LESSON 1
THE MASTER’S WAY OF PRAYER
BEGIN YOUR STUDY WITH THIS MEDITATION
God in the midst of me is mighty. He guides and governs the thoughts of my mind, the feelings of my heart, and the acts of my life to establish joy, health, and bounty in my life and my world.
IF YOU want authoritative information on any subject, to whom do you go? To the leading authority on that subject, do you not? Even if your own knowledge of the subject were quite thorough, you would be inclined to check your information by that of some one who knows as much as you do, or more. Wise men go to headquarters for what they want. They find that the head of the firm is often more approachable than the subordinates, and that even if the subordinates are willing to co-operate, they may not have as complete information as the chief executive. It is so in practical Christianity. If you have a good desire, go to the source of that desire for its righteous plan of fulfillment. As a home builder goes to an architect for plans, knowing that well-drawn plans will enable him to build the best house with the least effort, delay, and expense, so does the life builder go to the Supreme Architect for the plans of a successful life or a successful project in that life. You and I are builders. We do not create the material with which we build, nor do we in the final analysis create the plan; but we are responsible for the use we make of available material and for the way in which we co-operate with the divine plan for our life. We should go to the architect for guidance and direction. We should go to God.
Perhaps you say, “It is all well enough to say, `Go to God,’ but how are we to make contact with Him?”Prayer is your means of contact with God. “Prayer is the key that unlocks the stores of abundance and blessing. The secret of effectual prayer is belief. When we pray, we get not necessarily what we ask for, but what we expect.
“If we pray for some good thing, expecting its realization to be deferred, it will be.
“If we pray for a thousand dollars, expecting only a hundred, we shall get only a hundred.
“If we pray expecting a more satisfying answer than we can foresee, that too will be realized.
“If we pray expecting immediate response, we shall get immediate fulfillment or some sign or token to indicate that our prayer is in process of being fulfilled.
Faith: the Measuring Cup
“The reason for this is not that our belief will change what actually is true. The reason is that what is true is the perfect, the harmonious, the ideal; and that the perfect, the harmonious, and the ideal is manifested for us according to the measure of our faith. Jesus recognized this law when He said, ‘Whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.’ Again He said, “All things whatsoever ye pray and ask for, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.”
How can that be?
(How can we believe that we have something that is not apparent? The law of possession is the law of vision. You may have many blessings that you do not perceive. You do not really possess them until your vision is quickened to see what you have. A child might carry about in his pocket an immensely valuable diamond, believing it to be only a piece of glass. He would not truly possess it as a diamond until he knew it to be a diamond. Thus, though he would have received a diamond, he would to all practical intents and purposes have only a piece of glass, until he perceived it to be a diamond. Moses illustrated this law of possession through vision by the story in Genesis of Abram, in which Abram and his son-in-law Lot decided to divide their households and possessions and go their separate ways. “Abram dwelt in the land of Canaan” then, “and Lot dwelt in the cities of the Plain . . . And Jehovah said unto Abram, after that Lot was separated from him, Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art, northward and southward and eastward and westward: for all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it.” (The land thou seest! Look about you! Free your sight from the thought of prejudice and your environment often becomes transformed. How far can you see? How much can you see? How much of good can you detect? “The land which thou seest, to thee will I give it” is Jehovah’s promise.)
The Law of Vision
Again in the story of Jacob and Laban and the spotted sticks Moses illustrates this same law of vision. Jacob, you will remember, had been tricked by his father-in-law. His loyalty and faithfulness and devotion through fourteen years of good service had been discounted. Laban had promised Jacob that all the spotted and ringstreaked and speckled young animals born to the cows and ewes and she-goats should be given to him as a beginning for his own herds. Then Laban had secretly had the spotted mother animals taken on a journey over the hills, leaving only the plain-colored ones, whose progeny presumably would be plain-colored too.
