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Healing by Myrtle Fillmore
T. DeCorte
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Jul 16, 2013
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Transcript of "Healing by Myrtle Fillmore"
1. HEALING Myrtle Fillmore
Myrtle Fillmore's Healing Letters This book is made up of extracts from the letters of Myrtle Page Fillmore, "mother of Unity," as she was lovingly called and as she was in its founding. By her mothering spirit of love and faith and service, in cooperation with her husband Charles Fillmore, she molded Unity and upheld it during the years of its growth. As the letters from which these extracts were taken blessed and lifted those to whom they were sent, it is hoped that they will do this for others as they go forth in printed form; that they will bless students everywhere and thus extend Myrtle Fillmore's ministry on this plane, as she is now extending it on that other plane to which she said she was called for another phase of Christ ministry. The preparation of these pages for your perusal has been a service of love undertaken in appreciation of a great soul. It has been like being again in her presence and receiving instruction and inspiration from the Christ Mind that spoke so freely through her; like receiving a benediction from her. May you, too, as you read these pages, receive from that Christ to whom she always pointed all who came to her, some of the fire of her inspiration, some of the steadfastness of her faith, some of the zeal she had for Truth, as well as the wisdom and understanding with which she handled all problems, the love she so freely bestowed on all; and may you, as you are lifted, use these Christ attributes as she used them: to inspire others and lift the race in its ongoing to glory. Frances W. Foulks
My Love to Thee Adapted from "The Rosary" By Myrtle Fillmore The hours I've spent with Thee, dear Lord, Are pearls of priceless worth to me. My soul, my being merge in sweet accord In love for Thee; in love for Thee. Each hour a pearl, each pearl a prayer, Binding Thy presence close to me; I only know that Thou art there, and I Am lost in Thee. Oh, glorious joys that thrill and bless! Oh, visions sweet of love divine! My soul its rapturous bliss can ill express That Thou art mine, O Lord! that Thou art mine.
Contents In Appreciation My Love to Thee Myrtle Fillmore ... 1 Jesus Christ ... 13 Prayer ... 17 Drawing On the Source ... 22 Going Into the Silence ... 27 Quickened By the Spirit ... 35 Understanding the Body ... 38 Day and Night Experience ... 42 No Incurable Disease ... 44 Permanent Prosperity ... 49 The Subconsciousness ... 56 Threefold Healing ... 62 Developing Our Faculties ... 68 Spiritual Control of the Body ... 74 The Way to Health ... 78 Helping Others ... 85 Concerning Age ... 91 Our Work ... 98 Our Methods ... 104 Transition ... 111 Maternity ... 116 To Truth Teachers ... 123 To Married People ...142
Myrtle Fillmore THE FOLLOWING EXTRACTS FROM HER LETTERS INTRODUCE MYRTLE PAGE FILLMORE TO YOU AS SHE KNEW HERSELF AND AS NO ONE ELSE COULD. You see, dear, we just feel rather modest—really we haven't much to say, as to when the work was started, and how it was done! We just received from the Father some ideas that proved wonderfully helpful in our own family; then we shared them with others, and they too were helped. Since those of like faith are drawn together, we soon found ourselves in a little society, which was formed for the study of Truth and the practice of its ideas. We grew. After a time it seemed that the other folks went their various ways, and only we were left to continue what we felt to be important enough to develop and to devote ourselves to. Unity School unfolded and continued to grow. We have never cared to interest folks in our own lives. It makes no difference to others what we have done, who we are. What is important is that we are doing what the Father has given us to do, according to our best light. And if we have something that others want or that will help them—spiritual ideas and their radiance—we are glad to share it. If others wish to receive, all right; if not, because of what they may //page 2 term our personal limitations, that is all right too. We are not trying to interest folks in the School, but in the ideas of the Christ Mind, which we feel to be the foundation of the work, and our standard of life. But, dear, I feel you are crowning me with an honor that belongs to the Holy Spirit—which is omnipresent, and which expresses in the loving desires of the hearts of all those who are endeavoring to manifest the Mother side of God! You call me the mother of Unity! Well, now, I know of nothing that would give me greater joy than to feel that God could work so perfectly through me as to bring forth a great ministry and a place of peace and goodwill and health such as this [Unity School] is. But in reality, I feel that I am only the soul who caught the first vision of this ministry, and who nurtured that vision until others came along to help in the establishment of it in the minds and hearts of our dear ones, and to help in the molding in substance the outer forms of this school and its work.
It is my great joy to perceive somewhat of the mother side of God—the divine love that never fails and that is equal to the drawing of souls to itself. It is my prayer to be able to radiate the qualities of this divine love to all. You too are the mother of Unity, because in your heart you have the same ideals, and the same great generous spirit, and the endless and tireless service, and the love that never fails! The mother //page 3 of Unity is the universal mother. How happy we are, to represent this mother! You may never have suspected it, but the Unity work is a dream that has been nurtured and built from the invisible to the concrete through love, devotion, and good, hard work. It may never have occurred to you that my husband and I have put ourselves into this thing which God has given us to do without personal returns beyond our "daily bread" and clothing. I work here every day, and receive a salary, just as several hundred other workers do. I think a very capable businessman or woman would not consider working for this salary. But it meets my personal needs; and usually I have a little each week with which to do what my heart prompts. We are helping all who come our way to unite with us in the study of the Truth that enables each one to bring forth sufficient supply for daily needs, and to make good use of all the riches of God here in the earth as well as in the heavens of mind. I am glad to offer you the testimony that we have proved that God can and will prosper the work that the Holy Spirit prompts. As the needs of other branches of our work have arisen, we have let them be known, and the supply and the necessary help have come forth. But we have always had to launch out on faith without //page 4 visible evidence of the ultimate success. We know that God is in His work, and that it is the Spirit of God operative in a given service that provides whatever is required in doing that work. I was once an emaciated little woman, upon whom relatives and doctors had placed the stamp "T.B." [tuberculosis]. And this was only one of the ailments— there were others considered beyond help, except possibly the changing of structures through an operation. There were family problems too. We were a sickly lot, and came to the place where we were unable to provide for our children. In the midst of all this gloom, we kept looking for the way out, which we felt sure would be revealed. It was! The light of God revealed to us—the
thought came to me first—that life was of God, that we were inseparably one with the Source, and that we inherited from the divine and perfect Father. What that revelation did to me at first was not apparent to the senses. But it held my mind above negation, and I began to claim my birthright and to act as though I believed myself the child of God, filled with His life. I gained. Others saw that there was something new in me. They asked me to share it. I did. Others were healed, and began to study. My husband continued his business, and at first took little interest in what I was doing. But after a time he became absorbed in the study of Truth too. We consecrated ourselves to the Lord, and kept doing daily that which we felt led to //page 5 do. We began to prosper, a little at a time, and our health continued to improve. Life became sweeter and more interesting, and we began to see a new world. In all these years, our interest has not lagged, and we have continued to enjoy the unfoldment of God's plan in our lives. I'm going to tell you a secret: I don't get to keep house as much as I should like. I'm not supposed to have time for it—folks demand so much of my time. So I have a woman to keep house for us. But do you know, I like to carry the dishes away from the table at the close of the meal; and make a nice hot suds and wash the dishes, wipe them, and put them away in nice rows in the china closet! So if sometimes you find yourself doing work that isn't supposed to be desirable, remember that there are other good folks doing the same sort of work, and that still others would like to be doing it, even though circumstances have placed them at something else. Whatever you undertake, do it the very best you can. Folks will note your good work, and soon you will be given more important positions. Show the Father that you are ready to do your best, and He will keep increasing your ability and will place you where you will be blessed and where your work will bless others. I often think that we are all in too much of a rush, //page 6 trying to do too much, and failing to discern and do the things that would mean most. So much that we think and do, surely, would not be done by one in the Jesus Christ consciousness. So much that we think we need would not be desired by one conscious of the spiritual resources. Indeed, I have felt in a strange land and longing for familiar landmarks! When I feel such a hungering, I try to draw very close to God and rest in the assurance that all is well. I know that God would not have me struggle with unknown things, or talk of that which I have not proved. I realize that that which God
would have me do God inspires in me, that it is very easy to do God's will, and that when I thus conduct myself, a great peace and friendliness comes and abides. We must have quiet and opportunity for inward searching, for we must go beyond what we have heretofore attained. There is nothing in hearsay or in observation or in the evidence of the senses, apart from spiritual discernment, that can take us beyond our present footing. Know this, dear, that I know I must be beautiful within, and in my fellowship with others, and in my sharing with them the good things of life if I am to become beautiful without. Anything that makes me have the feeling of selfishness cannot result in more beauty to me. Anything that awakens in me the loving desire to have others happy and adorned with beautiful //page 7 things, and anything that helps me to express this loving desire in my living is sure to bring forth its fruit in my life. Now, I am sure that you understand, and approve my passing on to another the use of the beautiful gift that you with so much love sent to me. You did mean for me to use it in the way it would give me most joy, didn't you? I was very religiously trained and suffered a lot from the theology taught of a God who in truth is loving. But I am rejoicing in the doctrine of our wise and loving heavenly Father who chooses that none shall perish but that all shall have eternal life. One more word: I think you are trying to give me too much credit for your poise, happiness, and success! Of course I am happy to have been privileged to write to you and pray with you and rejoice with you over demonstrations. But I know that it is God in the midst of you doing His perfect work who is responsible for the good. You ask what restored me to vigorous health. It was a change of mind from the old, carnal mind that believes in sickness to the Christ Mind of life and permanent health. "Be transformed by the renewal of your mind" (Rom. 12:2). "As he thinketh in his heart, so is he" (Prov. 23:7 A.V.). I applied spiritual laws effectively, blessing my body temple until it manifested //page 8 the innate health of Spirit. These wonderful laws will work for you too when you apply them diligently and in faith.
