter and it will return to you with greater certainty and with surer reward.
Away out in the front lines while the battle was raging, a carrier pigeon was let loose with a message, and as he disappeared into the distance, fading away into the limpid blue of the sky, no worried thought hampered his voyage. When they “loosed him and let him go” they knew that he would fly to his destination and results would follow.
Who had not felt the perfect faith of a child in St. Nicholas? They ask for their heart’s desire and are never left without some expression of love. When ye ask, ask as believing ye shall receive. You don’t go into a store and ask the clerk for a certain article and then chase madly about repeating the request a thousand times. You ask and then wait. And so when we learn to ask and wait – – wait with the patience which is absolute faith – – then we shall constantly receive the reply, the reward that is rightfully ours. “Ask and ye shall receive; knock and it shall be opened unto you; seek and ye shall find.” Don’t knock and at the same time try to force an entrance by the window. The master of the house will take you for a robber and only bar his doors heavier.
And so as you send a letter, send your prayer – – let them go forth unhampered, untrammeled by fear, worry or care. Don’t stampede your thoughts – – a multitude of assertions accomplish nothing, they only congest you thinking. Speak to your Father in secret, and he will reward thee openly.
YOUR DIVINE HERITAGE
Claim your rightful inheritance. What is your inheritance? Who are you? Until you fully recognize these two points, you are merely playing about with an affirmation — merely toying with some words. Thousands have spent years of their lives claiming, “All that the Father hath is mine,” and had difficulty finding enough to pay for a week’s lodging and food. Beloved, how long will you wait without, seeking for that which is in plain sight? How long will you try to make God do that which is already done? When will you identify yourself with the Christ within, the Son of the Most High, and begin to see the right — the Divine Heritage — the joy that will come to you when you realize that life is not just one long, tiresome job of demonstrating God? Thousands today are rising each morning and getting busy, knowing the truth about God and His universe, hoping thereby to overcome some of the fiendish conditions of the flesh — and finding themselves defeated. Who are you? Were you created by God, or by some erring human concept which has thrown you into a hell of change, and then given you a glimmer of light which says that if by your prayers you can establish the fact that there is a God, perhaps He will give you a crust of bread?
You have been taught as much — conceived in sin, brought forth in iniquity, worm of the dust, miserable sinner. Where does the Divine Heritage come in? Where does the Child of God find its own? Nowhere, and everywhere. Nowhere so long as you are looking for Him in some far-off place, and everywhere when you recognize the Presence here and now. Now are we the Sons of God — right now. When a man hears the word “now” in its true sense he finds he has been spelling it backward, and that in reality the “now” understood means “won. “You have won the sonship and all that goes with it when you understand the “now” of Spirit.
You are not a mixture of matter and spirit. Ice and steam are the same in essence, but as steam the water is lighter than ice. You are not a material thing separated from God, but a being of pure Spirit. If God had been clay in the first instance, everything that He evolved would have been made of clay; but we find Him as pure Spirit, all inclusive, and hence the creation must of necessity be Spirit. You, as the highest manifestation of this Power, are made of the all-inclusive substance of mind called Spirit. You are the Son or the center of manifestation, where all the innate qualities of God pour out into expression. It is asking no special dispensation or favor of God for you, as the Son, to “claim your right and press your claim.” It is merely recognizing that which innately belongs to you.
The name of the Queen of England is Elizabeth; but the power is vested in her rights as the Queen of England, and pressing her claim into expression. You are a king — by the name of I AM — – only you fail to recognize this, and hence beg at the open fount, wondering if, by beseeching the tyrant you worship through fear, He will give you enough to live on. The less you ask for, the harder it is to get — not because of any stinginess of the Power, but by reason of its tremendous affluence. If you hold a pint cup in Niagara Falls you will come away with it empty — not because of the lack of water, but because of too much water. The force of the water dashes everything out as fast as it gets in, because the measure is too small. Your poor little vision of what belongs to you keeps you from having the abundance of Spirit. You can have all, and all be left. “All that the Father hath is mine.” Where is the Father? What is the Father? If you look at this in terms of Jesus’ words, you find that the Father is within you — and you have everything or all that your Father has. Putting this through the limited beliefs of personality causes you to partake of the good, bad, or indifferent states of your consciousness. All that you have in your consciousness — all that you conceive the Father within you to be — is all that you actually have into manifestation.
If your room is ten feet square, you can have the entire radio concert, just the same as the man with a room a thousand feet square, and this can go on indefinitely and still all of it remain. The measure that you hold to the universe is all that can possibly come into manifestation. If you are dissatisfied with the results of your daily life, it cannot be rectified from without, but a better concept of the Father within — taking attention entirely away from the appearance — will enable you to bring out what you formerly called demonstrations. You will begin to see that enlarging the borders of your tent means becoming more conscious of the Power within and discovering its unlimited capacities — which are up and beyond anything that you can imagine.
All things are possible to ME, but nothing is possible to me. I doubt if a great portion of the people in the world would be affected one way or the other by the name Elizabeth Windsor, but most anyone is interested in the name the Queen of England — – and yet they are one and the same person. If she did not recognize this fact, another would certainly usurp her rights. Even though she be born to the place, yet, if she did not recognize this, she would never have the power of it. Even though you are born the Son of God, with unlimited power and happiness within your rights, until you recognize this you function along as John Smith or some other person, ignorant of the glorious freedom of the Sons of God, and you will beg a crust when you might be sitting at the overflowing table of the Infinite Spirit. Joy comes when you make a clear line of demarcation between the John Smith and the Christ.
