What is it that restores the lost years of the locusts? I. What is it that resurrects our body, businesses, home, strength, health, and vitality? I. There is only one Divine Presence and Power and It is all embodied in that which secretly, and secretly is called I. The master had great difficulty in imparting this idea to the Hebrews who had observed ceremonies, rituals, and holy days, but who had been given little or no spiritual enlightenment. All the instructions had been in the realm of the mind, and the observance of outward rites, and that is not sufficient. Spiritual teaching must enter the heart. It must be in the soul. It must be felt, rather than reasoned or thought.
In an attempt to understand the mystery of God, to explain what can never be explained, and to comprehend what can never be comprehended, man has used words. But words can never explain God. There can never be a word that is God. Not even the word God is God, nor the words Mind, Soul, Spirit, or Truth, for all these are effects objective to the person voicing them. There are no synonyms for God in absolute truth. Those that we have used are only attributes descriptive of God. Soul is an attribute of the purity of God; Spirit describes God’s immateriality; love, mine, principle, and law are facets, of God’s being. But none of these is God. Regardless of what word we utter. Even the word God, there is an I that utters it and, an it to be altered.
The Kingdom of God is within our consciousness, and when we turn in meditation to this infinite Consciousness to let it flow, we will show forth. More of the Limitlessness, which we are and always have been, and next year a greater degree, and a year after, still a greater degree. In other words, we are expressing as much infinite Consciousness as we can at the moment comprehend. Let us begin with the realization that we are not form. We are consciousness. By our devotions to meditation, we bring forth a greater degree and deeper awareness of God's consciousness. Consciousness forever express Itself as an individual form of intelligence.
Everything visible first had to have an invisible something to send it into form, and that invisible Something is consciousness, which sends Itself into expression as a seed, and all that comes forth from the seed. Were it not for Consciousness, there would be nothing expressed as form. Regardless of how beautiful a thing may seem to be, how wonderful, or how abundant, we must look behind it and realize that it could not exist but for the Consciousness that formed it. There is something about us greater than what we appear to be. Eventually, we will discover that that something is our consciousness.
To sow to the Spirit, does not mean that we have to avoid physical pleasure. It does not mean giving up our work, our profession, our home, or our family. It has nothing to do with what we do externally; It has to do with what is going on in our consciousness while our mind and body are performing their functions on the outer plane. What is going on in our consciousness determines whether we are sowing to the flesh, or whether we are sowing to the spirit, and whether we are setting in motion the karmic law of good order, comic law of evil. We do not always reap what we sow immediately or quickly. The mills of the gods grind slowly, yet they are exceeding fine. Sometimes a person may indeed live for many years in a measure of spiritual realization before the overcoming overturning comes, and He comes who's right it is. Then there are also those persons who indulge in every manner of evil and seem to be able to do it for a long period of years before their karma begins to operate.
With each meditation, there must be this surrender of ourselves to the Spirit within, together with a realization that God’s grace is our sufficiency and that we are in meditation for the express purpose of receiving the comfort of His Presence. The person who is one with God is merely the transparency through which God is living His life. His body is the temple of God, and his mind is the instrument of God, the mind which was also in Christ Jesus. That mind can be attained only in silence, not with words or with thoughts, although words and thoughts may be used as a preliminary step which we know as meditation, which plays a vitally important part in the development of our spiritual life. It is the meditation that makes teaching come alive because meditation is the connecting link between our outer life and our inner self.
The human race as we know it, is composed of men and women, living completely shut off from Divine Aid, Divine Substance, and Divine Providence. From the most ancient of times up to modern days, man has not only lived by the sweat of his brow but has engaged in conflict to gain his ends, whether in the case of individuals or companies under the name of competition or as a nation under the name of war. However, most human beings are born and brought up in ignorance of their true identity. In ignorance of that indwelling Something, and, uninstructed by the Divine Master. This is the human race as we know it. These are the people we read about in the newspapers, those in prison, in the prison of lack, sin, and disease. The prison of political slavery and Ignorance. These are unenlightened and earthbound. However, from the beginning of all revelation, it has been pointed out that this need not be. That anytime we can turn within and begin our accent out of the tomb of our darkness, out of the prison, and into the light. Out of ignorance, into understanding
If we are willfully disobedient to the laws of God, we must correct ourselves and bring ourselves into attunement, and alignment with His laws. In so doing, the finger of God will touch us to His will and His grace. We must learn to relax, and stop trying to bring God to our mind or body. In that moment we would find that God has always been there. God has made a covenant with his image and likeness. We cannot make God do our will. But that does not leave us hopeless. Instead, it gives us added courage and strength, because we know there is no way, to sway, influence, or persuade Him. When we learn that, we will realize that instead of releasing God, we have released ourselves from finite concepts of God. Also, from our ignorance of skeptical beliefs about prayer. And from the belief that we knew more than God and have more love than God.
Jesus was wise in the world's ways and heavenly wisdom. He advised his followers against attempting to help people when they wished no help. He said "When you come into the house, salute it. And if the house is worthy, let your peace come upon it: if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you." People do not always receive their message. When this happens, there should be no controversy, no argument, and no sense of disturbance. However, as we abide in the conviction of the ultimate acceptance of truth by all, we should let our peace return unto ourselves and go calmly on our way.
The Universe holds nothing against us. No matter how many mistakes we have made; we are still perfect beings within, and the within may become the without, if we will carefully train ourselves to listen to the inner voice of truth which speaks to us in our moments of quietness. There is nothing in the Universe that wishes evil to anyone. Indeed, it is only as we experience good that God is expressed through us. The more completely we realize good, happiness, and success, the more perfectly we express God, and the more of God we become, that is the more God becomes personified through us.