I smiled as I read about the state of your finances. I'll tell you a little about mine! I am on salary, just as other Unity folks are. Sometimes I have a very definite place for all my allowance, before I even begin on my individual needs. Sometimes I am obliged to draw upon the Fillmore account in order to do something I feel to be important. Usually when I find myself "strapped," someone who doesn't know the facts will send me a love gift. Last week I handed out about all I could get my hands on and was looking for more, because I had places for it. This morning a letter came from a woman to whom I have written a few times, but whom I haven't seen, in which there was a check for me for two hundred dollars. There was no apparent reason for her sending it; evidently she and the Lord were aware of my use of money and replenished my purse in that happy way. The money I had sent forth came back multiplied; I can replace the amount I drew out and still have plenty of "pin money." I confess that I haven't always looked at people and their work, and their abilities as I now do. There was a time when I felt I must go back to old ways to earn money to meet pressing needs. But my faith and the //page 9 faith of those who could see a little further than I helped to hold me steadfast. I reasoned that my past experiences had not been satisfying, that I could at least turn my mind to new ideas and give them a thorough trial. I determined to use my ability in the manner that seemed to meet the needs of persons who came my way. I had little proofs that I was using a law and that there was substance and life backing me and coming forth at my command. While it may be that this work in which we are engaged is something that we began in another life—and it doubtless is a science that the universal Christ Mind is pouring forth through us—we do know that the same mind and the same law is in all and operative for all. We know that faith and understanding and the determination to live according to the Creator's plan will bring forth whatever is needed, and will do this for everyone who puts his or her trust fully in the Father. From our experience we find it wise not to talk too much about what we are discovering and using—except to those who come to us for it. We know that it is not wise or profitable to call attention to differences, not even in an effort to explain our point. If we were to go into other churches or classes, we should endeavor to avoid points of difference or apparent contradictions. We should look for all points on which to agree, and praise the other's faith and good works. We //page 10
should talk on subjects that intuition made us to know others were interested in. We should not stamp our faith "Unity" or stress points of doctrine. We should keep to Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, as the source of our light and the application of His teaching as the way of life. We should give God the glory for any and all good in our lives, and emphasize the Truth that it is God's working in and through us that does the transforming. We should not, however, be disturbed about the prejudice of those who feel that they must shut out the undesirable. When we began our study and work, we might have had only a handful of friends—if we had thought to look about us and count them. We no doubt would have met with objections from churches if we had given them opportunity to object. But now—well, we just haven't the time to meet and enjoy all the thousands of good friends, hundreds of whom are ministers, who find our work safe and our literature food for thought. You will find that if you love folks and live happily among them, they will love you. If you do not try to change them or give them what they have no knowledge of wanting, they will not show resistance or resentment. If you do not in your attitude or inference show disapproval of their beliefs or ways, they will tear down their walls of opposition and indifference and after a while show interest in what you have. No one wants to feel that what he has and has been depending on is false and unreliable; but all want to add to the treasures they now have, and all will in time //page 11 drop the worthless pebbles for the precious gems, when they have awakened to the difference. Rather than feel that you must "stand up for Truth if it is ridiculed," let the Truth in you stand for itself. How can a thing be ridiculed, really? If one who knows the Truth and takes no account of evil keeps poised and loving, that is proof enough. One who speaks an untruth or is mistaken in his judgments has the Christ Mind within him to correct him. You do not need to do this. Leave it with Him. And why compare Unity with other teachings? This is not the Unity way. Unless some earnest soul comes to you for an explanation or light on some point, it is better to let others form their own conclusions. Adverse states of mind are built through some sort of contradiction or lack of understanding—and of course they can but contradict that which would set them at naught. Those who don't know Jesus, the Son of God manifest in the individual, will perhaps contradict the principles embodied. But what of this? The day will come when all adverse states of mind will give way to the light of Truth. If you have the poise to keep still when unbelief is talking, the day will come when you will be intrusted by the Father with speaking or doing that which will reveal Jesus Christ indwelling. Pray for understanding for yourself. Get all your faculties and powers awake and working in perfect harmony with
the Christ pattern. You will be busy enough without bothering about what others are doing. //page 12 I smile as I think of your wanting to sit at my feet, when you are in touch with the fount of all wisdom and understanding power and life and love and substance! Your indwelling Christ is beginning to find you receptive, and you will grow by leaps and bounds. Never again be sad or give way to thoughts of what might have been! God is eternal, unchanging good, and you have access to all that God is and has. There's a Bible promise that will help you to know that what may seem lost is not so in reality, and that the opportunities and blessings that seem gone will return just as fast as you are ready for them. "I will restore to you the years which the swarming locust has eaten," saith Jehovah (Job 2:25). All that has been destroyed, neglected, or lost through lack of understanding or foolishness or false pride or ambition can and will be brought forth as present good just as rapidly as you grow in consciousness; for God is ever giving just what we expect! //page 13
Jesus Christ Unity teachings are based on the Jesus Christ teachings, and we advise all people to hold firmly and steadfastly to the principles taught and demonstrated by this first Christian metaphysician. We have found in Christianity rightly interpreted more Truth than in any of the other religions we have delved into; consequently we advocate it. We have found Jesus to be the great Teacher, accessible to all who have faith in and understand the spiritual principles that He sets forth. Jesus as a superman is here in our midst and we can receive instruction direct from Him if we ask, and agree to carry out in our lives what He teaches. If we want all that is contained in Christianity, Mohammedanism, and every other religion or religious cult that came out of Christianity, we should ask Jesus and He will show us the Truth just as fast as we develop our spiritual nature to the point where He can import it to us. Jesus cannot reach minds that are immersed in materialism. By those immersed in materialism we mean not only those who deal with the most material elements in the world but also those who have materialized Christianity. To insure success and to inspire faith and confidence in ourselves and our undertaking, we should always have Christ as the source of our inspiration and prosperity. //page 14 Our success and satisfaction in business, in home, in our social lives is always greater when we take Christ Jesus as our partner. It is, "Christ in you, the hope of glory" (Col. 1:27). Why not follow in the footsteps of One who has demonstrated and proved every step of the way? God's love for us, for all His children, is so great that He sent Jesus Christ to be the Way-Shower to lead us to a greater realization of our heavenly Father's love and will for us. Jesus Christ is not merely a divine man who lived many centuries ago and whose life and works are to be considered past history. He is alive today. He is with us now. His words, "Lo, I am with you always" (Mt. 28:20), are His living promise to each of us. The Christ presence within our own souls is the Great Physician who has wisdom and power to heal and to adjust in divine order every function of our body temples. Turning within to Him, we receive that guidance, that assurance, that healing for which our souls long, the prospering and success for which we not only long but need to express as sons and daughters of the Most High, heir to all that the Father has. Instead of thinking of the Lord as the personal Jesus Christ who is away at some distant place called
heaven, we must think of the Lord as our own God-given Christ Mind, and of Jesus Christ as ever with us in the spiritual consciousness that He has established and that He has merged with the race mind in order that we //page 15 may be in touch with Him and lay hold of Him and build our lives according to His pattern. There's a distinction between Jesus Christ, the man, and the perfect-man idea that God has created and implanted in each of us, His children. The Christ Mind is the crystal-clear mind that is not blurred by the "becoming" things of which the senses tell us, nor by the reports of the intellect which are records of people's experiments day by day. The Christ Mind gives us an idea in its entirety and then we work it out in our own consciousness and body and affairs. For example, the Christ idea of love is given us, God love. Love unifies us with God, our Source, and we know that we are good and true and fearless from within, because we let these God qualities well up from the center of our being. Love alone would not enable us to keep our balance; it would draw us here and there without regard to what we accomplished. Here is where we begin to see the difference between the man Jesus Christ as we know Him, and the people who have fallen short of what we term goodness and real power. Jesus exercised all the God qualities we have yet been able to discern in a masterly way. God love was expressed by Him; but it was supplemented and balanced by God wisdom, power, judgment, will, zeal, life, renunciation, strength, order, imagination, and faith. Love drew Him to people; but good judgment held Him to a course of action that resulted in success more far-reaching than any of us have yet realized. //page 16 Jesus is the individual who made the complete union of mind, soul, and body in Spirit. He brought forth into expression the Christ, the God-Mind within, and consciously identified Himself with the Father. God is not a person; "God is Spirit." Jesus Christ has merged His wonderful consciousness with the race consciousness, that we may turn to Him and receive into our minds the understanding of life and the activities of mind that result in freedom from the limitations of race beliefs and intellectual reasonings. We can quicken our own Christ Mind by dwelling upon the Truth that we are one with Jesus Christ and one with God, through the understanding that Jesus the Christ helps us to unfold. //page 17
Prayer It is not enough to pray. Prayer is one step that you take, but you need other steps. You need to think of God, the all-powerful Healer, as being already within you, in every part of your mind, heart, and body. To keep one's attention and prayers in the spiritual realm of mind, without letting them work out into the soul's expression and into the actual physical doing of that which corresponds with what the mind and heart has thought and spoken and prayed, is to court trouble. To keep declaring love and power and life and substance, and yet unconsciously, perhaps, assuming limitations and living them, will cause explosions and congestion that work out in the physical. We need to harmonize our thinking and our prayers with actual living experiences. Sometimes we pray to a God outside of ourselves. It is the God in the midst of us that frees and heals. With our eye of faith we must see God in our flesh, see that wholeness for which we are praying in every part of the body temple. "Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you. . . . Glorify God in your body" (1 Cor. 6:19, 20). Prayers aren't sent out at all! Sometimes that is our //page 18 trouble. Where would we send our prayers? We should direct them to our minds and hearts and affairs. We commune with God-Mind within our own consciousness. Prayer is an exercise to change our thought habits and our living habits, that we may set up a new and better activity, in accord with the divine law rather than with the suggestions we have received from various sources. We sometimes think that we pray when we read and declare statements of Truth. We have very little idea of the way in which the answers to those prayers are coming. And we do not prove that we expect them to be answered. Almost immediately after praying we go on doing the things we have been doing, which does not allow answers. And we think and say that which is not in accord with the prayers we have made. For example, we go into the silence and declare statements of prosperity. Then in writing a letter we speak of lack and failure and longing which proves that we have those thoughts and feelings of lack in our hearts and that we are dwelling on them more strongly than we are on the Truth that we have prayed.