You begin at once to appropriate the rights of the Son of God. In pressing your claim you do not drive a hard bargain — you do not fight; in this sense “pressing” means merely standing firm on the points that you know to be true, and turning not to the right nor left. It means saluting no man as you pass along the way; saluting no belief of doubt or appearance as you go forward into the expression of the Son of God. “Claim your rightful inheritance, and show by your magnificent example that the Son of God hath power on earth to forgive sins (to correct the ignorance of human belief). And then follow the magnificent works without number, until millions of blessings are pouring down about everybody. When I attempt to count my blessings, they are as numerous as the sands of the sea.
Your blessings, Son of the Living God, are so numerous that you have not time to contemplate the lack of anything, and, when you attempt to count the blessings, you find the lack has been swallowed up in abundance, and you are free, here and now, as the Son of the Living God. It is wonderful! It is wonderful! It is wonderful! “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good.” “Prove me and see if I will not open the windows in heaven and pour out a blessing you will not be able to receive.” Where is heaven? It is a state of consciousness. What is the ME? It is the I AM within you, and hence the windows that are to be opened are in your own consciousness, and the blessings that are to be poured out are the ideas which will pour out through your own mind into the manifest world of expression. It is wonderful. Millions and millions of blessings are yours. Do You hear, Son of God?
Stop this useless trying to seek Me after the loaves and fishes, and find ME as the pure substance of Spirit, and you will hear the joyous command, “Heretofore ye have asked for nothing; now ask, that your joy might be full.” Not nearly full, but full to overflowing! Do you begin to see what is meant by pressing your claim after having claimed your inheritance? You are one with the mighty sea of substance. As the wave is one with the ocean — never for one instant separated — and rises and loses itself in the ocean, so man finds that by “Losing his life he finds it, And by saving his life he loses it.”
When you lose your little personal sense of life, you will find the One Life — that which is Wonderful — the life that is won now — the heaven, hear and now. What have you to worry about, beloved? A new day, a new start, a new idea. No matter where this finds you — no matter into what depths you have fallen nor to what dizzy heights you have climbed — you have the wonderful chance of finding the glorious true Self within, and claiming your rights and pressing your claim as the Son of the Living God. Just imagine what this means. It means that their is no personal effort to do and to be. It means that the Father within is responsible, and it means that the I AM goes before your John Smith and makes the way clear and perfect. Do you see why you suddenly awaken to the realities of being, and begin to take your good out of the universe? I AM here, there, and everywhere.
The power in the wave is not separated from the ocean, but moves through the wave, an impersonal power; so the power in you is not a personal possession of health, happiness, or prosperity, but is an impersonal power which is merely pouring itself out into expression through the visible means supplied. Do you see, then, how all men (Sons of God) are equal? We have been hypnotized to the belief that we were a body, with a little health or power shut up within; with a little capacity to earn money; with a little wit to psychologize people out of money or things. And now we are awake to the fact that the power is pouring through us, never the same and always the same. As we go toward the fountain at the distance, we have not seen the same picture two minutes in succession; the water has been changing constantly, yet has held the same form; and so it is with the Spirit. It is a constant change of changeless power coming into manifestation. You are the Son of God, and the Great Power is here and there and everywhere. If you go into the desert, you have but to recognize this to find it blossoming as a rose. I AM here, there, and everywhere. It is wonderful — it is truly wonderful.
Blessings, blessings, blessings.
Do you see, beloved, the gift — complete wholeness? For this Is (right here and now) Life Eternal, that they might know Me. To know the ME — the I AM and to identify yourself with this, is to experience the Life Eternal which needs nothing. Can you conceive of Spirit being burned, drowned, killed, aided or assisted in any way by matter? To know yourself as the Son is to experience the freedom of the Son of God — to experience the power of decreeing a thing and seeing it come to pass. The recognition — re-cognition — cognizing again that which has always been true — the divine remembrance of your rightful heritage, is what will restore to you the lost substance of life, is what will bring to you the robe, the ring, and the fatted calf.
To him that hath shall be given, and from him that hath not shall be taken away. You have in manifestation exactly what you have in consciousness — good, bad, or indifferent. Why waste any further time trying to change the outside condition, when it is held in manifestation by the inner state of consciousness? To him that hath shall be given — because he will take, be it a good, bad, or indifferent manifestation. A man with a consciousness full of troubles always gets more troubles, and he finds them everywhere. It is what he finds to be true, and so he must find it in manifestation. No wonder the prophet asked, “What have you in your house?” What have you in your house, your consciousness? You have just what you conceive the Father-within to be, and you cannot increase this until you begin to recognize the nature of the pure substance of Spirit from which all things come into manifestation. Until you recognize the true Self, and stop trying to doctor up an old body or condition, you cannot know the glory of the Son of God. You are not an old creature patched up. You are a new creature in Christ Jesus. You are a new, perfect manifestation; to recognize this is to claim your rights and press your claim by the serene power of the Almighty.
Every perfect gift cometh down from the Father of Light, with Whom there is no change, neither shadow of turning. Where is the Father? How long will you look for Him in some far-off locality? How long will you seek among the husks for the substance of life? Every gift that is to come to you as John Smith will proceed out of the center of the I AM consciousness within yourself. Behold, I AM he that should come. I AM that I AM has sent me into expression. It is wonderful, it is wonderful. Blessings, blessings, blessings. I am the Son of the Living God. Claim your rights, and press your claim. Son of the Living God, I salute you! Arise! Leave your human reasoning and go unto your Father-within. Let the filthy be filthy still. Let all those who wish to sell the Word of God continue to do so. Let those who what to argue continue their arguments. Let those judges and spiritual busybodies cast their stones. Go thy way; it is well with thee. The new secret has been revealed to you; do you hear? Peace be unto you. It is well. Now and always. Claim your inheritance. It is well with you. Now and always. Son of the Living God, arise and go thy way into expression. Now is the time. Now is the Day of Salvation. Now are we the Sons of God. Now are millions of blessings yours. Be still. Be still. Be still. It is wonderful. It is wonderful!
