LECTURE
GIVE GOD A CHANCE
© The School of Truth
Source p. 76, Apr / May 2006 - The Path of Truth
It is a very wonderful thing to have the experience of the Christ-presence, not as something nebulous and abstract, but as a living reality.
The great trouble with most of us in seeking after God is we feel our minds have become too hardened by the negative aspects of life to react to new ideas, or that the effort required is beyond us. Perhaps we feel that when the time comes for us to pass over the divine Presence of Love will liberate us from all our constraints and we will find spiritual consciousness of peace. If we accept any of these feelings as true, we miss the Truth that is ready at this moment to become manifest in and through us all.
Many people who come to see me are under the impression that I find these things all very simple, that I never lapse into recognising negative conditions, and that it requires no effort on my part to keep my thinking constantly in tune with God the Good. I wish it were true, but I am just as human as you, am bombarded by the same thoughts and fears as you, and am presented with the same types of problems.
However it is a question of habit. We build up a practice of wrong feeling or right thinking, and to do the latter calls for effort. We have to keep our hearts and minds centred on God. It would appear that in any condition of strain the human consciousness will give way to worry. The more you and I look at circumstances the more feeling we invest in them, the more real they become for us, and the longer they persist in our lives.
Yet Truth is very simple. It is so simple that if you could dwell in It within yourselves you could not truly desire or ask for a single thing that would not become manifest. You see, we of ourselves produce nothing. We do not create our happiness, our health or our prosperity. All of these have already been brought forth for us, are already in manifestation, already constitute us. We are the temples of the living God of Love Who is so cognizant of our every need that before we call for any good it is already being pressed into livingness for us.
If you can live in this definite consciousness of the Presence of Good, in the awareness that comprising your physical bodies is the perfect spiritual Substance of the Father, and that This is timelessly trying to externalise Itself through you then, irrespective of your needs, be they of happiness, wisdom, guidance or protection, and no mater if you have ever heard the words "God", "Truth", or "religion", whatever you require or truly desire will be provided for you.
Why then must we make it so complicated? We give affirmations not because they of themselves produce anything but because it is impossible for any human being to cease thinking, and they provide a constructive form of thought. You are always registering ideas and emotions, and the positive declarations we give you help you to direct your thoughts into channels of good. It is rather as though you had pain in a finger and stamped on your toe to take your mind off it. I stress that you do not have to visualise, or to meditate, or to repeat assertions of Truth, nor do you have to struggle to keep your mind attuned to the Presence of good, if you can get into the consciousness thereof without all this. Hearts simply filled with gratitude and praise are the same as certain knowledge, or "faith", that everything has already been provided - and so it has.
Once I walked around in a state of stress and strain, unable to take my mind off conditions and people and to discern the presence of health where disease appeared to be, or to see prosperity in the place of lack, or happiness where discord seemed to prevail, but I knew that by using the appropriate affirmation I should be making so much more noise about God that I should be unable to hear myself thinking about poor conditions and circumstances. Now I am able to dwell in raised consciousness without such measures.
It is all a question of right judgement, but it is very difficult to arrive at conclusions where one is faced with what appears to be their direct opposites. It is hard to believe that the temple is filled with Life when it appears torn by sickness, nor is it easy to hold that you have unlimited prosperity when you have not enough to eat. I know just how you feel, for I have been through it but, even in the midst of such confusion, it seemed vital that I make up my mind about God. Did He really exist and, if He did, was He really Love? And if I was the temple of this Love, what was holding up the manifestation of this loving Presence through me? It could not be anything outside myself, friends or enemies, for there could be no outer conditions or circumstances that could in any way interpose between me and God if He was All-power and All-knowledge. In common honesty therefore I had to admit that I myself must be the impediment. In having no trust I was seeing, not God manifest as disease, poverty and unhappiness, but the effects that would naturally follow on my own concept of separation between my body temple and its indwelling Spirit.
I wish I could get you to understand what Love means. Then you would be able to say to the difficulties that beset you "I know that you are but seeming realities, accepted by my human intelligence alone, and having no place in Mind That is God. Since He is from everlasting to everlasting it is impossible that you are anything but illusion."
Followers of Truth have learned through real experience that Mind works quite independently of "brain". Imagine brain as a glass of water to which a toxin has been added. The liquid would be poisoned and if it solidified into ice that too would be polluted. But when this was exposed to sunlight, the light-giving rays of God would dissolve it back into water and finally into invisible vapour, or Spirit, and this would be completely pure, all taint having been left behind. God is never affected by the lie, it is only we who suffer in this way.