Prayer, then, is to change our minds and hearts so that God's omnipresent good may fill our minds and hearts and manifest in our lives. If we do not keep on thinking in accord with the prayers we have made, we do not get good results. For all thought is formative; all thought has its effect in our lives. When some of //page 19 our thought energy is expended in negative beliefs and feelings, and we show that we have old mental habits in the subconscious mind, we get those old negative results—even when we are praying daily and when others are praying for us. We have a very decided part; we are to cease worrying, and being anxious, and thinking and speaking of the past and of the apparent lack and idleness. We are to concentrate all our attention upon the Truth of God, and the truth of our own being, upon the very things we would see taking place in our lives. We cannot do this so long as we have negative thoughts in our hearts. As we pray, the word of life is going into us, breaking up old fixed beliefs and reorganizing our lives. The word of life—life as God has planned it—is taking hold of our subconsciousness, and we know that we are free and will begin to use our freedom. Working in the consciousness of freedom, we will be happy and well and busy and prosperous. But our attention will be upon what we are doing rather than upon outer results. The results will take care of themselves once we have started our foundation in Truth. "With God all things are possible" (Mt. 19:26). Those who receive spiritual help are the ones who place their undivided faith in God and who bring their thinking in line with His Truth. "You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free" (Jn. 8:32). Prayer, as Jesus Christ understood and used it, is //page 20 communion with God; the communion of the child with his or her Father; the splendid confidential talks of the son or daughter with the Father. This communion is an attitude of mind and heart. It lifts the individual into a wonderful sense of oneness with God, who is Spirit, the source of every good and perfect thing, and the substance that supplies all the child's needs—whether they are spiritual, social, mental, physical, or financial. Positive declaration of the truth of one's unity with God sets up a new current of thought power, which delivers one from old beliefs and their depression. And when the soul is lifted up and becomes positive, the body and the affairs are readily healed.
Sometimes I have written a letter to God when I have wanted to be sure that something would have divine consideration and love and attention. I have written the letter, and laid it away, in the assurance that the eyes of the loving and all-wise Father were seeing my letter and knowing my heart and working to find ways to bless me and help me to grow. So I suggest that you write a letter to God, putting into words that which your heart holds and hopes for. Have faith that God is seeing your letter and your heart, and that there is wisdom and power and freedom and love to accomplish that which will meet your needs. After you have placed your heart's desires with God, don't be anxious or worried or negative. Don't look for signs that He has responded. Busy yourself with //page 21 the work God gives, and with study and prayer develop into a real companion and a real radiator of happiness and inspiration. As you do so you become the radiating center toward which those are drawn who will add to your happiness and cooperate with you in making your life a beautiful success. Spirit intends you to be a radiating center that will draw to you whatever you need to be well and strong, successful and prosperous. //page 22
Drawing On the Source An individual who needs to realize and draw upon God's light and life and power and substance for health and sustenance cannot make the grade so long as he or she is so situated that it is the way of least resistance to let others do for him or her that which they feel impelled, from love or any other motive, to do. Each one of us is inseparably one with God, the source and substance of life and wisdom and every good. Each one must draw upon the source for his own sustenance, and for his own light and willpower. Parents too often claim the children who come to them as their own, and feel that they must think for them and do for them and take responsibility for them. This is done until the child loses his God-given initiative and comes from habit to depend on others. This thought grows up with him, but all the time he resents this state of affairs, yet he has not developed the ability to launch out for himself, nor does he know that he possesses enough latent wisdom to work out his difficulties. Here is where God as universal law steps in. Where there has been failure to know and to measure up to the divine plan of life, circumstances arise, experiences come that make it necessary for the individual to pull apart and to rely more upon himself. //page 23 If these individuals will make the most of such opportunities, and seek to develop from within the latent God-given resources and abilities, they will swing clear of the old entanglements and dependencies, and learning to draw on the Source, they will bring forth their own God-given good. If an individual fails to see wherein he has transgressed the law of life and omnipresent good, he will continue to claim responsibilities that are not his and burdens that he need not assume and that hinder his progress. He may through special prayer and effort realize a measure of harmony and health, but he will not know the fullness of good until he recognizes God as the omnipresent life and substance, ready to meet the needs of all His children in the way of Spirit and without burden or worry to any of them. Truth means little until it is applied to individual cases and needs. If a person would be healed and would keep getting younger and more vigorous and alert and ready for what the times demand of him, he must get out of the rut, change his habits, appropriate the life elements in food, in the sunshine, and especially in Truth statements.
