LECTURE
EXPECT AND ACCEPT
Nicol C. Campbell
© The School of Truth
Source p. 197, Aug / Sep 2006 - The Path of Truth
How secure do you feel about yourself and your affairs? Are you unconcerned about today and tomorrow, and what happened in the past?
It is my experience that even for those who feel secure there come times when a difficulty or dilemma presents itself and they feel uncertain, even lost - separated in mind and heart from God. Perhaps you believe you are the only one who feels this but know that there are millions who feel exactly the way you do, fearful of the past, present and future. If you are rational you may ask yourself why you are so concerned. There must be a reason. It may lie in the unconscious mind but it is there.
But we do not have to enter psychoanalysis to get the answers. All-presence, God, constitutes His universe. He is Love and His presence encompasses the whole universe seen and unseen including you - your body and your affairs. So, whatever the cause, you need not be anxious, need not break down. Whatever it is - a personality, condition or circumstance - it is non-existent. You are like someone walking around in the dark, terrified of what you cannot see and trying to find the light switch.
But God has given you this most wonderful thing - vision. I am not talking about looking outside of yourselves, but inside. Every single thought that you think adds to a picture which is your vision of reality. I still have to ask myself this question at times: "What am I concerned about? Have I not experienced God's presence for well over fifty years? Has He (or She or It) changed? Is He not the same yesterday, today and forevermore in terms of good?" I am not dealing with a man-like presence apart from myself but with God-as-me, of Whom, while I shine His light, I can say with utter humility like the Master "He who has seen me has seen God." Your vision takes you inwards, and what it beholds is radiated outwards.
Whatever God is, release It in me and through me. God's work is finished but it is up to me how much of it I express and fulfil. But we do the thing we should not do - we look at conditions, imbue them with reality and become frightened by them. Eventually we cannot see a way out; it is the eleventh hour and something is about to be taken from us. There is no loss in God but we have literally created the very thing that we are afraid of.
There cannot be two realities. There cannot be God and. There is only God as. Everything else is nothing. I accept in toto God as Life, Love, Beauty, Health, Abundance, Perfection.
What is faith? It is the very presence of the living Substance Which is God in our minds and hearts. It is our realisation that the true and burning desire in us for good is God himself telling us what is already manifesting in and through us. If I switch off this microphone you will not hear me so clearly. There is nothing wrong with the power - I have simply separated myself from it. "Ask and it will be given you." What you ask for is what is in your consciousness, in your mind-and-heart, what you are truly expecting.
I have trained myself, to the best of my ability over the years, to expect only that which is the best, turning away a second-best. A friend said to me about a year ago "You know you are turning away your good." I replied "That is your measure of good, not mine. If I cannot have the best I do not want anything at all, because I will not compromise with God, with Omniscience, with Omnipotence, with Omnipresence." "But" protested my friend "you might lose out." You cannot lose out. That is impossible. It always hits the mark.
What is your mark? What is your direction? On what are you focussing the mind that is God's mind in you, that is impacting Itself on you momently, telling you what It wants to be in you and as you? You have to put on the blinkers that prevent you from being distracted by appearances and see only what is good and true. You have to resolve not to join those who would accept second and third best. Let them go their way. You go your way.
I accept the teaching that the kingdom of God is within me, and that It is perfect, that whatsoever I desire when I pray, if I believe I shall receive it, I shall have it, and that all things, not some things, are possible with God. I know what I believe by the way I feel in my solar plexus. If I say to fear within myself, which is simply faith in the wrong thing, "Be still and know that I am God," there is literally no-thing to fear. God is Divine Love, "the affection of the Creator for His created, tender and infinite, immeasurable and unbounded, from everlasting to everlasting and uplifting, protecting and blessing Power." This is what I believe. Do you believe it?
My whole faith is a child-like acceptance. I must have this simple faith in order to do my work. I do not have time to sit down all day long and meditate and visualise to bring something forth for this organisation. My business is to travel to the cities and deliver lectures. My work is to exalt Him, to draw the attention of humanity to His goodness, to His unfailing love.
No matter how bad a "sinner" you may consider yourself to be, He still loves you, He cannot see the error in your heart and mind. He cannot see the poverty or lack of happiness in your life because He is pure Light. That is why we call our magazine "The Path of Truth". In Truth there is no error. People say to me "But how do you know you are right?" I say "All I can say is that if this publication continues I must be right." For forty eight years it has been published. Decades ago our printer came to see me and said "You know I am a bit concerned about things. You cannot continue giving this stuff away. It is expensive." I replied "We are not giving it away. We are giving it in His name. It is His work. If we stop paying you can stop printing. We are not worried. We have found God changeless."