Jacob might have been justifiably indignant at such treatment. Perhaps he was; the Bible does not say. He went down by the poplars, perhaps to nurse his hurt feelings, perhaps to think over the problem of what to do. At any rate he did one thing right then. “Jacob took him rods of fresh poplar, and of the almond and of the planetree; and peeled white streaks in them, and made the white appear.” Then he came back to the ranch house, and as he passed the watering troughs where the animals came to drink, he tossed the rods into the troughs. “And the flocks conceived before the rods.” A curious thing happened. When the animals gave birth to their young, they were born spotted and ringstreaked and speckled, and Jacob took them as his patrimony and went and established his own household.
Seeing spots, the animals had “thought” spots, thinking spots they had conceived spots, and conceiving spots, they had brought forth spots! In this modern day, scientists declare that mothers, either human or animal, do not prenatally “mark” their young; but Moses evidently thought that they did; and whether they do or not, it is quite evident that in other ways we mark our own lives by what we see, which may have been the point that Moses intended us to realize.
What we see, that we shall think.
What we think, that we shall conceive.
What we conceive, that we shall bring forth
Calling Forth Abundance
Vision calls forth abundance. As we look back through the past we can see that clearly. It is said that Watt caught the vision that was responsible for the development of the steam engine from watching the steam from a teakettle. Franklin viewing a thunderstorm, brought lightning down to earth in a way that prepared the world for Edison’s discoveries. Chemists working in their laboratories have learned to make rubber from weeds, perfume from coal tar, and wall board from cornstalks. Such simple things as barbed wire and paper clips have made fortunes for persons who had the vision to see opportunities in simple things. We sigh sometimes when we hear of such things. Perhaps we say, “If only I had lived in the time of Watt; if only I had the education of Edison; if only some one would finance me while I invent something worth while.”
The genius of vision is to see the possibilities of the present moment, the present environment, the things within our grasp. “Far fields are always greenest” is an old saying. Youth sighs for the olden days of romance and adventure; but perhaps no time has ever equaled the present in opportunities. Surely no country has greater opportunities than our own. Our dreams and our ideals cheat us unless we insist upon their yielding us a deep appreciation of what we have at hand. Let us meditate often upon the thought: I am alert and responsive to new ideas, new opportunities, new joys that are at hand this moment to bless me.
Do Not Belittle!
Let us never belittle our work, ourselves, or our environment. We may wish to change them, but we can usually best change them not by condemnation, but by growth. Conrad, one of the most distinguished writers of English prose, could not speak a word of English at the age of twenty-one, yet before he was forty he had written books in the language that gained world-wide recognition. Abraham Lincoln, as every schoolboy knows, was born in a log cabin, and read his few books by firelight. Genius, wealth, happiness, good health, and well-being generally are limited to no one locality or age. (Apply the law of vision to whatever seems to trouble, handicap, or offend you.) Through vision you can discern and call forth the good. Have faith in your vision of the good, and you shall prove abundantly that miracle follows miracle and wonders never cease.
Finding Your Place in Life
Does your job seem too small for you, unworthy worthy of your abilities? Strive the more to give it your best. Let appreciation of the work in hand be your job. Do a good job of appreciating the work you have to do. Look upon your work as a learning time. Learn all that you possibly can about your job. Later perhaps you will come to a time of directing others in what you have learned. When you have grown too big for your work, you will find your way into other work. When the chicken grows too big for the egg, the shell breaks and he finds himself in a new world. But he can never go back into his snug little egg world again. And once you have graduated out of your “little” job into one that offers bigger opportunities, you will find that it also includes greater responsibilities. You may then find yourself thinking appreciatively of the past-and-gone days of carefree work. Make the most of them now, and be ready to accept new blessings as they come, without regrets for those you leave behind.