The defilement starts in the brain, arising out of what it unguardedly sees, thinks, touches, hears and smells, and this passes into the emotional consciousness where it becomes a fixation, taking on the functions of cause and producing the unhappy effects. Yet, if we prevent ourselves from being drawn into this, we see as God sees and judge, as the Masters tells us to do, with righteous judgement. We must be of too pure eyes to behold evils, or delusions. Whatever composes this in our minds and hearts is nothingness because God, Who is in the midst of us, is not only mighty to heal but is the healing Power that eliminates all that is of a negative nature.
If we are living in a state of gratitude because of the vital Truth that Love, the Christ-spirit, constitutes us, and that nothing outside can enter in and vitiate It, it stands to reason that before we call God has answered. If we need health it is already granted, if we need money to pay our debts that has already arrived, if we crave happiness the Christ-presence is already in the person or situation which we deem to be causing our sorrow. We are the temples of God, and when we fill ourselves with His presence, the Christ-presence, there is no possibility of us harbouring delusion of any kind.
When I begin to see the quality of good in you in spite of your apparent failings, recognising you as the shrine of Wholeness and Abundance, even if you yourself persistently refuse to accept it, you will eventually begin to disclose the God-qualities that I found in you - because we are one. There is but one Spirit, one Mind and one Power, and it is my task as inspirer of Truth to see this eternal Verity in you, that you come to see It in yourself.
Recently a woman said to me "Some time ago I came to see you when I was very unhappy and you were very unkind to me." I responded "I am extremely sorry. It was unintentional - I was entirely unaware of it. What did I say?" "You refused to sympathise with me, would not even agree that my condition was real. It was only much later that I realised what you were trying to do for me - you were trying to make me see things as you saw them, to share in your faith in God." That of course is my job. I feel as deeply for you as I do for myself. Sometimes I am made unhappy because of the difficulties that have been allowed to develop in some human consciousness, but I cannot descend into sentimentality, I dare not concur with the negation you are experiencing because that would merely bind it more tightly to you.
Naturally I want you to have the good. In my humble way I stand for the Presence of God - as Perfection, Love, Power, Knowledge and Protection. We in the School are helping you to know Truth as we have found It, so that you may be set free and be able to declare "I and the Father are one." The Christ-presence in you is God's presence filling His temple.
In reality you can never be one with any negative condition, because you cannot take it with you into the consciousness of God. And even if you were able to bring it into His presence saying "Here is my problem," He would reply "I know of none such." If you said "Behold my disease," He would answer "I am your health, I see no disease" and if you told Him your happiness was absent He would tell you "I am your happiness. I am your love." Perhaps you cannot now see your prosperity and you ask where it will come from, who will bestow it. To this God answers "Do you not know that I am your complete Good, that I am at this moment Life and Love ready to inundate your mind, heart and body?"
God, you see, is much more "unkind", harder, than I could ever be, for He refuses to recognise anything outside Himself, gives no power to any illusion. If it is true, and we know it is, that He is Omnipresence - everywhere equally present at the same time - is it possible for any other power to exist? Can you or anyone else withhold my health, joy or abundance? Can others deprive you of your God-given gifts? Not, I assure you, unless you yourself believe this to be possible and thereby give them dominion over you.
What I would have you grasp above everything else is the Truth that God abides in you because, when you know this, His kingdom must manifest through you and your affairs. Instead of asking Him for things, you will realise that it is already done, not going-to-be-done, and you will spend your days thanking your heavenly Father that with His presence comes all the things that you could ever need or truly desire.
Won't you try it? Give God the first chance before taking human steps. We are too prone to run around among people, places and circumstances, hoping there to find fulfilment. Some come to me and say they are tired of their present environments, that they intend to give up their jobs and emigrate to other countries. But what do they expect to find there - a different god, a different consciousness from the one through which their difficulties have arisen? The outside is but a reflection of the inside, and whether you look in a glass here or on the other side of the world you will see the same face and the same appearances looking back at you.
We have to cleanse our spiritual mirrors, to seek within and get our minds and hearts right with God and all humanity. Then, as we apprehend the Christ-presence within ourselves, and understand that What is in us is in all humanity, all Creation. It goes forth and returns to us as Good alone. His kingdom has come on earth as it is in heaven.
The above is an edited extract of a lecture that was published previously in The Path of Truth (Ref. POT 6211)
Lecture Index
Return
The School of Truth
Return