Instead of thinking about his apparent condition, of the race thought with which he may have been struggling, or his age, he is to concentrate his attention upon God, that he may become so aware of God's presence and God's perfect pattern of life and God's //page 24 qualities that he will forget old errors, and dissolve the conditions that he has built up from dependence on something or someone outside himself. God is the one perfect life flowing through us. God is the one pure substance out of which our organism is formed. God is the power that gives us motive power; the strength that holds us upright and allows us to exercise our members; the wisdom that gives us intelligence in every cell of our organism, every thought of our minds. God is the only reality of us; all else is but a shadow that is cast by some foolish belief or unwise combination of thoughts and the elements of being. When we let light flood us with its sunshine, all clouds vanish and we begin to see ourselves in new ways of doing, which lead to wholeness and health and satisfaction and growth. The free flow of God's life through us becomes hindered in its expression if our thoughts and acts imply a belief in a limited number of years, in a hoarding of strength or substance or supply. We must prove here and now, for ourselves, our faith in God as omnipresent good and eternal life. God in the midst of us is a great steady stream of renewing and cleansing and vitalizing life, and we can have the use of this life if we will open up the channels of its flowing and ourselves draw from this source. //page 25 God has put in each of us the germ of immortality which will bring forth its kind. "Every sound tree bears good fruit" (Mt. 7:17). So within us is this almightiness that we must cooperate with. As we cooperate with the Spirit of God in fulfilling His plan in us, all that is within us bursts into the beauty of wholeness. The moment a person yields his self to Godlikeness, he is letting the Spirit of God burst the shell of doubt and fear, and the light of faith reveals to him the light of life. He becomes conscious of the joy of life, the joy of life in himself and in everyone else. Yielding self means giving up the old concepts of the past; forgetting ourselves and our human desire to come forth, and just rejoicing that all God's creation constantly springs forth in newness of life and light and joy and service. When
we forget our own desires and devote ourselves to doing what God would have done, this moment and constantly, we shall find that there is no limit to the strength we have and the things we can do. We have yielded ourselves to the source and entered into a oneness that makes us receptive to all that the source is and holds for us. All God's blessings are for every child of the Father, and each individual should learn to receive direct from his indwelling source. Every individual has to live his own life and draw for himself upon the life, substance, health, and strength that are waiting to be brought forth. No one can eat another's food for him, or breathe for him; neither can one person express the indwelling //page 26 life and health for another. Each one of us must draw upon the source of these things for himself. Blessed are we when we recognize that this is the way of receiving, and do it. //page 27
Going Into the Silence Students should not try so hard to "go into the silence." When your growth brings you to the place where your consciousness may be so completely merged with Christ ideas in God-Mind that you lose all sense of things about you, it is time to seek to go into the silence. But one should not try to hurry this experience. Anything that is an effort and that disturbs the natural functioning of the body is not going to bring your mind into conscious at-one-ment with the source of your light and every good. It is because a person tries to force the process of going into the silence before he is ready for it that he has that unpleasant experience, about which some ask, of the heart's beating so rapidly and hard. This comes from trying to get the body to become inactive in the effort to go into the silence. Instead of stirring up greater activity, laying hold of more life and using it, you cause the body to become tense. Therefore, the heart must pump harder to do its work. When wisdom and love and life and power prompt your thoughts, you are living and moving and having your being in the very presence of God, and you know that all is well. Then you will be able to concentrate upon anything that requires your attention, and you will be quiet and poised and comfortable. With a relaxed body //page 28 you will lay hold of more life activity and come forth refreshed. When you start to go into the silence, you should breathe evenly, in the happy feeling that you are taking in great drafts of God's pure life-sustaining air, which is being used by every cell and blood corpuscle. Take your attention down out of your head into the organism. The flow of blood will follow your attention down into the trunk of the body and into your feet and hands, and thus the forces of being as well as the flow of the bloodstream will be equalized. You should be just as fair to the members of your body as you would be to a neighbor. You wouldn't expect to hold the neighbor's attention on one thing all day long. Nor would you expect to demand of your neighbor that she do without something that she should have, nor would you burden her with more work than she should do. Now you are to treat your own members (which are close neighbors in your body temple) with as much consideration and wisdom and love, giving them the benefit of this quiet time with the divine Creator. A period of quiet and rest each day is your opportunity to establish yourself at the center of your being, the one place where the supply of life and substance is
inexhaustible. God is this eternal life that we make into living. Each day you should have a period of stillness when the soul may gather sustaining power //page 29 and restoring life. God gives freely; it is for us to keep the receiving channels open, to keep attuned to the realities so that our intellect does not take us out among the limited ideas of the world. The manifest man must have the sustenance that can come only from within. We should not draw the strings of this instrument of Spirit so tight that the music of the soul cannot find expression, but this is what living in the world without withdrawal to the secret place does to us. One can stay in the silence too much. It is merely the doorway to that which is beyond the silence; i. e., activity based upon the light and strength gained in claiming it, accomplished by contacting it as the mind slips away from the clamor of dissipating thoughts. One can get too much of this good thing, just as one can get too much good nourishing food, and then sit still, failing to convert it into living energy and the results of that energy. So, dear, watch that you do not remain too much alone, too much in the silence, too much in contemplation and adoration, and not enough in the practical use of what the walks and talks alone with God would give. The Indian goes solitary into the forest to gain a sense of his superior strength and poise. He comes back to familiar scenes and regular activities, and runs, and leaps, and rides, and sings, and plants, and harvests, and tells the stories that inspire his race, and ministers to those in need in the spirit of love. He takes plenty of time to play, and he works at nothing while he's playing! Instead of spending too much time in the silence, //page 30 make practical use of what you have already gotten from study and from the silence. It is possible to waste strength and energy and substance in dwelling in that passive mental state sometimes called the silence, or in the personal effort to make certain thoughts go out and accomplish results that are not based on the divine order and plan of life. So when you turn to the secret place for silence, be sure that you get away from yourself, your old ideas and desires, and bring your mind into perfect harmony with Christ ideas. Work to bring those ideas to bear upon your thought centers, and then come forth to practice what you have seen with spiritual vision and declared for yourself. The more you think about the Christ within, the stronger will grow your consciousness of the divine presence and your oneness with Him, until you can "be still, and know that I am God"; until you can still all the outer thoughts and meditate upon "Christ in you, the hope of glory." Many have been helped
mightily, gloriously in finding the silence, by repeating "Jesus Christ" time after time, with short intervals between. When you go into the silence, it would be well for you to direct your attention into your organism, away from your head. The flow of blood will follow the attention, and thus the forces of your being and the flow of the bloodstream will be equalized. You owe God attention. You owe God the full //page 31 measure of your faith, of your thought, of your service. God abides in your mind as the wisdom that will reveal the way to you if you will quiet your thoughts from their ceaseless outer searching for ways and means. God not only gives you wisdom, God is the wisdom that can direct you into paths of peace and plenty. You cannot listen to God while your ear is given to your affairs. You can gain nothing by incessantly milling around in negative thought. You can gain all by quietly letting go of these outer appearances and laying hold of God. You love Jesus Christ and He is now with you, guiding you and teaching you, bringing you consciously into oneness with the Father. His prayer was: "That they may be one, even as we are one" (Jn. 17:11). His mission is to bring us into unity with the Father, and His promise is: "Lo, I am with you always" (Mt. 28:20). He taught us to pray in this way: "When you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret" (Mt. 6:6). The inner chamber is that quiet place within the heart. We are taught to center our thoughts within, and then to shut the door; that is, to close our minds to all other thinking and think about God and His goodness and love; to pray to God in secret, in the secret place of the Most High, and all things needful will be added. "Speak to Him, thou, for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit can meet— Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet."—Alfred, Lord Tennyson. //page 32 That is what the poet says to help us remember how close and loving God is. Speak to God in the quiet of your heart, just as you would speak to me; tell the Father how much you desire to know Him and feel His loving presence and how glad you are to receive His blessings and to do His will. Then be very still and feel God's love enfold you. Be still. Be still. Be still. God in the midst of you is substance. God in the midst of you is love. God in the midst of you is wisdom. Let not your thoughts be given to
lack, but let wisdom fill them with the substance and faith of God. Let not your heart be a center of resentment and fear and doubt. Be still and know that at this moment it is the altar of God, of love; love so sure and unfailing, love so irresistible and magnetic that it draws your supply to you from the great storehouse of the universe. Trust God, use God's wisdom, prove and express God's love. As you come out of the silence, count your blessings and give thanks for them. Realize that only good exists in you and in your world, that the power you contacted in the silence may have opportunity to multiply and increase your blessings. Give thanks that you have already received the good for which you looked to God in the silence, feeling the assurance, "Before they call I will answer, while they are yet speaking I will hear" (Is. 65:24). //page 33 On the "mountaintop" we receive new illumination, inspiration, and insight into the providing law. Then we have a work to do away from the mountaintop, lifting our thoughts to the Truth standard. We should carry the light, joy, peace, and strength we receive on the spiritual heights of consciousness into our everyday life for the purpose of redeeming the human part of us. Jesus had His times on the mountaintop, but afterward He descended to minister to the needy ones. This symbolizes our habit of giving attention to thoughts of lack, weakness, negativeness and redeeming them by bringing them into the Spirit, after we have entered the "secret place of the Most High" and communed with the Father. The thing to bear in mind is to take with you and hold on to all that you gain on the mountaintop of prayer, and not let go of it when you meet the thoughts and states of mind on the material plane that need to be spiritualized. In other words, maintain your spiritual poise and control when you meet adverse thoughts; otherwise you cannot redeem the Adversary. When we seek God, our temporal as well as spiritual needs are supplied. The providing law will always work for us when we work with it. "By wisdom a house is built, and by understanding it is established; by knowledge the rooms are filled with all precious and pleasant riches" (Prov. 24:3- 4). //page 34 It is through the development of our minds that we find the way to success. God is mind. "We have the mind of Christ," and it is for us to make conscious union
in the silence with the all-providing Mind, lifting our thoughts to its standard of Truth and holding them in this Truth as we go about our duties of living. //page 35