Are you out of a job? How many times, when you had one, did you wish you had more time? Now that you have it, make the most of it! Waste no time worrying. If you feel that you should be working for an income, put your house in order, your house of body, mind, and emotions. Prepare yourself inwardly for the kind of work that you can do best and in which you can best render service to others. Say and realize deeply,
“Nothing can keep from me the work that the Father has for me. I go forth to find and to do the work that the Father wishes me to do. I claim my good, and I press my claim. ‘My Father worketh even until now, and I work.’ ”
“Relative” Problems
Have you dependents that harass you and make heavy demands upon you? Do what you can do for them ungrudgingly. Have the grace to withhold what you cannot give willingly and freely. No blessing accompanies a grudging gift. Look deeper than the harassing demands to the unseen bond that links you to those who look to you as a channel of love and bounty. Distinguish between the persons you love and the characteristics you find to be unlovely. To what shall you bear witness in your estimation of persons and things? What is the real truth about them, and what is only passing, unreal, the “shadow of a great thing” ? One of old commanded, “Thou shalt not bear false witness.” Bear witness, by your inner vision, to Truth. You will call forth increasingly that to which you bear witness by thought and feeling, word and deed.
If you see yourself as separated from your good by time or space or both, that is your vision; if you see your good coming only through delay and in unexpected, unpredictable ways, that is your vision; and if you see your good opposed by persons and circumstances, that too is your vision. Your insistence upon such vision may make them seem to be true for a time, but none of them is the truth. Make your vision true to Spirit. Be able to say with Paul, “I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision.” For what you see you will think, what you think you will conceive, and what you conceive you will call forth!
Jubilantly Single-Eyed
Jesus said, “If therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is the darkness!” What is the single eye? In this passage Jesus contrasts opposites in parallel construction; light and darkness, the single and the evil eye. The single eye is to the eye beholding evil as light is to darkness. The single eye, then, is the eye that sees good. If thine eye be single seeing the good only thy whole body shall be filled with light. Modernly Emerson, defining prayer, has said almost the same thing: “Prayer is the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul pronouncing God’s work good.”
By seeing not good and evil, but good only, then, our world is transformed. This is the true attitude of prayer, an attitude that conforms our mental attitude to the attitude of Spirit. As God once beheld all His work and pronounced it good, so also shall we. When we have so cultivated the habit of searching out the good and persistently beholding and declaring its presence and power, we are beginning to fulfill the admonition to “pray without ceasing.” Turning thus to God not in order to change Him but in order that we ourselves may be changed, is the powerful attitude of true prayer. It should be our first recourse in any emergency, but we should not wait for some emergency before we become familiar with the attitude and the science of prayer. We should make the prayerful attitude the rule rather than the exception in our life. Prayer is a practice that like other forms of practice has only one legitimate end用erformance. Practice will lead to performance and ultimately to perfect performance.
Let us make a habit of turning to God in prayer, and in times of stress we shall do so without effort. Let us make a habit of taking the impersonal, spiritual viewpoint of persons and problems, viewing them with the single eye, and automatically we shall find ourselves doing so, with increasing steadfastness and effectiveness, when our personal interests and feelings might otherwise be involved to our detriment.
Go First Direct to God!
Go first direct to God; go next to man as God directs.
Many times our problems are simply a matter of mistaken human vision. Greater vision, vision more nearly true to Spirit, will correct and dissolve a very great many difficulties. Sometimes when we turn trustfully to the Father for guidance and vision, the light that fills our body or material world reveals to us clearly that we should change our methods of thought or speech or action, or perhaps all three. We should, then, not hesitate to do so. “If ye know these things,” said Jesus, “blessed are ye if ye do them.”
Having gone to God in prayer for guidance and vision, the next great step in prayer is to have faith in God’s power and willingness to answer your prayer. Have faith in the power of God. “Behold, Jehovah’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save.” Have faith in His loving-kindness. “For his lovingkindness endureth for ever,” and “the God of heaven, he will prosper us.” Have faith in His responsiveness. “Before they call, I will answer; and while they are yet speaking, I will hear.” Keep your faith high. Say often, “My expectation is from the Lord.” And mean what you say. Do not confuse the source and the channels. All mankind and all circumstances are possible channels for God’s blessing to you. There are many channels, but there is only one source. That source is God. Look to Him. You dissipate your faith when you fasten it upon channels as if they were the source.