We must understand the law of creation. God is our consciousness and, therefore, it is our consciousness that is creating, feeding, nourishing, supporting, and maintaining our bodies in their health, harmony, and beauty at all times if we so desire. We must, however, consciously realize that we are being fed, maintained, and sustained from within. If we do this, it will be done unto us. We may be inclined to ask, “Is this important?” Yes, it is the most important part of our development. There is only one thing important in this world, and that is showing forth God as our life, as our substance, as our safety, our security, our immortality, our eternality, proving that God is the only law unto our being.
We cannot separate our life or our minds except in belief. And when we do that there is a funeral. But we bring about that funeral by accepting the world's belief in a separation between God and God's creation. Since God is the consciousness of us, and since that consciousness is unfolding and revealing itself as form which we call creation we cannot separate God from its creation. Nobody believes that we can separate God from the sun, moon, and stars. People only believe that we can separate God from our bodies. Please get over any such belief! Remember: Our bodies are the temple of the living God and we must treat them as if they were of God and let them show forth the glory that is God.
How often had Jesus healed the multitude? How often had he healed individuals? How little healing power any of those people manifested themselves? How great was His sorrow when He said Jerusalem, Jerusalem, I would love to tell you and show you, but you cannot accept it? The people were grateful for loaves and fish. But, Jesus was seeking thankfulness for a principle that he was showing forth and which they were unable to grasp. Three times or more, Jesus fed the multitudes. He fed four thousand, five thousand, seven thousand. Not only did he feed the multitudes, but he healed them and taught the truth to those who could hear. But after he had fed the multitudes on one side of the sea, he felt a heavy sense within himself that his message had not reached his people. He felt a sense of discouragement in the realization that they had failed to catch the vision.
We must keep our demonstration in the realm of Spirit. When we turn to Spirit for help, desire only spiritual good. We are living in a higher state of unfoldment than that of demonstrating things and persons. When we turn to God, let us pray for the things of God. Ninety percent of our failure to experience harmony is that we are turning to Spirit for material demonstration. We only have the right to turn to God for things of God, and then let God interpret those things in us. Let Christ interpret the things of God in terms of what appears to us as human needs.
There is only one way to find our heaven on earth and that is through inner contact with God. We should never undertake anything even a slight thing as going to the corner store without first making conscious contact with God. Nothing is ever what it appears to be in the human picture. We often think that we are doing something for a normal, natural, human reason and find that this was not at all the real purpose of what we did. We should know by now that as human beings, we are only a transparency for the Divine. Our purpose in studying spiritual wisdom is to find out, what the spiritual plan is, and what our path in it is.
We cannot organize Christ as a physical body, or we will set up one member against another. We will have the mind fighting with the flesh, and the flesh with the bones, and the bones with the blood. The Christ is a spiritual being, and until we can see ourselves as disembodied we will be fighting the warfare between the Spirit and the flesh. We will be trying to use God, the intangible Spirit, to patch up the organized mass of flesh called a physical body. It is impossible to have peace in a church organization or to have peace in a physical body. If we accept Christ in our consciousness, we must take the next step also and see that the embodiment or body of Christ is the temple not made with hands.
The Christ, this great truth, comes to our human awareness. It is said that Christ is born in the manger, but that manger is our human awareness. What happens, then, to our human awareness? It begins to be dispelled. It becomes volatilized. This Christ, this great truth of the infinite Presence and Power, comes to us while we are yet depending on man, whose breath is in his nostrils. It comes to us while we are still depending on human government and organization. It comes to us to some degree while we are depending on dollars and investment, and to some degree while we are yet depending on medicine. It comes to us and says: Entertain Me a little while, and watch these other things disappear. Then, soon you will begin to love Me for My own sake, and not for the loves and fishes.
The purpose of this message is to set us free through a spiritual awareness of our oneness with God. If we find our oneness with God, we will need no contact with man, whose breath is in his nostrils. This whole message is a statement, or restatement, of our oneness with God now – with or without material organization or human contacts. Think of Christ as a feeling or recognition of a Presence within our consciousness; It is something that transcends human experience, but at the same time, enriches human experience. Christ is a divine reality. It is the power or presence of God, infinite, complete, and whole. It is part of our consciousness. It may constitute the whole of our unfoldment. It is beyond description in human terms.
The mind that was in Christ Jesus is the mind of all people walking up and down the earth, but it is of no avail to them unless and until they consciously purge their thought or mind of the fear, hate, and love of error. Let us use the illustration of money. One way of purging ourselves, and thereby manifesting the mind that was in Christ Jesus, is to look at money – whether it be a quarter or a hundred dollars and ask ourselves What is it? Then we start with the understanding that as matter it is only a concept. At best, as a piece of matter, it is only a concept, and its value varies and changes. But, as a symbol of a spiritual idea, it represents exchange; it represents value. It may represent an avenue of gratitude. However, even in its spiritual significance, it is an effect. An effect of what? Of the Mind of God, divine Consciousness.
In man’s evolution, mankind was always brought to the point of self-choice and left alone to discover his true nature. If we are endowed with the attributes of self-choice and free will, mankind must be allowed to make this discovery on its own. Nothing is more apparent than man as he now appears, which is the result of evolution. However, to evolve, he had to have a Principle from which to unfold. Since man is intelligent, he must have been formed from an intelligent Cause. Consider any of Nature’s forces; they must have existed always, but so far as man is concerned, they exist to be used only after he has discovered them and learned how to make use of them.