It is wonderful! Blessings, blessings, blessings.
YOUR HERITAGE
“IT IS A glorious privilege to know the Truth, and free yourself from all the infirmities of the human mind. When you begin to realize the great significance of the statement, that God condescended to put on a body in the likeness of you, you will begin the process at once of putting on immortality. Spirit, Mind, is perfect, with or without a body, but the body manifestation which you have brought into being has been made imperfect through ages of acceptance of evil as real. Coming to this conscious realization, you will see that the Impersonal Life, or the Spiritual Life, of which you heretofore thought you were a part, is in reality You. You, therefore, thought you were a part, or particle, of yourself, instead of recognizing your Wholeness, your Oneness. When you have recognized this dynamic fact, you will not have to look to the right or the left, you will not have to look up or down, for you will have come to the consciousness that these things which you have so long thought were Spiritual and Immaterial, are material and of the flesh.”
We are beginning to see that the Risen Lord is our Heritage (the body, not made by hands, and eternal in the Heavens – consciousness). “Be whole” is merely stating the Heritage of every manifestation. It is up to Man, travailing in the beliefs of evil, from which he is trying desperately to escape, to HEAR the voice, and accept his God-given Heritage. In an instant he leaps from the embodiment of disease and infirmities into the glorious manifestation of the Son of God – just as the cripple, at the temple gate, leaped from his life-time of belief into a glorious, radiant, singing being, instantly equipped with all those things he would never posses. It is Wonderful!
Be still; let the idea expand in you. It is the Resurrected Christ that is your Heritage. “You are on this side of the cross” (of persecutions and evil) the moment you recognize the fact that that which you thought Spiritual and Immaterial is actually tangible and real; at that moment you leap out of the straight-jacket of beliefs – the prison cell that you have built up about yourself. We are in the NEW DAY, the Day of conscious recognition. It is a day of something more than talking about the Truth; it is the DAY of the TRUTH made manifest. “The word made flesh” – the day when men shall “see – and believe” without having a sign. They shall see the Invisible-visible Reality of LIFE, and take their blessing which has been so long waiting for them. It is Wonderful! Wonderful! Can you, who are reading this very line, experience the feeling of the cripple at the temple gate – leaping out of his beliefs, very much as a child would leap out of his bed if he thought Father Christmas were in the drawing-room filling his stocking with toys! It is Wonderful, and it is near unto you. It is nearer than this book which you are holding, for it is actually within you at this very instant. Yea. that power to leap out of all the evils that you have hoarded together for many lifetimes. It is Wonderful!
“When you have lifted your mind to God, you will realize the Truth concerning yourself and others; you will know that you have nowhere to go but back to God, from whence you came.”
You will realize that all this roaming around looking for God, will cease, and that you are returning to the “Father’s house,” consciousness. No matter where you are journeying in the human sense of the word, you are in reality just going back to God, from whence you came. It is Wonderful! No matter what you are doing, you are doing it all to the glory of God. Do you see what an overwhelming Joy of Life comes to you? As soon as this is recognized, then all the mourning is turned into joy, and the tears are wiped away from your eyes; you are leaping out of your old beliefs, and praising God from whence you came. All the old, worn-out beliefs that you have been holding for years fall by the way; you are one with this great sea of substance – you are it; and you do not have to formulate a plan to accomplish that which has already been accomplished. It Is So and So It Is.
All the old ideas of self-aggrandizement die on the threshold of this New Day: all the old ideas of making yourself a leader, or a teacher, or anything but an unconscious revelator of the Truth. You are fast coming to the point where this takes place automatically. “Awake thou that sleepest” – God is HERE the moment you recognize it, and the moment you recognize that you, being one with this Power, are the Power in essence, then you begin to see all the promises of the Bible as statements of Truth which are inescapable. Jesus said of this Power, “Ye shall say to yon sycamine tree, Be ye plucked up by the root and cast into the uttermost parts of the sea, and it shall be so,” giving you an illustration which is in every way entirely outside of the human beliefs. In the first place, it is almost impossible to “pluck” up a fully matured tree by the root – it entails endless labor and struggle, and there is no means whereby it can successfully be “cast,” as though a giant were throwing it into the uttermost parts of the sea. This wonderful illustration of the Power, so beautifully stated, is not given for the purpose of creating magicians, but is given to show how utterly hopeless it is to imagine that you can limit the action of this Power to the human concept of God.
The illustration is given to show you that the ways and means of Spirit used in this picture are beyond man’s control, and almost beyond human imagination. It is Wonderful! Do you see, then, how it is that “Sycamine tree” of belief, which you think so real and hopeless in your life, can by this “way that ye know not of” be removed, and cast into the uttermost part of the sea of oblivion? It is Wonderful! And Jesus said this. Do you hear? It may sound foolish in a way – why would anyone want to pluck up a tree by the root? – but it is glorious for what it conveys. It is thrilling when we think of it all – the extent of this Power – yea, the heights and depths and majesty of this glorious Heritage. Who can know it through the human reasoning? It is Wonderful! Wonderful! Wonderful! Nothing – no, not anything is impossible to God, with whom you are one. Be still.