Have Only One God
It is unfair to persons to make gods out of them. They are sons of God and true vision always sees them so; but they are not God, and we should not look to them as to God. Even Jesus Christ discouraged such a view of Himself. He said, “Why tallest thou me good? none is good save one, evenGod,” and again, “I speak not from myself: but the Father abiding in me doeth his works.” It is unwise to hinge the fulfillment of prayer upon any person or circumstance. Identify your prayers and their fulfillment with God. Shall we not ask in the name and through the power of Jesus Christ then? Yes; but to ask in the name and through the power of Jesus Christ means to ask in the consciousness of Jesus Christ. The consciousness that gave Jesus Christ power was the consciousness of the Father within Him. Jesus knew the truth about God and Himself. He knew that the real nature of God is Father; and that the kingdom of God is within man. He knew the truth about Himself and all men; that is what made Him so wonderfully the Christ of God. For us to ask in His name and power, then, means to ask in recognition of God, all-mighty, all-powerful, all-present, and of man as the child of God, blessed by the Father’s indwelling presence.
Pray All the Way Through
Your prayer should not be a wish but a conviction. Not always the simplest prayer is most completely answered. That prayer is most completely answered that is itself most complete. How far does your prayer extend? To your dreams? To your thoughts? To your affirmations? Or through these to all your thoughts, all that you say, all that you do? Become a thinking, feeling, breathing, acting prayer of faith, and your prayer will find fulfillment through all the channels that you open to it by your consciousness of prayer. Remember that God answers even before you ask. Your part is to make prayer an open channel through which God’s answer shall come with harmony, grace, and power. If the answer to your prayer is delayed or incomplete or insufficient, obviously the channel needs to be cleared of whatever is clogging it. Open wide the channels of body, mind, and affairs to the action of God. Say often, with other Unity students the world over, “I am now in the presence of pure Being, and immersed in the Holy Spirit of life, love, and wisdom.” Know the Truth; feel it, think it, act upon it, and rejoice in its response to your needs.
Recapitulation
God, who gave you life, can best sustain it. Turn to Him. Prayer is your means of contact. You must have vision, for the law of possession is the law of vision. What you see, that you will think; what you think, that you will conceive; what you conceive, that you will bring forth. Make the most of what you have. Bless your work, your associates, your relatives. Be single-eyed to goodness. Cultivate the habits that will serve you, the habit of prayer, of right thinking, of vision, and in time of need they will rise up to bless you. Go always first direct to God; go next to man as God directs. Have faith. Pray all the way through. Close your study with this meditation for whomsoever you especially wish to bless: You are a radiant center of the Christ light, mighty to attract your good, and to radiate good to others.
LESSON II – THE MASTER’S WAY OF GIVING
BEGIN YOUR STUDY WITH THIS MEDITATION
I give as I would receive, richly, freely, joyously, in the Father’s name and spirit.
PROSPERITY is normally like the air we breathe. There is plenty of air for everybody, and there is likewise plenty of prosperity for everybody. Breathing includes inhaling and exhaling. Prosperity, as regards our appropriation of it, includes giving and receiving. If some one becomes fearful about his breath, he may make a very laborious matter of what would otherwise be quite simple. We can easily prove that to ourselves. Suppose we begin breathing consciously. We think, “Now I am inhaling,” “Now I am exhaling,” and very soon we shall find that our breathing becomes labored, and we feel “short of breath.” Or suppose that we begin to think, “Suppose there should not be enough air for me to breathe”; therefore we must get all that we can. We inhale, and inhale, and inhale, until it seems that our lungs will burst. We think, “I must hold onto this breath, because I may not get another!” and we become increasingly and very rapidly uncomfortable. What joy it becomes, to let the pent-up breath escape, to inhale and exhale again deeply; to be thereby assured that there is air in plenty for us to use. Perhaps we try another experiment. We try exhaling. We force as much air as possible out of the lungs. We try to keep it out. It is as unpleasant as holding the breath was. Soon we are quite content to let go of the labored process of directing our breathing consciously, and to relax in the happy realization that there is nothing to fear—except fear itself!