We cannot help what other people believe, what they do. Truth is the answer to every problem. I, especially as the head of our organisation, must keep my eye single to the good, never minding about the anxiety that may be in the minds and hearts of the others. In all these years I have been firm - God is the best there is, therefore I expect only the best, and I will give Him the best first. I will sow to reap. I will demand in His name that if I have put my seed in the ground, fertilized it and watered it, that it grows and produces a harvest for me. I will demand it, not with arrogance but in certainty of His law.
Beauty, ugliness, goodness, badness, are in the eye of the beholder. You make it good, you make it bad, you make it beautiful, ugly, abundant, poverty stricken. I am not prepared to compromise with family or organisation. This is my path and if I have to walk it alone I will walk it alone, because I know that the relentless desire in me is the Spirit of Life, of Love, of Intelligence, telling me through my thinking and feeling what is already in manifestation in and through me as my work and as The School of Truth.
What is there to fear? I know very well how you feel when you are afraid and start gritting your teeth and clenching your hands and looking over your shoulders. But God is Light all around you, in which are no shadows. He is the Solution, the Truth that sets you free from all that is negative. Your worldly indoctrination may draw you to believe in yourself as sinful and weak. But if you are truly weak then so am I. I say "God, because I am weak, You in me are my strength." I am no different from you, but my experience in seeking Truth has taught me that, if I remain steadfast in my orientation to Good alone, the perfect answer is always made manifest for me, whatever it may be.
There are no "buts" in God. If this is what I truly want ("ask in prayer"), this is what I am going to have. We learn through experience, some of it very difficult. Welcome your experience no matter how frightening it may be. Do not compromise your vision of Perfection no matter how few, even of your nearest and dearest, are able to accompany you.
In your mind, this tiny intellect, is the whole flood of Divine wisdom. In your heart is the whole flood of Divine love. Here is the body, temple of the Divine presence. Love in your heart brings you straight to God. In His presence you may reason with your mind. When mind and heart are married before God, your good is externalised as your health, your happiness, and your security.
Love is a word so distorted and misused. All-embracing Love is above sensual love and when you have this Love in your heart you desire as much good for your neighbour, or maybe someone you have perceived as an enemy, as you desire for yourself. We are not separate individuals, we are only separate centres of consciousness. There is only one Presence, one Power, permeating the whole universe - God the Good.
Think about it. Think about what you would like to give your children if you had all the money in the world and all the power to guide them - and then measure that with God's desire for you. God wants a great deal more for you than you think you want for yourself, but you have got to learn to accept it. My hands are open. They used to be closed with tension but now they are open. His life, His power, His knowledge, His substance, flows through me. If I close my hand I close every other hand. "Son, all that is Mine is yours." Accept in toto that only God the Good is manifest in your life and so it shall be.
You cannot be afraid if you have got God. "Before you call I have answered, while you are yet speaking I have already heard you" - and I have already established it. Every day I encounter people who are filled with fear and consciousness of "sin". "It is catching up with me. I have got to pay the utmost farthing" they say. No. Nothing is ever taken away. It is only we who fail to sow. If you sow your good seed, give freely of yourself, you will receive a harvest, heaped up, pressed down, shaken together and running over. You give to yourself.
We are all like sowers carrying a bag of seed at one side and a bag of nothingness at the other. Most of us are walking along putting our hand in the empty bag and sowing nothing, and wondering why God has not rewarded us. But there are those who put their hand into the bag full of seed and scatter them and reap the reward. If you are happy and healthy and surrounded by true abundance it is what you deserve. If not, you are still missing the mark. In that circumstance you may face what you feel is the impossible task of ridding yourself of wrong habits of consciousness. Say to yourself when fears come "The prince of this world comes but finds nothing in me." He is the liar that talks disease and poverty and unhappiness. The true Prince of this world is the Prince of Heaven, the Prince of Peace, the Jesus-Christ Presence, in every single person.
We have been mis-taught, including me. My parents were wonderful people, but misguided in their upbringing about the devil, and sin and sickness. "Bear your cross" they believed. My father was pure, beautiful, good, in every possible way. I have never met a more wonderful man in my life. He had to have several operations on his stomach which left beautiful scars. I said to him one day in awe "You carry your cross on your stomach." To me he was a second Jesus-Christ, his life was so exemplary. They tell me that from his tenth year he devoted his whole life to God. Yet the cross on his stomach was really the cross of anxiety over the future. Years later my mother said to my father "You do not know what sin is, but look at Nicol. He has done everything he should not do but look how blessed he is. He understands people because he talks from experience. He knows the temptations. He realises what others go through. You do not. You have never been tempted that way."
If the Master were standing here he would say "Go in peace. I see no sin in you. I see you separated from God through fear. I see your anxiety. I see the temples of the living God, and in these temples is life, and happiness, and health, and peace, and security, and abundance." Is it wrong to talk to God in terms of abundance and prosperity? Everything belongs to God and it is all yours for the asking. "Fear not little flock, it is your heavenly Father's pleasure to give it to you. Accept it, use it, and give it."
(Ref. Durban 850808)
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