Going back to first causes, we find: “Mind is perfect with or without a body” – God in All. His perfection is eternal, whether unexpressed or expressed in the physical body. We have a basic something to start with. The only inharmony or discord of the universe is expressed in man, and this is wholly a matter of his belief, as is proven over and over again. One tribe believes certain laws are true and sees evil in many thing which another race uses to its advantage, and so it is. “When we take words [you are the word] and return unto Jehovah,” we take this misunderstood manifestation back to the original source of Perfection, and the moment we glimpse the “Perfect vision that is shown to us” – the moment we recognize the Changelessness of God, Here, There, and Everywhere – that moment does the body begin its resurrection. It is Wonderful! It does not make any difference how far it gas gone astray, and how much it mat be covered with the mud of beliefs – all this shall fall from it, and the body of perfection be revealed. It is Wonderful! Wonderful! Wonderful! “Mind is perfect, with or without a body” – do you begin to see that we have the external pattern to return to? The difficulty has been that, instead of returning to the original “PATTERN,” we have copied other people’s idea of this, and have taken on their false concept of it. At one time we accepted the idea that we were worms of the dust and miserable sinners. This was the idea of a man sifted through all his mistakes and beliefs. We did not “take words and return to Jehovah”; we just took the copy of a copy of a copy a thousand times removed from its original, and each time repeated it with more and more defects added by each copier. We are through with this – we are returning to Jehovah with the Word which has been so badly expressed by us, and are regaining the original concept for ourselves direct.
The thing that you accept as real and true about God is the thing that is possible to bring into expression in your life. That is why we turn away from the man whose breath is in his nostrils – who is perpetually inventing some new way, or means, of making things happen – and return to the Jehovah within, and there find that perfect plan and design laid out for us. It is Wonderful! Wonderful! Wonderful! Aren’t you glad?
“To be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord” does not mean a state of dreaming or unconsciousness; it means that the body becomes the willing servant of the Lord, and functions perfectly, and expresses the Will of the Lord. It is Wonderful! You contemplate this Presence, and you manifest it automatically in your body and in your affairs. “Deny thyself and follow ME” has been thought to be almost impossible to most people, but when you find out that what you are to deny is the seeming reality of any power which is opposed to God, and which has for its basic principle, “When I would do good, evil is present with me,” you are merely denying reality to the beliefs that have so long bound you; denying them by following after the Christ – by following after ME.
What a WORD you have with you, under any circumstance, or condition, or belief.
“Greater is HE that is in you, than he that is in the world.”
We are consistent in or failure to RECOGNIZE the Presence of the Word. We attack Fear, only to find that it increases with every attack. Perhaps we are able to put on a brave front for the moment, but underneath is the great ever-increasing Volcano of Fear. We attack sickness, and may be able to smear over the surface with a smile, but underneath we know that it is increasing at an alarming speed, and so we say words, words, words of, and about, the WORD. We are not yet fully aware of the fact that we (yes, you and I), have this identical Word in our mouths. We have the WORD, which, when spoken, would instantly prove the above statement: “Greater is HE that is in you, than he that is in the world.” It is the Mind of God, with all its Power, pitted against the Goliath of human belief, which has grown into unusual proportions.
Little by little we are taking the absolute stand that there is such a thing as a PRESENCE. Yes, I know we have always said so with lips – but when we come to recognize this as absolutely true, we will not hesitate to “speak the WORD that is in thy mouth,” and see results forewith, backed up by the knowledge that this Word, which is so nigh unto thee, is more powerful than any collection of belief-words that might be set against it. The testimony of the human mind will crumple up and fall into dust, just as the walls of Jericho fell into dust, when the Word was finally spoken. It is Wonderful!
Be not discouraged, for finally we shall come to the place where we will speak the WORD, and not speak of, and about, it, and we shall say “thus and so” to the soldiers of belief and they will do our bidding. It is so written: “They that be with us are more than they that be with them” – if you want to sum it up in the terms of Power. “Nothing can stand against the word of God,” and that is the Word that is nigh unto thee, even in thy mouth. It is Wonderful!
This is the Day of Joy, you are the child of Joy, and we are experiencing this JOY right NOW, because we are discovering this Power within and without, and the means of expressing it. Life is not a battleground, and the reason of God is not to perpetually set up a warfare against a supposed power. We are given this power to prove the Kingdom of Heaven as Here and Now. We are given this Power so that the Perfect Revelation of Heaven on earth can be made manifest. We are given this Power, so that the overflowing Joy of Life will never run dry. We are given this Power so that we will experience the Peace that passeth all understanding. We are arranging a new set of values. We are looking into this glorious subject so that we can see the Revelation and Manifestation of the Lord of Lords and Host of Hosts, and so that we can experience in our own lives the actual Presence. It is Wonderful!
“Awake, thou that sleepest.” “Enter into thy Heritage.” Enter into the courts of the Lord with praise and thanksgiving. Do you hear? It is Wonderful! Wonderful! Wonderful! The New Day, the NEW NOW, the NEW consciousness of the Word that is nigh unto thee. You are filled with joy.
YOUR PROBLEM
I KNOW not what your individual problem may be, but just the same I bring you the glorious message that YOU CAN change your present condition; YOU CAN change sickness to health; YOU CAN change poverty into wealth; YOU CAN be that which you desire to be. Further I say to you that the castle of your dreams CAN BE ATTAINED here and now by simply gathering up the loose ends of your power and centralizing your energy and force.