Simple as Breathing
If all men realized the truth about prosperity as well as they do about breathing, much of our financial worry as a race would be over; but there are still many who are fearful in matters of finance. They need the assurance that can come to them only as they definitely know and prove the law of their unfailing abundance and immediate supply to be as free, as natural, as responsive as breath itself. Indeed the root word for Spirit and for breath are actually the same word, an abiding reminder of an all too often unheeded truth. Giving and receiving are the two halves of the law of prosperity, as exhaling and inhaling are halves of the process of breathing. The Great Teacher knew more about the law of prosperity than any one who has ever lived. He was most fearless and understanding in its use. We can scarcely by study exhaust the depths of His great wisdom. “Give, and it shall be given unto you.” “With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured unto you,” He said. He was aware of the incompleteness of human vision or understanding, but He was also conscious of the divine wisdom that supplements and completes our human knowledge and reveals the blessings and bounties that God has prepared for us. The clear vision of Jesus Christ disclosed to Him that in Spirit or in Truth supply for any need is instantaneous; but that to our human perception supply is progressive.
In Truth we are in the presence of infinite supply.
In consciousness, or human perception, we seem to come into supply step by step, gradually. All about us is the air, more of it than our human mind can imagine or picture; but we “have” only as much of it as we inhale and exhale through our lungs. What we “have” of the infinite air is according to our capacity to use. We have what we can use.
What we can use may seem very small in comparison to all that there is; but we can increase our capacity, if to do so serves any good purpose, and what we can use is the measure of our content and well-being. More than we can use is as uncomfortable as is less than we require. To Spirit, then, supply is infinite and instantaneous; to consciousness, it is progressive. We need to remember this, in applying the law of prosperity in our human affairs. Acting upon the assumption that because supply, spiritually, is unlimited and instantaneous we have unlimited and instantaneous supply is acting upon a half-truth that gets superficial students into trouble. Supply is unlimited and instantaneous, but yoursupply is measured by your own consciousness or capacity. Your lungs have as much air as their capacity provides for.
Your available supply, in a practical sense, 4s measured by your spiritual lung capacity– your developed capacity to give and receive. “Unto every one that bath shall be given; but from him that bath not, even that which he hath shall be taken away,” said Jesus; and this statement applies very definitely to the matter of supply.
“To every one that hath [the consciousness of supply] shall be given; but from him that bath not [this developed capacity], even that which he hath shall be taken away.” You can develop the capacity to handle millions of dollars if it serves your highest good and that of others to do so; but if you have developed the capacity to deal with small sums only, or small amounts of spiritual substance, you may find that dealing with very large sums or very large amounts of substance is as uncomfortable and difficult as breathing great quantities of air, with an undeveloped lung capacity.
Where Demonstration Begins
In demonstrating supply, then, begin by developing your consciousness or awareness of supply; not simply the consciousness of supply but yourconsciousness of supply. This can be done in only one practical way.
Give and receive. Give and receive.
No amount of reading and study will of itself give you a prosperity consciousness, as it is sometimes called. No amount of spiritual meditation can of itself give you this desirable perception. You must use what you have. You must put into actual practice all the Truth that you read and study about, concerning the law of supply. As breathing depends primarily upon lung capacity, so does your prosperity depend upon your capacity to use supply.
It is true that supply is unlimited, that it is everywhere present, available, immediately usable; but it is no more usable, available, and immediate to you, than is your developed capacity to perceive, appropriate, and use it. Develop such a capacity if you wish to demonstrate supply. The law of manifested prosperity is the law of giving and receiving. This law, seen to be acting as regards the breath, is called respiration; in the health of the body, good circulation. In the body corporate of humanity, prosperity is still manifest as giving and receiving, as good circulation. When there is apparent lack in the world, it is not because all bounty and supply of nature have failed. At most there is apparent lack of certain products in certain limited areas, but there is abundance of them elsewhere. Good circulation, giving and receiving, would balance demand and supply. God and nature produce abundance; man suffers from want because of his own abuse or misappropriation of substance, not from lack of it.