Quickened By the Spirit You remember the spiritual inspiration that Paul had, an inspiration that is also ours as we claim the light and power and love that are God's expression through us: "If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit which dwells in you" (Rom. 7:11). It isn't people at Unity who quicken and heal. It isn't the human desire of the individual's heart that makes the life flow through his organism more freely. It isn't the thing that we usually think of as Christianity that brings one into the quickening, healing currents of Christ life. It is the stirring in us of the same Spirit of Christ that was and is in Jesus Christ—the Spirit of God, standing forth in individual consciousness and expression—the stirring up in our minds of divine ideas from the mind of Being. It is the soul's willingness and effort to live in its daily thinking and acts in the Spirit of Christ—that same Spirit which made Jesus forget Himself in doing the good and perfect will of His Father. It is not churchgoing and praying and the observance of moral laws, but vital, loving, powerful words and acts of helpfulness to others. Jesus' consecration was a living, constant thing. He adored //page 36 the Father and sought constantly to glorify Him in making the things of His Spirit manifest in the lives of His children. Jesus was eagerly discovering the real purpose of life and fulfilling it not for Himself alone but for all of us. Jesus says, "Follow me" (Lk. 9:59). "If you love me, you will keep my commandments" (Jn. 14:15). "He who believes in me will also do the works that I do" (Jn. 14:12). "Feed my sheep" (Jn. 21:19). "Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons" (Mt. 10:8). To be truly healed and quickened by the life more abundant, one must forget the past and the limitations of the past, and offer every thought, every ounce of energy to Spirit, to be used in bringing God's kingdom of light and love and order and beauty and health into the earth, into the lives of all people. This giving is not to be done in human consciousness and might, but in the realization that it is God working through one's soul and body to increase one's life and strength and substance, to fulfill His perfect plan. One's body is to be thought of as the temple of the living God. One's arms and hands are to be thought of, and used, as God's arms and hands, the expression of God-Mind's ideas of power and loving service and splendid work. The executive power of the mind, in its
relation to things that we think of as belonging in the three-dimensional world, is expressed through the arms and hands. One should think of whatever one is led to do as being God's work. One should know and rejoice in one's innate ability to accomplish that work. One should //page 37 realize that one is free to decide wisely, and to do whatever will benefit oneself and others. One should see others in this beautiful spiritual world of activity and bless them. God is in us as the very life and substance that we use, and our use of God's gifts increases our ability to use and to direct them. God is life; we make that life into living. God is love; we make divine love into loving. God is substance; we take the substantial reality and bring it through into the manifest world. God is wisdom; we claim oneness with divine wisdom and it expresses through us as wise thoughts and decisions and actions: the light of life that glows from heart and face, yes, every cell of the body. //page 38
Understanding the Body Jesus says, "You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Mt. 5:48). Paul says, "Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God . . . glorify God in your body" (I Cor. 6:19-20). Unity says, "God in the midst of you is mighty to quicken, to cleanse, to heal, to restore to wholeness, to prosper. Look within yourself to the Christ Mind for the light that will flood your soul and enable you to see yourself and your affairs in right relation to God and your fellow human beings." Seeing is the discerning capacity of the mind. By taking time for quiet meditation, and by confidently claiming oneness with God-Mind, we keep the avenues of our minds open to the divine plan for us. There is a divine law of mind action that we may conform to, and that will always bring satisfactory results. There is also a physical side to the operation of this divine law. The body and its needs must have our consideration. We must not drive the body or neglect its normal needs. This body is the result of our use of God-given faculties and powers. We have needed such a temple, and the soul has built it. Sometimes we fail to remember that the temple is for the use of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes the belief in lack or darkness or time comes //page 39 in to cause us to do things which are not good for the body temple. When there is evidence of disobedience, we should not seek to whip the body into submission and comfort by outer means or by mental treatment. We should prayerfully seek the understanding of the soul's need and bring ourselves into harmony with God-Mind. Sometimes we become so intent upon some outer form of success that we keep our eyes fixed upon the partial good. Sometimes that which we undertake does not progress as we had dreamed, and we are tempted to see walls of limitation or the darkness of opposition. Sometimes in the effort to accomplish that which we feel we must do we are unfair to the body, until it calls a halt. Whatever the cause of the appearance of negation, turning the attention Godward, with willingness to look into all phases of daily living and to make such adjustments as are wise and loving toward the body, will quickly relieve all strain and congestion and allow the free flow of life to renew nerves and structures. The body responds to changes of mind; and when this is accompanied
by truly wise living habits, the conformity to true ideas of life and power and love and substance and intelligence will renew it and make it every whit whole. We must see the life of God in our flesh. Any form of denial of God-life and intelligence or of the physical //page 40 organism, any thought of the flesh other than as of God's pure substance, congests and irritates the body. This is double-mindedness, which consists in believing in evil as well as good, in perceiving and thinking about evil, or undesirable conditions, or lack, or failure, or calamity of any sort. Double- mindedness weakens the eyes and dims the vision, and we do not clearly perceive that which is our perfection in God-Mind. To look about one and see evil and imperfection is sinful. That which we mentally stamp a thing is registered in our own flesh. The eye is the outer evidence of the ability of the mind to discern and understand. A strong, unclouded, perceiving, and discerning mind attuned to Truth is manifest in strong, healthy eyes and clearness of sight; for one who perceives the Truth will live by the law of Truth. "I am God . . . the Holy One in your midst" (Hos. 11:9). God in the midst of us is mighty, and when we look toward God in faith, God binds up, harmonizes, and strengthens whatever places need to be adjusted and restored. God, the Holy One in the midst of us, is that power which creates and is irresistible to renew and to make wholeness manifest. When we are full of faith and cooperate with this restoring principle of our being, God's work of restoration never ceases its activity in us. God seeks always to restore harmony, //page 41 strength, life, wholeness in that which He has created. Our holding thoughts like these and communing with the indwelling Presence in the silence gives to the healing Christ within the best possible opportunity to do His work quickly. We do not at a time of renewal overtax the body and its energies, because we need to use the vigorous life of Spirit to build up our body temple. Let us pour out upon our organism blessings of praise for the good work it is doing in establishing wholeness. Let us think of ourselves as already manifesting perfection in mind, soul, and body, and give thanks that divine order is now established. "I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless" (Gen. 17:1). The Father within is saying, "Be thou perfect"; and His word has fulfilled its mission of restoring the body with His own vital livingness.
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Day and Night Experience "His delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night."—Ps. 1:2 "Day and night" does not necessarily mean twenty-four hours of time. It has reference to the daytime of the soul—when it has light, and everything seems to be going smoothly, and it can see evidence that the divine law is working; and to the nighttime of the soul—when a person has gone as far as the light of his consciousness will take him in a given direction, and when he must turn within and wait for more light. You may not see how the law of the Lord is working for you, but it is working just as surely as the law of growth is operative during nighttime. Nighttime is necessary to the proper growth and development of plants, just as the daytime and sunlight with their warmth are necessary. We wouldn't say that "business is dull" with the plants during the night or that they are not receiving their good. On the contrary, we have many times seen a transformation through the night. A plant that had seemed almost dead for lack of moisture and the ability to draw from the earth the required elements will be crisp and strong and very desirable in the morning! //page 43 Had it not been for the night with its blessings, that plant would have ceased to grow and to yield its helpfulness to us. When "nighttime" comes to us, we should use it as a quiet time of great help. If we do, it will afford us time for meditation and the careful study of ourselves and our present methods and plan of service. It will cause us to turn more to the universal law and its operation and less to our personal efforts and the ways of others. In this nighttime we are to rest in the spiritual knowledge and assurance that our growth is precious in the sight of the Lord. We are to rejoice that the divine law is ever operative, ever working to prosper all of God's children. We are to give thanks that our affairs are in the Father's hands and under the management of divine wisdom. We shall rise up to be glad for this "night" in which we have turned within to the great stream of light, life, love, substance, and power, and have let them flow silently into our consciousness, to raise it to the Christ understanding. As we do this, we will know that we are:
"Like a tree planted by streams of water, that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers."—Ps. 1:3 //page 44
No Incurable Disease There is no such thing as a "disease" or incurable condition. These activities, weaknesses, or abnormalities to which the medical profession gives name are but the efforts of the God-given inner intelligence to deal with conditions that the individual has produced by his failure to understand the Truth and to recognize himself as the perfect child of God, and to live by the divine law of life. Anything that does not measure up to the Christ pattern of perfection can be changed. Anything that the ideas of God-Mind, expressing in the mind of man, have not produced can be dissolved into the original nothingness by the understanding application of the power of spiritual thought and the resultant spiritual action. Doctors, of course, judge by appearances, founding their opinions upon the study of effects, and drawing their conclusions from the outworking of mistakes the patients have made. No one who has awakened spiritually and is seeing his threefold being in the light of Truth would speak of disease as something of itself. He would not think for a moment that the mind was fixed in old race beliefs or errors, nor that his body was unresponsive to the Spirit. So when someone comes to us who has had a doctor //page 45 diagnose his illness, we ask him to turn from the doctor's opinions and verdict and cease to think of the name he gave to the condition that existed at the time of the examination and treatment. We ask him to cast out the assumption that this condition would not be changed and done away with, just as one would refuse to hold to and to think of some unworthy and untrue thing that he might have heard spoken as he walked down the street. He is to begin at once to rejoice that he is the offspring of God, that the life and the substance of his body and the perfect pattern of that life and body are gifts of God, gifts that are in reality inseparably one with His own being, the very essence of God-life and God substance and God intelligence. It is God's plan, you know, to have the creation picture forth, express His ideas, qualities, and being. It is our purpose in being here to become conscious of and to express in our lives the true pattern and qualities of our Father-Mother. We know very well that God would not create a person with imperfections and shortcomings and disease. We also know that God would not create automatons without free-will and the privilege of exercising their powers of sonship. Just as
we give our children—in our own thought of them and in our endeavors to have them live as they should that they may come forth clothed perfectly—the best that we can conceive, and then permit them to unfold their powers and faculties and their body temples as the inner intelligence and //page 46 life prompts. We give them the best instruction we have to offer, but if we are wise, we permit the Spirit within them to develop the soul, that it may express their individual gifts. We accept the God-given perfection. We wave aside the past mistakes and the untrue suggestions, and fix undivided attention upon the Creator and the inner pattern of perfection. In this lies the success of spiritual treatment. We bring all the mental attitudes and the centers of consciousness, and even the physical structures, to this high place in mind where we see as God sees and where we name all that is within us according to the patterns and uses for which these soul qualities and their outpicturing have been created. We prayerfully consider all our living habits to get a better understanding of their purposes and to know whether or not they are chording with the divine law of health. We consider whether or not we are worrying or fearing anything. We look back of the conscious mind into the realm of the subconsciousness, or memory, to determine whether there is anything that took place in the past that is continuing its disturbing influence through the unconscious expressions of mind. Much of the habit side of life is made up of these past experiences and trainings. Many things we do daily are not consciously thought out but are the continuation of something impressed upon us long ago. We rejoice and remember that we have the God-power //page 47 to change conditions, the God-love to express Christlikeness, and we work lovingly and diligently with whatever we find in ourselves or our environment that falls short. Keeping the attention centered in the Christ Mind, we are able to see beyond appearances to the impulses of the soul, which is always urging us in our efforts to make use of what God has given. To the degree that we let Christ be lifted up, in the same degree shall we rid ourselves of that which may have been pronounced incurable or may have seemed to us a disease that was incurable. Let us remember what Jesus Christ said, "With God all things are possible" (Mt. 19:26), and let us listen until we hear within, "Is anything too hard for Jehovah?" Any thought that is not based on the eternal reality, Truth, has no existence. If we believe in disease we are believing in something that has no substance or reality.