Of course there are different kinds of thinking and so there are different stages, degrees and kinds of life. When a man stops thinking he is dead. Is this not so? Even a lunatic thinks, though he scatters his thought over a great field, taking on the thought of everything that passes by. Many people scatter thought and are in a constant state of confusion. Such people are like the chameleon placed on a highly colored oriental rug—he changes so rapidly that he represents no one color but is in a constant state of change. Nothing definite in the way of color.
The subject which we are going to take up is so simple that it seems difficult-but since you are seeker of light, let us examine into it with unprejudiced mind and try it and see if it is not the Truth.
Everybody realizes thought is the dynamic force of the universe. Without thought where would we be. Take your own home for instance what would happen if thought properly directed were not in use. Do you believe in thought and its affect on your life and body? Go into a church where it is quiet and see if the quiet thought of reverence does not immediately take possession of you. Go into a theatre where thousands of people are laughing and cheering and try to weep. Go into an orphan’s home and look into the wistful eyes of half a dozen children and try to keep the love thought out of your mind. Go into a penitentiary and see the long lines of men marching to and fro and then try to keep the thought of compassion down.
Your whole life is made up of thought—–what you think is what you are. “As a man thinketh in his heart so is he” has been “quoted over and over and the truth of it finally dawns on every one who is really thinking. Our lives are exactly what we think them to be; our position exactly what our thought has made it; your health exactly what you have held in mind regarding your bodies and other people’s bodies.
“Nothing is either good or bad but thinking made it so” might well be rendered. There is nothing EITHER good or bad that is not made by thinking. There is no limit to what you can do when you get hold of the idea of right thinking. There are no walls which will not crumble before the right understanding of the power of thought. There is no mountain which will not be removed and cast into the uttermost parts of the sea if you handle your thought correctly. And again I repeat that the process of thinking rightly is so simple that it seems difficult.
Everybody is seeking the “Kingdom of Heaven” some of us are looking one place and some another, but all, even the grossest materialist is seeking this state of happiness which he thinks of in terms of heaven. The great mistake which has always been made, and is largely made today is that we seek this Kingdom in some locality, generally quite remote to our present place, instead of seeking it in the only possible place it can be found—-i. e. “WITHIN YOU.” Now heed this-the Kingdom of your desires fulfilled, lies WITHIN YOU.
The world or heaven within is lying there waiting the coming of the Master-you are the Master and we are going to go hand in hand into the Kingdom of your most cherished desire and find there that which. will make you happy, healthy, prosperous.
Keep in mind that there is no mystery to this work, no hard concentration, no strained positions to be held or forced thoughts, but a natural unfolding as beautifully easy as the unfolding of a rose in June. That which you see about you, after all, is the result of that which was at one time hidden in the inner world. Like the seed which was dropped into the earth, when it busted through the darkness or the invisible it came out into the objective world and was seen. So with these wonderful flowers of your desire—when they receive the touch of Life which your thinking is presently going to give them you will soon see them blooming everywhere. For as we have already said, thought is life. Up to this time the Kingdom of your life has been full of seeds but no urge or life was felt in them so they remained in the darkness of the, invisible. visible.
The secret of Live thinking is what we are going to learn. All about you is the great Mind of God. The Mind, out of which all things were brought forth and from which all things will eventually be brought forth, for it is the formless substance of things hoped for. Now Thought is the creative force which acts on this formless substance and shapes it into that which it desires. Thought makes the mould into which this substance is poured before it is made manifest in the flesh.
Before an architect can build a house he first conceives it in his mind as complete and perfect-lie works out the details of every little part and then he sets it down on paper and as he does this he keeps on reaching further until the mental mould that he made and filled full of the formless substance of Mind finally becomes the picture which he first held in mind.
There is nothing unnatural about this. Take it in your own life for instance, what do you do? Are you a business man or woman? Do you want to write a letter? Whether you know it or not you have the picture of it formulated in your mind and then you go to work and finally the thing which was just a thought in the beginning finally becomes a piece of paper with a message written on it. You made the mould and poured it full and finally you have the result. Perhaps you are a house-wife-and instead of a letter you think of a pie. Perhaps you are a Minister and you think of a Sermon, but no matter what line you follow, no matter what your station in life the Law works just the same.
That is reasonable you say, and the next step is too.—When we come to the point that we can recognizes that Thought is the creator, then we come, to the- matter of quality. What is the quality of your thinking. Perhaps you say “Well I never did think of this sickness and I have it-or I never did think of this poverty and I have it,” etc.
Let me recall to your mind the story of the cobbler who sat working at his little bench when a camel looked in at the window. The Cobbler worked on and so the camel put his nose in and not receiving any resistance he pushed his head in and then his neck and then his hump and then his whole body sprawled into the room crowded the cobbler into the corner so tightly that lie could not do his ‘work. “How did you get here, I never invited you in,” and when he looked at the small open window he almost knew it; was impossible for such a large animal to get through such a small opening. But since the camel stood against the closed door it was impossible for him to get out any other way than the way he had come in so then the work began in earnest.
Thought is something that needs attention. We must watch it and see that the quality is right. If we want camels of sickness, unhappiness and poverty to crowd us out of our birthright, then all we have to do is to leave the window open and unguarded and presently we will be crowded over into the narrow corner of our already too narrow existence. All the light will be shut off and the air will become foul with these hateful animals which have crept in at unguarded moments.
Now the matter of guarding your thought need not alarm you-it is not nearly so stupendous a job as it looks, it is merely refusing to accept the destructive thoughts that come to us.