There Is Always a Way Out
A few years ago, during the worst of the so-called depression, a man accustomed to great wealth lost all his money through the crash of stock-market prices. He was deeply depressed by his losses, and yet he could not yield himself completely to despair.
“There is some way out. I know there is,” he said to himself, and his perturbation was almost as much due to the elusive process of his thought as to his apparent penniless condition. He went to bed, but he could not sleep. He arose and paced the floor. He was restless and disturbed, yet he kept saying, “There is a way. I know there is.” Actually, without realizing it, he was affirming abundance. Finally he picked up a newspaper. His eye fell upon an item telling of the glutted coffee market of Brazil. Millions of pounds of coffee with no market. The phrase linked itself with another in his mind. Millions of bushels of American wheat with no market. He put the two ideas together, worked out a method of exchanging the two crops that involved very little expenditure of actual money, and made himself a fortune in the process at a time and under circumstances that were thought to be extremely adverse.
“When things are tight, something has to give” is a saying that we could paraphrase to read, “When things are tight, some one has to give.”
Give and you shall receive, is the law.
When people hoard their money and other forms of service, there are hard times; when public confidence returns, there is prosperity. There is no more money at one time than at the other, necessarily; there is a difference in circulation, giving and receiving.
Simply to squander money, however, is not constructive giving. To give one’s money, services, or enthusiasm constructively and helpfully is a fine art. Many men of wealth employ large staffs of research workers to study and plan means by which they may dispose of wealth in ways that will be for the general good. Oftentimes those of even limited means have found it difficult to share their substance in ways that are truly helpful.
Learning to Give Wisely
We find that simply to give money to those whose need is apparent, is not always most helpful. Sometimes it makes them less self-reliant, or it wounds their self-respect. It is not always easy to give ideas to others, even though we are convinced that if they would accept and apply the ideas we have to give, their lot would be immensely improved. But even though it does not always seem easy to give, we must find ways of doing so, and must persist patiently and with as great wisdom as we can call forth, for upon our ability to give depends our ability to receive.
“There is that scattereth, and increaseth yet more;
And there is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth only to want.”
How then shall we give? We must give as we would receive, the Great Teacher admonished. How would we receive? First, let us say, we would receive a prompt response to our needs. Then let us give promptly.
We Must Give Promptly
If it is true that we receive as we give, then how foolish it is for us to withhold until the last possible moment the payment of a debt or other obligation. If we do not give until we are obliged to do so, can we expect to receive promptly the payment of obligations due us ? Are we careless in remembering the payment of debts? If so, can we expect better treatment from others? Life is an echo that returns to us what we give to others. We establish the reaction of the law by our own acting upon it. Action and reaction are commensurate.
In the writer’s book Adventures in Prosperity he tells of a man who very nearly lost his business by failure to give promptly. He owed many debts and his available capital was not nearly sufficient to pay them. Instead of paying his creditors promptly what he could pay, he gave them nothing because he could not give them all that he owed. A Truth teacher helped him to see that even though his intentions were not dishonest, he was placing himself in an undesirable relationship to the law of supply— and perhaps to human law as well. He saw the point, and going to his creditors, he explained the situation to them and offered to apportion among them what he could pay. They were impressed with his integrity and helped him to remain in business, so that he ultimately fulfilled all his obligations, and re-established his prosperity.
So often when the human mind cannot see its way completely through a problem, it is tempted not to act even upon what it can see. Because we cannot do all that we desire to do, too often we delay doing anything at all. Give what you can, and you always can give —something. If you have no money, offer your services.