When we dissolve the belief out of our minds and in its place establish the realization of the one presence and power of good, and exercise our faith in health as the one presence and power within us, we shall feel the conviction that we are the expression of the health that God is. This powerful conviction of oneness with divine wholeness will become abiding—nothing can take it from us. "God is love," and His love has cast out of the mind and heart all fear. There is no room for doubts and fears because God as love and health reigns supreme in us. We set to work to change any and everything that //page 48 we may find does not measure up to the best that our new light shows us. We know that it is of much more importance to change and to do that which is best for our progress and our health, than to be smugly consistent, or to make the excuse that we have always done a thing and that it is too late to change. The moment we discover something undesirable in our minds or our lives we should seek to make the changes necessary to bring the desirable into manifestation. //page 49
Permanent Prosperity The only way to become permanently prosperous and successful is through quickening, awakening, and bringing into righteous use all the indwelling resources of Spirit. When we develop our soul and express its talents and capabilities in loving service to God and humankind, our temporal needs will be supplied in bountiful measure. We have access to the realm of rich ideas; we enrich our consciousness by incorporating these rich ideas into it. A rich consciousness always demonstrates prosperity. "The kingdom of God is in the midst of you" (Lk. 17:21). Jesus said, "Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well" (Mt. 6:33). This means that we are to find the wealth of capabilities and spiritual resources within us, and bring them into expression. When we develop the power to accomplish things and the qualities that we need in order to accomplish them, success is assured. We must depend wholly on the inner kingdom of supply and the indwelling Christ, for this inner way is the only way to receive permanently. We are to cease depending on outer, material avenues for prosperity, because when we look to the outer we look away from the one resource that is within us. Prosperity is the result of complying with laws that //page 50 are revealed by the Spirit of truth within. Those who are prosperous and successful are the people who have a rich consciousness. They open their minds to rich ideas, and then cash in on these ideas in an outer way. The people who are famous and successful are the ones who have developed their innate abilities and used the success-producing ideas that have come to them. Sometimes we begin at the wrong end of the prosperity line, and our methods need changing. Perhaps we try to accumulate money to meet our temporal needs without first laying hold of the equivalent of money on the inner planes of consciousness. This inner equivalent consists of our rich ideas, our innate capabilities and resources of Spirit. A great help in realizing permanent prosperity is to come into the realization that we do not work to earn money to meet our expenses! This is a delusion of mortal mind. In reality, in earning money we are expressing the God-given faculties and powers to bless others, and to keep our part of the divine law of giving and receiving. The supply is a gift of God and is ours because it is a part of God's plan. We are to accept it in faith as such. Expect it to come, and it will.
Prosperity is not an accumulation of money or other so-called wealth, as we have sometimes thought. Wouldn't it be a terrible thing if we were eternally surrounded with the material baubles that we in our childish fancies believe to be prosperity? Wouldn't you //page 51 dread to think of spending eternity, with chains of houses and lands, and storehouses of food, and wardrobes of clothing, and garages of cars, and chests of silver? Wouldn't you dread to think that men and women were always to be deluded with the belief that these formed things are the realities, the truly valuable things of life? Why, we'd have to employ guards and give our thought to caring for our wealth! We'd never get to the place where we could get still and learn from the Father the deeper things, the soul-satisfying things—the lessons there are for us ere we arise into the majesty of sonship—the realization of oneness! Let us rejoice then that our resources are the God qualities, the spiritual sources and substances from which our consciousness, our body, our home, come forth in response to our need and our word of faith and wisdom and authority. Let us rejoice that our good is in the realm of Mind, where it is instantly available and responsive to our thought and word and need. Rejoice that it is all under law, that it holds us to the law, even though a negative attitude does fail to produce desirable results! The lessons of experience are helpful to us until we learn the unchangeableness of the law and determine in our minds that prosperity is progress, accomplishment of that which one has an urge to do, gain in spiritual, mental, physical or financial matters, attainment of that which is good and needful. Supply in abundance for the so-called temporal needs is a part of prosperity. And surely, since God has given us this physical being, and the //page 52 physical earth, and all its bounty, it is not wrong for us to get the understanding of the full free use of it all! If we are ever to understand and use higher spiritual laws, we must learn to use the laws governing our present state! As we do this, we shall see that they are different phases of the same law. "The Lord is more willing to give than we are to receive." The bounty of God is within us, undeveloped, and all about us, unused and misunderstood. It is ours to use all that the Father has. Did I hear you say that healing comes from the Spirit within but that prosperity comes from without, or is something outside? Well, now, are you sure? Let's see.
Spirit within is the quickening, adjusting, harmonizing force, yes. We must agree to think health, and to bless the body, and to express that which causes all the functions of the organism to work perfectly. But there is the physical side of health, also. Spirit must have substance through which to manifest! You must provide the manifest substance and life elements in proper food, and drink, and sunshine, and air. Without these Spirit would have no vehicle—and these are drawn in from the outside! Do you see? So it is with prosperity. The Spirit of Christ in you reveals the plan of God in your life and quickens in you the urge and the desire for the activities and the appropriations that fulfill the divine law in your being. Your faculties must let Spirit work through them, and //page 53 develop them to the point where they can express the Christ ideas. They must learn to draw upon the universal spiritual substance and life, and mold it, and make use of it either for health or for prosperity. We have accepted the suggestions of those whose judgments in other things we might not be willing to abide by, and have thought that some things are "food which perisheth." The consciousness determines whether it is food that perishes, or whether it is living substance that is building an eternal temple. The results we get from the full, free use of life and substance are determined by our beliefs and our habits. When you develop your soul and express its talents and capabilities in loving service to God and humankind, your temporal needs will be supplied in bountiful measure. You have access to the rich ideas of Divine Mind; enrich your consciousness by incorporating rich ideas into it. When you make righteous use of your indwelling resources of Spirit, you will become a magnet to attract success. A splendid prosperity lesson is found in the 1st chapter of Joshua: "Only be strong and very courageous, being careful to do according to all the law ... turn not from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may have good success wherever you go. This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it; for then you shall make your way prosperous, and then //page 54 you shall have good success . . . for the Lord your God is with you." When you are "careful to do according to all that is written," the law will open all the ways and outer avenues of supply for you.