We have got to learn now to judge not from appearances, but to judge righteous judgment. No matter what the seeming conditions of a thing may be-we have enlisted in the army of right-thinking people and we are going to change the face of the thing and see the new fine thought manifested right before our eyes.
Mind is like a great storage plant with millions of volts of static electricity waiting for an outlet. Thought is the dynamic force which connects up with this great storage house and the result is seen in what we create or what the thought pattern was that was taken to the power house. Now Mind is always and eternally good and when it is applied properly will accomplish undreamed of wonders, but we must not attempt to use this great force wrongly and expect good results. If an electric wire is left to lie on the ground and a child steps on it and is killed, you could not say that electricity was bad, for you know that same force that seemed to do the damage to the child could have been applied to carry a message thousands of miles or could have run a street car or a thousand and one other things. Look then to the quality of your thinking.
I do not have to bring to your mind the various proofs of the power of thought.
All of us have experiences, some of the optical illusions and the sense illusions which are so common they hardly need mentioning. What boy has joined a secret order or fraternity who has not been burned with an ice cold poker or felt himself bleeding to death by a small stream of lukewarm water being poured over his arm. Inversely we all know of instances where thought has carried people far into the most difficult feats. Mothers have been able to do remarkable things for their children in , time of peril. Men in battle have been- swept on to victory; everything is the result of thought. Thought is all there is to existence, so now let us begin with an eliminating process.
If we want wealth we are going to begin to eliminate the poverty idea. If we want health we are going to begin to eliminate the sick thought; if we want happiness, we are going to eliminate the unhappy thought, etc.
How shall we do this?
Listen: All that you desire, the kingdom of Heaven, lies within. Then the way to get what we want is to go within and bring it out.
“Not so easy,” you say?
“Perfectly easy,” I reply to you.
“Line upon line, precept upon precept,” etc.
Today we are going to begin the journey back into the kingdom and go just as fast as we can find the way.
Let us take an easy position, somewhere in a place as quiet as is possible and then relax. Relax and let the chair hold you up and get perfectly easy physically. Now close your eyes and rest for a moment. Think of yourself not as a body, not as a person but as the same care-free individual you are when you dream at night. Remember how easy it is for you to pass from one place to another in your dream that is because you don’t have to bother with the material body and a lot of other paraphernalia, which we do when waking. Now then you can take this Individuality into the innermost recesses of your mind, by declaring “I Am One with the Father within.” This was what Jesus did. He knew that the “Father within” was Right thinking which enabled him to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. If you are one with the Father within you are ‘one with Goodness, with happiness with health with wealth.
You are one with the great Powerhouse in which is stored infinite power to accomplish that which you wish right here and now and the way is not difficult and hard to find.
YOUR TALENT
Did you know that you had a special something, a special, peculiar little something that made you different from the whole world? Of course you did; but you never dreamed that it would enable you to step out of the ugly grey mass of routine living and give you a little place all of your own. No, I don’t mean that it would make a queen or a mighty monarch of you, but it will make you infinitely greater; and this little something that lies wrapped in the napkin of fear, and which you only visit in the very secret closet of your own imagination, is your Talent.
You’ve been so used to fading out of sight and being a member of those who accept all things, that you never even made an effort to see what you would really be like if you “cut loose” once and let this little seed in you take root and flower.
In your heart of hearts is written your name – – a name which is peculiar to you and which no other idea has – – and it is this name, this something, which is to be brought out, to be made great.
Mariah was from far off Russia. She worked hard in the fields with her sisters and brothers, but something kept whispering to her. Something within stirred – – it was talent which was working itself out of the napkin. It pointed the way out across the land, far across the seas into a strange place that she knew not of; but a fearlessness led her on, and every day the way was made clearer, until at last she found herself in her place – – a place which was waiting for her in a land where few spoke her tongue; but that place was hers and the Talent led her to it and it was a place of growth and success, of happiness and harmony.
So within you the Talent keeps whispering and trying to edge its way out of the napkin of your fear, but you keep wrapping it tighter with new illusions and will not let it come to the light. You are afraid to do what it bids you do. “What would people say.” You are overcome with the fear that other people would say things. They intimidate you into a state of “greyness” you don’t dare to come out and be yourself. You coward! – – you are afraid to live your life – – the life you cherish above all things. You are scared to become great because it means work and it means hewing to the line and letting the world take care of itself. Let them talk – – their gossiping and sneers will soon be turned into hero worship. They are the “grey mass” to which you belonged and they change with the wind. Don’t mind them when they say, “You cannot,” or “Aren’t you afraid to do that?” These very voices will be saying, “I always knew that you would make a go of it.”
Here’s what you need: It’s more communion with God. Take Him at His word and trust Him to the last letter of His promises. He wants to bless you – to manifest Himself through you, to make your talent shine forth – – and He’s the only partner you need in life’s business. You need Him and you need His instructions. “Get wisdom.” Wisdom comes from cutting away from the worldly things and turning your attention to Love – – childlike (not childish) and simple.
Your place is waiting for you – – it is the place of your desires, if your desires are good – – it is beckoning you, and God is willing to lead you there and to call you by the secret name which is written in the tablet of your heart.
Can’t you just let go? Can’t you just break away from all the old things and plunge forth guided by this Talent – – by this name – – and live your own life? By so doing you will be losing your material sense of life, and find that which is real, that which is eternal and lasting. When the material napkin which is holding your Talent from the light is taken away, then you are wrapped in the substance of Mind, which is infinite and in which you can go on unfolding, growing grander, nobler and lovelier each succeeding year.