Find some way to keep “in circulation.” The poor man is the “shut-off” man.
Keep your contacts with activity, circulation, and supply.
Never harp on your losses or lacks or shortcomings. Make the most and best of what you have and can do.
The poor widow, when asked by the prophet what she had in her house, did not answer him directly. She told him what she lacked. “Thy handmaid hath not anything in the house, save a pot of oil,” she said! “We have here but five loaves, and two fishes,” said the disciples to Jesus. The “not-anything-save” and the “but” consciousness is the consciousness of lack, of postponement, of delay.
Agree with your Father now. Do not say, “I will prosper when ______________ or “I will give when ____________ ” Thank God for present supply, for what you can do now, for what you can give now. “Now is the acceptable time.” The fields are white to the harvest now, said Jesus. Whatever you wish to do or be, however great the project you desire to see fulfilled, all these things must begin when you begin! When will you begin? Now! When will you set in motion the law of increase for you? Now!
Attach No Strings
Have you ever received a gift with a string tied to it?
How did you like it?
Give as you would receive.
Attach no strings to your gifts. Do not try to bargain and barter with the God of your supply by giving merely that you may receive in return. Remember, that just as you cannot receive without giving, so you cannot give without receiving; but do not expect your good to return to you from the same channel through which you give. You may give to a thousand seemingly unappreciative and unresponsive persons, and receive from a thousand others or from only one—whose gift is as the gift of a thousand. Or your supply may come through some wholly impersonal channel. All giving and receiving is, in its highest sense, of God. God is the great giver and the great gift.
“I give as to the Lord,” is an excellent motto, true in principle and dependable in ‘fact. “What I give, I give,” says one devout student of God’s Truth. If we give expecting something in return, are we really giving at all? How many letters are received from students who say in effect, “I have given and given and given to my brother, or sister, or parent. I have sacrificed, I have scrimped and saved that he or she might prosper. Now what do I receive in return? Nothing and less than nothing. I am not appreciated.”
When Giving Is Not Giving
What, then, did you give for appreciation? Or for financial return? Can you call your giving a gift, then, if it demands something in return? Are you paying for compliments, adulation, subservience? Are you bribing for affection? Are you demanding return with interest?
Then you may not be a giver, but a usurer! Loan if you wish or if it is demanded of you and you respond to the demand; but do not call the loan giving. Have the courage, as Emerson admonishes, to withhold what you cannot give with a blessing.
What is given grudgingly blesses neither the giver nor the receiver.
As you give, so shall you receive. To give only from a sense of duty may in some instances be good discipline, but often its reactions are adverse. For instance, there was a certain woman who did not get along well with her husband’s mother. She did not seek out the good qualities in her mother-in-law, which might have inspired real affection, but instead allowed her mind to dwell on the older woman’s objectionable qualities and on her own righteousness. Only two sleeping rooms were available in the home, and while the wife’s inclinations bade her claim the sunny south room, her spiritual pride—than which there are few deadlier sins—insisted that she be the magnanimous giver. So she took the colder north room, gave the sunny south room to her husband’s mother, and gave herself rheumatism. The rheumatism was not, incidentally, traceable to the atmosphere of the north room, but evidently was related to the adverse and chilly atmosphere in which she enshrouded herself.
After many remedies had failed to relieve her of her complaint, the recognition of her own mental attitude and the desire to make amends led her lovingly to give her mother-in -law the pleasanter room, and the rheumatism disappeared. An unexpectedly happy outcome of the experience was the development of a warm friendship between the two women.
We Must Give Freely
Truly a grudging gift is no gift at all. Give “not grudgingly, or of necessity, for God loveth a cheerful giver.” What we link with our dispensations, whether as gifts or payments, becomes real to our mind and goes forth like an unseen messenger to represent us and become identified with us. Unless we wish to attract lack we should never stamp the thought of lack upon our disbursements.
