LECTURE
THE FINISHED KINGDOM
© The School of Truth
Source p. 332, Dec 2006 / Jan 2007 - The Path of Truth
The most difficult thing for inspirers of Truth to elicit in the mind and heart of the individual is the absolute nullity of negative conditions. Some think that we of The School live in a state of self-hypnosis, dwelling falsely in a reality where health prevails over sickness, happiness over misery and prosperity over penury. But is it not they who are deluded? Instead of accepting God, or Good, as real, they believe in negation. Daily we see people overcoming lack, recovering from chronic sickness, and rising out of all kinds of unhappy situations. What is real in Spirit wells-up into their mental, emotional and physical reality.
Think of a very tall skyscraper, perhaps the tallest office block in the world. On the ground floor is all the hustle and bustle, the conflict and turmoil of unfulfilled striving. Above this are dozens of other floors, each a home of consciousness - good and not-good. At the very top is the viewing deck. There is spread out the panorama of the city, and everyone is invited to go up and enjoy this view. You can walk up the many stairs or take the express elevator. Yet most are too lazy to make the effort or too fearful to take the lift. They remain below, gazing skywards, longing to reach the summit but taking no practical steps whatsoever. They remain in the frustrating and fruitless environment of the ground floor.
Everyone could attain the peace and beauty that awaits them but, until their own desire propels them to do something about it, they remain where they are. No "higher power" transports them or forces them to act.
Is the Christ-message that you should live in turmoil and misery? Does the Presence of God in you say "I have come into the consciousness of this world through you that you may have more abundant poverty, disease and wretchedness"? Surely not. God-as-you is Love and Perfection, knocking at your heart and mind as longing and discontent, inducing you to arise out of your material awareness, pleading with you to worship Spirit, to put Him first - after which, He promises, all the things that you need and truly desire will be added.
The other day I heard two men discussing a third person who, it seemed, was very wealthy, and they were criticising him and attributing malevolent motives to him. I thought "How futile this is. Here we have a person with a consciousness of wealth, who in consequence prospers and lives in affluence, and two others who could have the same awareness (since the same Presence constitutes both them and him) but they are filled instead with jealousy and frustration, which can produce only of the same kind. As long as they continue in mind and heart along such negative lines, they condemn themselves to unfulfilment and lack."
When I see that you are happy I do not envy you - I share in your happiness. When I recognise your health I am not jealous of it - on the contrary I am grateful for it. And if you have great wealth I participate in it, for I know that what you have I too can bring into being. It is all a question of trust, trust in the unlimited Substance of God, a directed, activated faith that reduces to nothingness disease in the body and releases itself through the heart as peace, or the spiritual ideas necessary for your progress and success. But if courage is lacking, if we are not prepared to take the steps in ourselves that confirm the Ideal we are following, then we shall be unable to rise above conditions.
Who, in the whole world, can interpose between you and your God-consciousness? Surely there is no-one so great and powerful that they can thwart the Father's purpose in you. If you are at one in mind, heart and endeavour with All-power, every door will open that leads to your highest good and fulfilment. There must in you be constant recognition of Spirit, of God, persistent denial of negative appearances, affirmation that God is all, and all is God.
I have never come across anything that is greater than God. No human being can be so closed-in and unresponsive that they cannot be opened up by Him Who constitutes them. I have looked at apparently insurmountable obstructions - as you do daily - and have found them to be illusions, real to me only as long as I bind them to myself by my own negative thinking. The moment that you see such impostors for what they are, when you recognise the Allness of God, the seeming condition is dissipated as darkness dissolves when it encounters light.
The only thing that shackles man to any kind of adversity is faith in it. "But" you murmur "I have no faith in lack (or disease or discord)." If that were true, where do these conditions come from? Would God send them, or some person? Are they the product of mindless circumstance - realities from which we can never be set free? If it were true, then God would not be All-power, All-knowledge, All-presence, Love.
If these things prevail in your life, and you reflect sincerely, you will find that you do have faith in them, that you do admit them as verities - just as I did once when disease, unhappiness and poverty formed part of my inner awareness. They were very substantial to me. But the moment I took responsibility for my consciousness, began to recognise God as All-in-all, to know Him as All-presence permeating the universe that constitutes and holds me, then the manifestations that were but lies of my own cognition, dissolved into thin air.
The instant my anxiety was dissipated, that is when I took my inverted faith which we call fear away from the conditions and centred myself, as trust, upon God within me, they disappeared. How could I possibly be poor when I lived and moved and existed in unlimited Substance? How could I experience want when I could open my hands and give freely and bountifully? It is only as we hold on to negation that it can remain with us, but if we recognise that God is the only Power and the only Presence, filling all space, in what corner of the universe could negation conceivably exist?
As I take my whole being in consciousness to my Father, the finished kingdom within me comes into expression. Faith produces both good and not-good depending on how we use it - positively or negatively. Too many of us indulge in unconstructive activity - thinking, feeling and doing - and it brings forth all the discord we see about us.
We must make a determined effort to believe in the immanence of God. Let us remind ourselves - many times a day - that we live and move and exist in Spirit, that we are temples of His Power of Good, that It abides in us as the one-and-only Reality. Adverse conditions, circumstances and problems are lies in our own awareness.
You may start out for work one morning in a very happy mood. Then you meet someone who is in the depths of dejection and, before you know where you are, you have taken on this frame of mind. In similar vein is the story of the plague in India that over three months decimated the population of a district. A traveller met Death and asked him how he could have had the heart to kill a hundred thousand people. Death answered "I killed only one, fear did the rest."
Happiness is infectious. So is health. So also is prosperity. You will never hear me talk poverty. I will never admit to myself or others any limitation as far as God's substance is concerned, because I know that such ideas are transmissible. The more I talk affluence to you, the more you will begin to accept it. The more I speak about the Presence of God as health in you, the deeper will sink that idea in your minds. The more I express happiness in my dealing with you, the more you will understand it, until eventually you begin to radiate it. All these are contagious conditions - but most people seem to prefer to spread their morbid opposites.
People revel in negative conditions. Ears are constantly attuned to gossip, hearts always ready to hurt. It is like a soap opera - the characters cherish envy and jealousy, never looking for the finished kingdom in their fellows but rather seeking out their weaknesses and faults. In these failings we project an image of ourselves and then contemplate its reflection in others. That we see these flaws at all proves that they are part of our own awareness. If we had ascended in mind and heart above all this, it would be a mere shadow that our own light would disperse.
None of us is without "sin". Everyone has some sort of skeleton in his cupboard. Is it God Who binds us, or do we fetter ourselves? God says timelessly to you and me "You come to Me, your Father, for I am Love, Power, Knowledge and Protection. Enter into my finished kingdom and be at peace. God's kingdom, our Father's house, is not half completed. It is accomplished - done. The conditions we call health, happiness and prosperity are now realities in you. Nothing has to be brought to you, but you must go to Him: "Come unto Me with all your weariness, your problems, your difficulties and your fears, and I will give you rest."
Such is the invitation of Love. Could you ask for any more? Here, now, is the alpha and omega of All-good, the Father's infinite Bounty, everywhere present, and it is a free gift to you and to me.
The above is an edited version of a lecture that was published previously in The Path of Truth (Ref. 6608)
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