YOUR UNIVERSE
‘This is my Universe,’ said the ancient Greek, and then inscribed over the portal of his temple ‘Know thyself.’ He who knows himself rightly knows God. Can there be more than God in a universe of God? Can there be God and anything else if God fills all space eternally and is changeless? He who knows himself, knows God, for God is the only Self of the universe. As man comes to understand this, it becomes clear to him that this is indeed his universe.
The old puzzle of where to hide the divinity of man was finally solved by placing it within himself. Man has looked for it everywhere, but within himself; hence it has proved a safe hiding-place. However, he is awakening to the Truth of Being, and is coming to understand that his attitude towards life determines what life will be to him.
A sculptor and a stone-mason see something entirely different in the same piece of stone; again, two sculptors or two stone-masons looking at the same stone may see entirely different possibilities in it . Everything in the universe, in one sense of the word is plastic to the consciousness which fashions it, according to the attitude taken towards it; and yet everything is changeless and eternal in a universe ruled by a changeless Power.
‘What is one man’s meat is another man’s poison’ indicates that it is purely a matter of attitude. The same thing that sustains one may kill another, according to the attitude taken towards it. The thing does not change that kills or sustains; it is merely the attitude that is different. Morphine does not quiet everyone, but has the reverse effect on some people. What cures one man does not cure another, or all disease would have long ago been wiped out by the use of medicine.
The man whom you call a benefactor another may call a devil; the man remains the same–the difference is in the attitude towards him which causes him to seem to react in accordance with your belief .
A lover sees beauty where you may see homeliness. The story of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ fully illustrates what a change of attitude does towards life. It is a story of your own life. You are always tied up to a beast (problem) before you know that it only awaits the recognition of its better self to change into a Prince Charming. When you can hold to the eternal facts of Being in spite of appearances, you will see the transformation take place before your very eyes–in the place where you saw lack you will see plenty; in the place of in harmony, harmony; in the place of sickness, health. Whatever you love you glorify. You have for ages been seeking the universal panacea.
‘Awake thou that sleepeth.’ ‘Love never faileth.’ Love is God, and a quality of God at the same time. It is love which transforms everything. Love is knowledge of life. Belief changes constantly , sentiment changes, and emotions come and go; but ‘love never faileth,’ and never changeth.
Love is the understanding of the isness of things. It is a conscious capacity to ‘see God in temples not made with hands and eternal m the heavens.’ You and our neighbors are these temples ‘not made with hands.’ ‘The Lord in the midst of thee is strong and mighty’ is a statement of a fact. When you come to understand this as a fact you will see God in ever man. Yes, you will see him in everything, even in the thing called space, since he is everywhere, eternally present. Then it naturally follows that the higher your concept of him, the higher and finer your universe and ideas will be.
Your body and universe are only the out picturing of what you conceive yourself to be. It is the shadow of your soul; a screen upon which are thrown all the attitudes you hold toward yourself and our universe.
The moment you become conscious of a thing as real and eternal, that thing comes into visibility in the realm of the manifest. The moment you release a thing in consciousness, it is released from the visible world.
‘Loose him and let him go’ is a command to every man who is holding a worry attitude toward his temple and his universe. Again the ‘letting’ comes into play. You will finally know that only what you ‘let’ can actually happen.
You can see the invisible become visible before your very eyes by the ‘letting’ process. You have only to ‘let’ a smile loose in your universe to see it caught up and reflected by everyone who comes in contact with it. Everybody understands the language of a smile; it is universal. Drummond says, ‘We do not know what ripples of healing are set in motion when we smile on one another.’
A smile is a recognition of something higher and finer than most of us imagine. A second before you smile every face may be frowning and serious, but in the twinkling of an eye you see your thought crystallized into realization–the inward state of consciousness becomes the manifest. ‘That which is told in secret shall be called from the housetop.’ This proves to you that this is your universe and that it is affected–yes, controlled–by your attitude towards it. Note the difference between a smile and a grin. It is the difference between the real and the unreal; a grin rarely gets much response, for it is forced and hard to sustain. A grinning face may be hideous and ugly but a smiling face always has charm.
When you come to understand the ‘letting’ in contradistinction to the ‘making’ you begin to appreciate God’s manner of working. There is always a joy in ‘letting.’ If those working in the Truth would realize this, they would delete from their consciousness the very serious attitude towards life and cease struggling. No matter how you try, you are not going to force God either to do your bidding or your begging. He cannot do more than he has already done, which is all.
You can, however, recognize this fact, and ‘ let’ it into expression. Why will the self styled healer insist that God does the work, and at the same time become so concerned about the outcome of it ?
The moment he recognizes the fact that life is spiritual he has brought forth the fruits of Spirit, and has dropped off the idea of personal responsibility. He who calls himself a healer and then uses what is known as the ‘tongs and hammer method’ (the beating and fighting to make God answer his prayer), will find that he has plenty of work to do with his ‘tongs and hammer,’ and that for every bit of effort he has put forth he has only succeeded in making the condition worse. Putting forth great effort is not knowing the Truth, but foreshadows a great doubt that God is able to fulfil his promises. ‘If we will be still and know,’ finally we shall hear some of the statements of Truth and abide in peace.
Who that has heard the Truth can again designate anyone as ‘my patient.‘ What is this silly ownership of another ? Who are you that you should stamp the branding-iron of possession on another? All this leads to the amusing situation of the circumstance man using methods and means to hold his patients. Imagine what a rich harvest this kind of thought is going to bring when it is time for that person to reap.
