LECTURE
"Thou Preparest a Table..."
Nicol C. Campbell
© The School of Truth
Source p. 4 - The Path of Truth, Feb. 2009
When I think upon the words, "My strength is sufficient unto you," there wells up within me, mentally, emotionally and physically a conscious recognition that God's strength is indeed my strength and that in any infirmity of my own, irrespective of its nature, I can call upon Him, not in the mere hope that His dynamic Force will become fulfilled in me through my human weakness, but with the complete assurance that it will be so.
I believe implicitly, as the result of many years of practical experience of the working of Truth, that it is a literal fact that a thousand can fall on one side and ten thousand on the other, but that he who dwells in the secret place of his spiritual understanding, abides, in safety, under the shadow – not of some limited anthropomorphic being – but of Almighty God, and if I could infuse into you just a tenth part of my enthusiasm in respect of Him as Power, Beauty, Love and Protection, I should feel that I had accomplished my mission for I should be satisfied that you no longer needed the support of any individual or organization whatever.
I cannot describe to you the thrill one experiences when one possesses the inner certainty that, since you and God are a majority, no personality, no outside appearance, no seeming cause can interpose between you and your spiritual desires.
All your material requirements will flow into your lives in a measure to share and to spare when you give up the pursuit of things and seek instead the spiritual awareness that understands that when you are weak, God within you is strong: that recognizes that, when you are tested, He will become through you the Power you need in order to withstand the ordeal; and that realizes that when obstacles are put in your way, you have no cause to worry for His Presence will dissolve all obstructions for you.
Unfortunately, most of us depend on people for our sustenance and maintenance, or for the wherewithal to purchase only luxuries, but the bare necessities of life, when by the attainment of this consciousness, by spiritual meditation, and the opening of our hands and hearts, our mouths and ears and minds to the Presence of Love, we can be completely self-sufficient, with every need – spoken in silence – fulfilled for our physical bodies and in our material affairs.
At one time I was very much afraid of, and upset by, criticism. I used to feel that perhaps those dispensing it could hurt or harm me until I realized that if that were true my faith was of no value, for what benefit could it be to me to believe that my body (and those of everyone else) was the temple of the living God, Who is Omnipotence, Omniscience, and Omnipresence, if any individual, or a group of people, could in any way affect my spiritual aims which are His spiritual ideas, thought through me!
I am trying to build up my life according to the pattern laid down by Christ and I am not interested in anything that is negative; my only concern is to forgive all evil, to release it and to let it go, for as long as my heart is with my God and I think and feel, act and speak in terms of love, kindness, tolerance and compassion, then I too can say, "What have these things to do with me? Follow Christ."
He is my exemplar, and I want to find the consciousness, in an ever-increasing degree, of what He would say, what he would do, and how He would react. I want to know, morning, noon and night that His Spirit of Love is my strength, and that if I can contact It, It will bring forth for me my happiness, peace and all-good.
No one has room for fear if he is in tune with God and I know that if we listen to things of evil report we become a part of them, so I do not allow outer occurrences to affect me, for if they did, all I stand for and all I teach would be worthless nonsense. I have learned that Love is the fulfillment of the Law, and that the Presence of God, as Power, extends throughout the whole universe and beyond it and Love, Omnipotence and Omnipresence, That are happiness, peace, health, protection and prosperity, are focused upon all people and flood them in a way to share and to spare.
I contend that it is no less than intelligent to practice what Christ taught. People who are labouring under some particular difficulty or struggling with an unsolved problem and who rant and rave at God, declaring that they do not believe in Him, invoke only pity and compassion from me because I know that there is nothing wrong with Him, with the Christ, or with the teachings disseminated through Him. They have to look within themselves to find where the fault lies and to correct it, for the Law by Which the whole of God's universe is governed, cannot work for one and not another, because it is an impersonal and mathematically precise code which is the upholder and sustainer of Its Own Being.