Those who take time regularly to give themselves to the necessary prayer and meditation, to get new light and to round out their consciousness and ability to use all their faculties, find that they go from one prosperity to another. They frequently finish with one thing undertaken. This does not mean that they have failed or that they must be without position and resources. It means that they are being offered the next higher step, and that by entering upon the new undertaking or the greater light given in the present place, they are growing and bringing forth more of the inner resources. True prosperity is not making money or putting out goods or developing property. It is determining what our souls require in order to cause them to unfold more of God; and then how to harmonize their expression with the needs of our fellow human beings so that all are benefited and inspired to unfold and express more of their inner spiritual resources. The exchange of merchandise and money is merely incidental to this spiritual association and growth. Money success comes as a result; but there are other results that should be //page 55 sought and rejoiced over even more than the financial returns. Radiant health and physical freedom and the greater awakening of all the faculties and their physical centers of activity is another more valuable gain than the increase in salary and the promotion to a greater chair in the management's office. The feeling that one is doing something to help in the establishment of the kingdom of heaven in the earth is great compensation for the hours of prayer and the effort to swing clear of the old commercial bondage and ways. We are to have whatever we require, yes. But we are making progress toward the time when we shall work at something really constructive, something that reveals God in people and in God's world, something that gives us the privilege of deciding for ourselves, under guidance of Spirit, when we are to go and when we are to come. As soon as we are capable of it, the Lord will place us in such a position among our fellow human beings. But before we are given this place, we are to prove that we are ever considering the highest good of our neighbors, and that we have the ability to discern what it is they need and bring them face to face with it. Spiritual growth, you see, as well as temporal ability and success! //page 56
The Subconsciousness Most of us have had to meet and deal with some of the subconscious holdings. Most of us have had so many years of arduous training in mortal beliefs, in the convictions of the intellect and senses, that we have very fixed subconscious states of mind, which have their correspondences in the activities of the soul and in the physical structures. Wherever beliefs in materiality, in the power of disease, or in adversity of any sort have been allowed to settle into mind and result in formations of flesh or in functional activity, it takes great illumination—and not only illumination but earnest, constant identification of ourselves with Jesus Christ and His wonderful humility and obedience, and with the spiritual knowledge of mastering the physical elements—to dissolve these beliefs. But as long as there is in our subconscious minds (our memory and habits of thinking) that which does not chord with Truth (God, good, the only presence and power in all and through all), we keep meeting it in some form or other, and we shall be obliged to keep using Truth and the power God has given us to change our minds if we are to cast out the old and establish a new order. So long as we remember experiences that were unhappy, as we saw them once and still see them and //page 57 speak of them, we will be unable to demonstrate joy and prosperity and health in our lives. Because of lack of understanding, these seemingly unkind things have made negative impressions upon our souls. Whatever has been impressed upon our souls will work out in our bodies and affairs. Because the activities of the mind in its contacts with Divine Mind and also with the world of appearances and the minds of others, build the soul, which in turn forms the body through which it carries out its impressions and the urge from within; the soul's desires and impressions also make the conditions under which we live. Understanding this law of mind action will help us to see why we have the experiences we have, and why we react to them, and why it is important to go to God-Mind for more light and love and life and substance. We have the power to change our soul's impressions, our subconscious, through the indwelling Christ Mind, and so change our bodies and their functioning and also the conditions about us. It gives us renewed strength and confidence to realize that every thought of Truth that enters our minds is taking up its abode in our subconsciousness and is working itself out in our flesh as harmony and radiant health. Our body temples
are the fruit of our minds. The truths that we hold in mind redeem and heal our flesh. In Spirit and in Truth we are now and always every whit whole. By getting false thoughts out of the way, and keeping the image and likeness of wholeness ever //page 58 before our mind's eye, and trying to feel that we are healed, health becomes irresistible and it is bound to manifest. When a soul is encouraged to develop the mental faculties and to open the heart to a great feeling of love for humanity, it opens up the subconscious door that allows it to peer into the past. Before we are free from the shortcomings and the ignorance of the race mind, we must awaken to the fact that these things exist and that we are connected with them, until through the Jesus Christ Mind we swing clear of them and establish ourselves in a consciousness of life, light, freedom, and love. We do not attain this place of life, light, freedom, and love by allowing the soul to dwell upon these shadowy things of the past or by trying to recall the experiences through which we have come. Should we dwell upon such things, we would sink back into them. We must begin at once to rejoice in the light that is come to redeem our subconsciousness from the shadows of error and fear and superstition and mistakes. The race mind with which we are connected because of common experiences and beliefs suggests that we know not whence we come, nor where we go, nor yet how to direct our way along the path. Looking at life through this limited thought, it does seem gray, and we appear to grope our way and to leave much undone. But there is a new and wonderful way to view life; Jesus Christ //page 59 lived so eagerly the light that came to Him day by day that life ceased to be a gray mystery to Him. He saw Himself and others in a new light. He understood why He had been born into the world. He knew where He was going. In fact, He knew that He was not going anywhere, in the sense of separation and distance. He knew that He was merging Himself with the race mind so that He might abide with us and bring us into the same wonderful light in which He dwells. When we cease to think shadows and lack of knowledge and begin to call to mind the teachings of Jesus Christ, the light will shine for us. We will not care to peer into the past, nor to recall its experiences. We will know that all that measures up to the mark of helpfulness will abide with us. We will be content to realize that when our growth makes it necessary for us to have something out of the subconscious, it will come without disturbing us, without depressing us.
The sensitive soul sympathetically attuned to the mind and feeling of humanity suffers greatly, when the mental vision opens, at exposing the soul to contact with the experiences of humankind during the past. For this very reason it is imperative that each Truth student should prayerfully seek to enter into the Jesus Christ consciousness of the omnipresence of God, the good. When we can look at life, present and past, through eyes that see only God and good, we can keep our poise. We see not frenzy of ignorance and anxiety, the mists of seeming failure, the gray of lack of love and wasted life. Rather we see the warmth and light //page 60 of the great solar system that is of creative Mind's planning and that keeps working the miracle of growth; we see the radiance of the Son of God shining through the Son of man and men and women everywhere, perhaps a little here, a little there, but shining surely to bring forth the fruits of His planting. We are the children of the Creator of this wonderful universe. I do not believe that the lily feels the terrors of darkness down at the bottom of the pond, nor does it allow the mud and water that shut out much of the light to keep it from appropriating the good that is provided for it, and pushing surely and intelligently upward to the freedom and light that were there for it long before the bulb began to swell and burst. I am sure that the lily is "conscious" only of the foods in the earth and the warmth and helpfulness of the sun and air. I am sure that if we allow the intelligence within us to appropriate only the good and that which keeps us looking up, we too shall be conscious of good only, and we will grow just as perfectly as the lily. If we do as Jesus suggested, turn to the Holy Spirit (the whole Spirit of God) and seek to know good only, we shall grow just as surely and as perfectly into the Christ consciousness as Jesus did. I do not say that we can take our frequently translated Scriptures and depend on them entirely for instruction and guidance. But we may depend always on the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ, which is ever here with us, to give us whatever we have need of. //page 62
Threefold Healing Two of your statements prompt us to a little explanation, before giving the outline for treatments: (1) "I am wondering if you will send me, also my brother, some health vibrations." (2) "We are asking you to relieve us through the Silent Unity healing." We are not sure that you understand that you are to cooperate with us, by studying the Truth so that you may come into the understanding of the divine laws of health and life and prosperity, and by joining us daily in prayers. We will not say that the work we do here has nothing to do with the healing. But we do not promise results unless we have the faith and the cooperation of those for whom we pray and to whom we give instruction. After all it is not the physical and mental relief that means most to the persons receiving treatment, and we are not so much concerned with the results as we are with the growth in consciousness that will make the results abiding. This health law is threefold: spiritual, keeping a person assured of his God-given freedom from all anxiety, worry, fear, and lack; mental, giving him the intelligence that enables him to do that which promotes health and success; physical, forming those habits which keep him making the right use of his faculties, and powers, and the life energy and substance. //page 63 There is a tendency to disregard the harmonious combination of these three elements, one person being very careful to observe the spiritual, another to accomplish results through the physical. Our work is to unify these three and to bring our students into the understanding application of the Truth of being. One who remembers and lives by the spiritual promises of the law of health will not worry, or seek to manage other people's affairs, or neglect to feed his or her soul with that which is necessary to keep it unfolding Christward. One who is aware of the mental side of his health seeks to keep himself free from the limitations of the race mind, the opinions and demands of others, the depressions and hurried attitudes that keep the Christ ideas from finding perfect expression through his thoughts and acts. One who is determined that his physical life will show forth the peace and order of spiritual reality and divine intelligence is considerate of his body, and careful in his demands upon it. He sees to it that he understands the physical requirements and that he meets these every day.
So you see there is more to our Silent Unity ministry than a formula of words to be said at intervals! We want to help you to live the Christ life here and now, which means to live a life of understanding trust in the good; of joyous activity, mental and physical; of freedom from fear and worry; of loving contact with your fellows, without anxiety as to their apparent //page 64 shortcomings or selfishness. So we ask you to consider prayerfully the following explanation of your being, and to seek to incorporate an understanding of it in your consciousness, using it in your daily living. Being threefold, spirit, soul, body, we find that our expression is threefold, the harmonious and constructive unfoldments are threefold, and the things that we term undesirable and imperfect and destructive are threefold also. For example, joyous radiant health is the result of the right spiritual viewpoint, the daily purposeful effort to unfold the faculties and soul qualities, and the daily recognition of the body as the temple of God and the structure that Spirit and soul are building, all these prompting us to give careful attention to the needs of the system. Weakness, or sickness, or inharmony, or imperfection in the organism, is the result of failure to identify oneself with God, the divine source, and understanding how to lay hold of and express one's inheritance of spiritual powers; some limitation in the soul's development of its riches; some ignorance of the body's requirements and disregard of the divine law of life and health. Study and training are required for righteous expression of our threefold nature. The study and training should be more thorough than are our first lessons in life, because we are dealing with advanced stages of the same thing. Because of lack of understanding much must be done over and changed. So if we would have the full, free use of our senses and our organs, we must get at the causes of inharmonies, remove them, and //page 65 establish a new and perfect pattern and plan of action. We do this by remembering that we are God's children, that God has created us perfect, and that there is a law established within us that will keep us unfolding harmoniously if we will but recognize it. We who have begun it find this study of the Truth of being and the science of living much more fascinating than any school course.