In the same way, mysticism is introduced into the teachings by ‘ the holier than thou’ attitude of many healers. Trying to make others do your bidding is only saying to yourself that you will make God do your bidding. Woe unto that one who tries to offend the law in this manner. The wrath of God, of his own making, shall grind him to powder. He who through ignorance or wilfulness tries to ‘steady the ark of another’ will find his power ‘withered away.’ Look well to this meddlesome state of mind, and let thy brother alone. Speak the word of Truth, but do not try domination. The thing you dominate in one instance will one day dominate you with accelerated force though you may flourish as a ‘ green bay‘ for a while–all of which brings you to understand that the ‘wrath of God’ is the wrath of your own making. When you instil the doctrine of fear in another you are only instilling it into your own self, and it shall return to you ‘pressed down and running over.’
You are not responsible for the healing of another. You are asked to make a statement of fact to him, to call to his remembrance the Eternal Facts of Being, not to work some magic trick over him.
‘I will’ is the answer of Spirit to every prayer that is made in true understanding, and it follows ‘according to your faith be it unto you,’ and ‘the servant is healed in the selfsame hour ‘ if he has had the faith to accept the ‘it-is-done’ state of mind.
You are joyously abandoned into life. This is God’s universe and he can, and does run it perfectly. You are a point in consciousness. Why not let this power into expression, instead of trying to distort it to personal ends? Verily it shall be well with thee if God rules in your universe, consciously. ‘Be still and know.” Contemplate the glory of it all; rest in peace; it is well with thee.
Prayer is not a means of changing the universe, but a way of getting into line with the Power, ‘which to know aright is Life’ Eternal.’ You have the infinite capacity to become one with this power, and then you shall know what it is to be in a majority. Becoming one with the Power is to feel the divine urge of life, expressing itself through everything and every circumstance. Why should you worry ? Nothing matters. Give up the foolish idea of trying to change God or his universe to suit your personal demands, and you will find that the universe, for you, is suddenly changed from hell to heaven. ‘ Not my will (personal sense) but thine be done’ is not submission to blind fate, but conscious activity into life, because you are guided eternally by the voice of Truth, which says ‘this is the way, walk thou in it.’
Give up striving for freedom and you shall know the joyous abandon of life. Does a lily struggle into expression? Have you considered the lily ? If God cannot do it, it cannot be done, so why not rest the case with him, since he has invited you to lean on him and to take the burden of his glorious understanding upon yourself the understanding that, being spiritual, you are free from the hamperings of material beliefs. God has already done everything that needs to be done. ‘Be still, be still, be still.’
Before you ask the answer is, and while you are yet lisping the words it is given unto you. This is what comes of ‘letting’ God express through you, in his glorious way, instead of trying to force him to do your bidding. Oh, the wonder of it, the rest and peace of it all, when you take up your place in the body of Christ, ‘for we are all members of the one body;’ and one member is as important as another. Through all parts of this grand body flows a stream of God ideas, sustaining everything in perfect peace and joy.
And so you are joyously abandoned into life, for now you know. You are free. Nothing matters. You have recognized the real, and ‘ the lines have fallen to you in pleasant places.’ Only beliefs and conditions will change, because they are but the objectified thought pictures that change and disintegrate before your very eyes.
Take away your judgment from appearances because in them you are always deceived. When you look at the outside of an egg nothing seems to be happening for weeks, but a new life is forming on the inside. Something is happening from the moment the warmth of the mother love touches the egg; this is not visible to the appearance world, but the mother love feels it is so. So it is with your problem–every time you meditate upon the isness of your Perfect Self something tremendously interesting is taking place on the inside, though the appearance may not indicate it on the outside. One day the shell cracks, and out comes the new idea, perfect and glorious. ‘For unto us a child is born and his name shall be called Wonderful, the Mighty, the Everlasting,’ and this child is born in the stable of your heart. Instantly this news is broadcast the Herod idea of the circumstance mind wishes to kill the newborn child.
‘Keep silent before me–see that you tell no man.
‘What matter though the world, judging from appearance, says nothing is happening. You know that it is, and so you rest in peace; then one day ‘it is called from the house tops’ and you follow the command, ‘Launch out into the deep waters’ of a new activity. The larger fish are in the deep waters, but until you are of ‘the seeing eye’ and ‘hearing ear’ you are not able ‘to launch out.’
Away with all the foolish wondering whether this or that person will like or dislike what you are doing! Away with all the self-appointed keepers of the Truth who screech out that you are off the track or are following a blind path! You are never in danger of going far afield if you follow Christ. Remember that he is for all men, in all climes and under all conditions. The Truth is the thing which is good for everybody at all times.
‘Hold fast to that which is good.’ ‘Go not back again to your former bondage’ once you have tasted the freedom of a dweller in the Finished Kingdom. This isness is the kingdom that Jesus came offering to the world, and so few heard the word with the hearing ear; yet what countless thousands are following after the dead letter. ‘My way is the only way,’ they say, and they condemn you if you do not follow their way.
What of Christ’s way? ‘He that has ears to hear, let him hear.’ Throw opinions to the wind, and do not listen to the arguments of personal sense or appearance.
Contemplate this Finished Mystery. ‘Be still and know.’ Rest in the ‘peace that passeth all understanding.’ Rest in Peace. It is well with thee.
Oh, glorious message! We start now with ‘It is done,’ because we recognize that everything must already be done in a Finished Kingdom, and certainly God said, ‘It is finished’ and ‘good’ and he rested. Why not rest awhile in this peace.
‘Tarry awhile in Jerusalem (peace).’
The End