Let us not emulate those foolish people who attempt to pack new furniture into a room still filled with old rubbish, let us rather clear out our consciousness, get rid of all that is worthless, and begin to work with God. Omnipotence, Omniscience and Omnipresence – Three in One – is my Love, my good and yours as well, you and every human being appears to be persecuting you and frustrating you is but spurring you on to make a closer contact with a higher form of life that more and more of what you desire may be fulfilled in you and your daily living. If you elect merely to exist, to mill around amid ritual, ceremony and dogma, no one will constrain you, I can but tell you out of my own experience that the only approach that I know to God is that of love. Christ says, "Follow thou Me." You are all temples of God, Who is Love, and it matters not what others say and do, but for you, what you say and do is vitally important because out of the fullness of your hearts you speak, either negatively – in which case you will separate yourselves from the consciousness of Good – or positively, in which event you will see more and more of His Bounty flowing into your lives.
Christ is ever waiting to come to the aid of every human being but their own negative natures (their unbelief, their hardness of heart) divide them from their good and prevent them from setting the Law, That will bring it to pass, into constructive operation for themselves, and until they release the power of Omnipotence, that is their own strength within them; and set free the knowledge of Omniscience which will become their wisdom, thinking, speaking and acting through them in accordance with Its spiritual Ideas That will fill all their needs without robbing anyone else; until they themselves liberate this Power of Love, not even the Christ can help them, or bring forth for them that which they desire.
"Give me my own," is the prayer of the Truth student, or, as he advances in understanding, "Become, Father through me my own, not for me alone but that I may share it freely". He, like the Christ, recognizes no enemies; he sees in those who seek to impose themselves upon him as rivals only the temples of God; he closes his ears to all pettiness and looks upon all adversaries as manifestations of the body of God, of which his own body – spiritual, mental, emotional and physical – is an integral part. He knows that they are but experiences that expand his consciousness of good.
When another tries to hurt you it is a wonderful spiritual sensation to be able to get into your inner chamber and pray sincerely for his happiness and wellbeing, and while he is busy attacking you publicly to know that you can, from your heart, ask for his success, saying: "Father, speak to him, become his power, bless him, guide him, prosper him, FOR HE IS ME." That is spiritual awareness, that is the inner understanding of the Omnipresence of Good, of Light and Love and Beauty that can help and succour those who abuse you and despitefully use you; that can give its cloak to the man with his tongue in his cheek and can pray for him who would see you overthrown and destroyed, poverty stricken and diseased. If such a one crashes to his ruin do not fall into the error of thinking that God is punishing him, for God can punish you and me as much as light can produce darkness, as Love can bring forth disease in our bodies, and as health can manifest as sickness.
Omniscience can only express its All-knowledge as the spiritual ideas of prosperity bombarding every single individual in the world but only those who listen, who become still emotionally, whose hearts are filled with love and whose minds and intellects are attuned to the spiritual Self, Whose Wisdom is greater than all of man's mental attainments lumped together, CAN HEAR. Only he who, knowing that man's wisdom is foolishness with God, listens to Love, will find Love, together with Power and Knowledge and all the physical manifestations of the material things that the human being desires.
Yes, verily, "My Strength is made perfect in your weakness. In your impotence you shall realize My Omnipotence; in your poverty you shall appreciate My Prosperity; in your emptiness you shall feel the consciousness of My Love; in your sickness, I will not heal you, but I will become in you the spiritual Strength that is made perfect as your physical strength."
Love has no other desire than to awaken you, than to bestow upon you its free gifts from God, Whose Hand is always open, giving, forgiving and giving; from where, otherwise, do you think that your desire for happiness, for health, self-sufficiency, protection and the mundane thing you call 'money' comes? From you! Never! It comes from Love, from the inside of the temple where God dwells, Who is nearer than hands and feet, closer than breathing, Who has heard you before you call and Who, while you are yet speaking, has answered.
What more assurance do you want of the ever-presence of your highest good? What greater beneficence can you expect in your lives than Everlasting Love eternally upholding you and sustaining you and filling your entire being with Its Bounty, to share and to spare? Surely and truly the Lord is your Shepherd, you shall not want!
_________
(Johannesburg lecture)
Lecture Index
Return
The School of Truth
Return