To know how to hear with the mind, and to discern and discriminate between the true and real and worthwhile and that which is mere foolishness and the clatter of elements not yet organized under law; and to realize that one may be obedient and receptive without giving up one's right to freedom of choice and action, is real accomplishment. To know how to see with the mind, to discern and to understand that which the nerves and cells of the sight organs report without being disturbed by the masses of manifest substance and the actions of those about one, gives real joy and poise. And the eyes are kept strong and steady and equal to the work for which they were formed. To know how to detect that which is adverse and not for one's good and to refuse to bother oneself about the seeming errors, so that the mind may be free to think out and to register only good, and the nose (the organ that the mind has built to help it in its work of taking in that which is required and of leading the body into pleasant experiences only) may be kept clean and open and keen to respond. //page 66 To realize that one has God-given capacity for judging righteous judgment and to understand that this judgment can and will keep one from bitter experiences and enable one to discriminate in all things, is one of the greatest blessings we have. The faculty of judgment has built the sense of taste, and when we are giving the attention to this faculty that we should, our taste helps mightily in the care of our bodies. There are the other senses, which are equally fascinating and perhaps more subtle. But this is enough to show what we mean by spiritual study, which re- educates us and enables us to go on from where many of us have stopped. Daily declare that your spiritual life and world, your mental life and world, your physical life and world are unified and that you are expressing harmoniously the ideas of the Christ Mind on these three planes. Know that your everyday physical life can and should be inspired and happy and purposeful, yet not strained and tense, and that it is never necessary to do that which is harmful or weakening to any of the functions or organs in accomplishing what is right and just and worthwhile and expedient. As you practice mentally seeing God's plan and world in your life, you will find that you are more poised, that you will do just the right thing, and that your body will be healthy. The realm of mind is even more fascinating than the manifestation of its ideas. One who strikes a balance //page 67
between the study of the mental side and the manifestations, and in living in his threefold being is truly blessed. He is free, and joyous, and can keep healthy and prosperous. The past does not worry him, the future does not entice him; he knows that a full measure of good is his, here and now. He profits by the past, glories in the now, and is fearlessly looking toward the future! //page 68
Developing Our Faculties The only way to abide in cosmic consciousness is to develop Christ consciousness, the abiding realization of oneness with God-Mind and of its ideas as directing all the faculties in fulfilling the divine purpose in being. All true followers of Jesus Christ are required to discipline the human self in the journey from the personal to the Christ consciousness. The human part of us wants to cling to things visible and to other people, but as the impersonal, spiritual Christ finds expression we gradually cease to lean upon these material limitations. Our spiritual faculties become so strong, vital, and substantial that we are able to contact the great invisible through them. When these faculties are well developed, the invisible reality becomes to us even more real and substantial and enduring than material things are to the senses. We study God as mind, and people as mind; and we find that in the expression of divine ideas people have definite centers of consciousness, which the soul has built through its effort to use divine ideas or qualities of being. We have found that there are twelve central or basic centers of consciousness, which are the result of the soul's use of the God qualities of life, love, wisdom, power, and substance. These centers of consciousness are centers of God-Mind; but they have //page 69 built the physical organism through which they express. We have twelve locations in the body, where the soul expresses definite qualities, which go to make up the Christ consciousness—at least we term it Christ consciousness when the individual is expressing himself under divine law. Developing these latent powers and capacities of the inner person is the key that will open to us the kingdom and give us Christ mastery. When we do this we shall succeed in whatever we undertake. None of us are yet able at all times to keep our faculties expressing perfectly. But we are finding out that we can discipline ourselves and call upon the Spirit of God to act through us, which is the light that is given to every one of us as we come into being and that gives us whatever we need in the way of love, wisdom, faith, understanding, and zeal, and the life and strength, the power and the will and the imagination to carry out the divine pattern and in an orderly way to eliminate or renounce all that has not been implanted in us by the Father. In the development of faculties and powers—talents—in self-expression through them, and in the service to others that one must consider, in order to be truly successful and satisfied one must go to God-Mind to learn what is truly best for
the soul at the time. Sometimes a soul will get into a rut through the desire to excel in some particular line, disregarding development along other lines. //page 70 We need all our faculties awake and alert to discern the reality of Being, and to see through the be-coming things to the underlying cause and to eventual order and perfection. We find that a daily development of all our faculties keeps us better balanced. Faith and love are qualities of Divine Mind that bring us into close communion with the Father and source of all light and blessings. Having quickened faith and love, we may go a long way on life's path and solve many problems. Eventually the very quickening of these two faculties of the soul will call for a full-rounded development. Faith and love will prompt a person to identify himself with the best he knows in religious life. This brings him to a realization of the need to develop the Christ powers; also the need to give up old race beliefs and human fears and personal ambitions. All that does not measure up is left behind as he follows Jesus Christ in calling and educating his disciples or faculties. Love without the cooperation of wisdom and good judgment and will would not give us the well-rounded expression that we desire, yet purified love will make it much easier to direct these other faculties into accord with the Christ pattern. You speak so often of love, and of the importance of love, and the necessity of love in healing; and that you make many affirmations of love and power. Well, now, wouldn't it be well to remember that there are //page 71 a number of other qualities equally important, and that the development of these is just as necessary as is the exercise of love? God is love, but God is also life, power, strength, and substance. Love is little more than affection and animal devotion, until other faculties are developed to the point of enabling the individual to see and understand in others that which is loved. Faith must be active; discrimination or judgment must help one to see the real and to understand that which appears perhaps unlovely; imagination must picture the God qualities in one's fellows and in one's environment that are lovable; understanding must keep the love from becoming negative or selfish; will must hold one to a true course and to that which the good judgment indicates as best; renunciation plays its part in that it helps us to give up that which would hinder development. Strength must be recognized as from within and be so established that it supports every other faculty.
Sometimes in our zeal for the Lord's work as we feel called to do it we emphasize the negative side of life and substance and love until we draw about us the correspondences to those negations. For example, a great desire for purity and for helping others to know and live pure lives may cause us to throw so much of our thought energy and substance into the fight against so-called impurity and waste and weakness that we fail to have enough energy and substance to build up our //page 72 own lives and to create the loveliness that is God's plan for us. When everyone seeks to live in perfect harmony with the divine law, they will begin to see order in their lives, and discord, if there is any, will be the unusual thing. In fact there will be nothing but order, harmony, and perfect conditions when we learn to express our Christ selves. First and last one must understand and appreciate life and lay hold of the life faculty in such a way as to keep a vital interest in living and in bringing the body to its highest point of development— not necessarily to a given number of pounds nor to a given strength, nor to the point where it heeds merely the demands of the personal will and ambition—but to the goal of the radiant health and freedom that come of living from within, in harmony with the inner intelligence and the Christ pattern. The light of Spirit, quickening the understanding, sets us free from all mortal sense and the boundaries placed by intellect. In the light of understanding we behold God's presence, and His kingdom, and His children, and we see all these as one, and each in right relation to the others. The faculty of discrimination enables us to know if we have really awakened and developed the capacity for righteous judgment and harmonious expression and Christlike attitude. It is merely a matter of giving up the lesser to receive the greater. So long as our mental hands and //page 73 our soul forces are holding us to limitations to the personal, there is no room in them for the mighty blessings of Spirit that the development of the faculties through selflessness will bring. The human part of us goes through a "crucifixion," and our spiritual, Christ self is resurrected. Whatever is good and true within us is not crucified—it does not need to be. Whatever is good endures and becomes one with the Christ in us. //page 74
Spiritual Control of the Body Unity emphasizes control of the physical by the spiritual. Many of the things that we do and expect to control are not spiritual in the sense that they are in accord with God's laws and plans! Real control is in living according to the perfect pattern and law. It is not spiritual thought that prompts one to abuse the body in any way. It is not spiritual thought or desire that allows one to eat when there is no need of food, or to partake of foods that the body does not require. It is not spiritual thought that causes one to worry, or to become tense, or to drive the body in the effort to gain intellectually. A thing is not less spiritual because it has taken form and weight and color. The thing that might be termed "material" is the misconception or unwise combination of thoughts and elements that produces an undesirable result. Spirit becomes manifest in our expression of what God gives. Our religious life, heretofore, has led us to feel that our thoughts and emotions were all that was necessary to our spiritual experience; that the body was to be disregarded as of little consequence and as not responsive to the finer things of Spirit—at least not as anything of importance except as "controlled" by them. Evidently, the individual soul has felt the need of //page 75 such an earth home as the body temple. We are to realize that the body, free from the inharmonies and weaknesses imposed upon it through error, is a part of God's plan of life. We understand people to be three-fold beings. We are convinced that the regular appropriation of certain manifest life elements is required to maintain the body at a given rate of vibration—which we know as health and endurance and ability to transmute thought into action. We do not know how long such a plan will be in effect; we are not greatly concerned. But it is reasonable to suppose that we shall not learn a great deal about laws and manifestations in advance of those which are now receiving our attention until we have learned to live by them. When we can sustain the body in health and activity and radiance indefinitely, we shall have gained a better understanding of the true purpose of life and will be ready to enter upon a mode of living that may free us from the observance of laws that we may term "physical." The science of building and operating an airplane would not permit the builder and the mechanics to take just any materials at hand out of which to fashion the parts of the plane or to furnish it with fuel. Yet we know that the power to build and drive the machine is in the builder's mind and in the universal atmosphere. Nevertheless, knowing this and acting upon it, we do not seek to set aside the