A certain Truth teacher has attracted much prosperity and many blessings to himself with the thought that all that comes to him comes to him from the Father. He made no charge for his ministry, or any service that he rendered, and was easily able to feel therefore that whatever came to him was given with a cheerful, willing, loving spirit, and bore a blessing. He attributed his prosperity to the freewill offering plan, but while that may have been a contributing factor to the result, it is very likely that his own free, happy, and joyous attitude of receptivity to blessings left the way open for good to pour abundantly into his life.
The story is told of a man who very much resented the necessity of paying streetcar fare to the big corporation, by whose conveyances he rode to and from work each day. He felt that the service was poor and the charge for it unjust. When he realized that he was harming himself more than the corporation by his negative mental attitude, he made a conscientious effort to change his viewpoint. He adopted the thought that his fare was a contribution to good service; he gave in the consciousness of being well able to give—which indeed he was—and decided to leave the matter of justice or injustice of the charge to be settled apart from his own affairs.
“If the company is unjust, that is their injustice; I shall not bear the burden of condemnation in my life and affairs, or permit it to make me depressed or unhappy,” he said. His attitude was eminently sound and practical. “I am willing to lend my spiritual and practical support to any constructive improvement, but unwilling to burden myself needlessly with resentment or criticism,” says one well-known teacher.
“My soul, wait thou in silence for God only; For my expectation is from him,”
sang the Psalmist, and so ought we too to sing; looking to no one or no outward thing as the source of our justice or supply. Let us look to God as the source of our good, with the realization that He uses ways that to human perception may or may not seem to be indicated, as channels for His blessing of us.
We Must Give Regularly
“Sooner or later my good always becomes manifest for me, but I am tortured by many eleventh-hour deliverances, and many periods of apparent want and anxious waiting,” writes one student. Why should this be, when God answers even before we ask, when His bounty is ever present and never failing, when good follows good without interruption or cessation? Why, but that we establish the law of intermittent, irregular supply by our own method of giving. As you give so shall you receive. Do you give as regularly and continuously as you wish God to give to you? Are you as alert to respond to need as you wish Him to be toward you? Or do you, weary in well-doing, wait until lack rears its gaunt head in your affairs, to bestir yourself, and be about the Father’s business of serving and sharing? Let us be as regular in our giving, as we wish God to be in His giving to us.
God, the Great Giver
How should we measure our giving? With what standard shall we compare our gifts? Shall we, with calculating eye, gauge the measure of another’s gift to us, before we give in return? Shall we say with one of old, “An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth,” or shall we give full measure, heaped up, pressed down, and running over ? We shall give as we wish to receive, in the same measure of abundance, in the same rich, free, generous spirit, with the same promptness and regularity. We should not try to bargain with God!
The law of prosperity, whose first action is giving, comes so closely into the heart of being that we can scarcely expect to weigh and balance it by numbers and calculations. At the center of our own heart we are one with Him. In us He is the great giver, in others He is the gracious recipient. Let all our dealings be as for the Lord, and in His name and Spirit.
We should give, because it is Godlike to give, and with all our giving, we cannot equal the gifts of our Father, who more than His children knows how to give good gifts. How little we know Him that we should fear the withholding of some good! How much we need to stretch our spiritual capacity to hold even a small fraction of all that He has prepared for us! Could we with spiritually illumined vision behold the wondrous things out of His law that He has prepared for those who love Him, how briefly should we cling to the tinseled baubles that we clutch in fearful hands!
God’s Promises
Listen to Him: “Be not afraid.” “Prove me now herewith.” “All these things shall be added.” “It is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” Promissory notes are these, signed and sealed by the hand of God, who above all His creation is to be trusted!
Recapitulation
Giving and receiving are the two halves of the law of prosperity. We must give as we would receive. To Spirit, supply is instantaneous; to consciousness it is progressive. To have greater abundance, we must develop greater capacity to receive, appropriate, and use it.
There is always a way of demonstration. When things are tight, something must “give.” We must find ways to give intelligently, thereby starting circulation, and opening ways for receiving what we desire.
We must give as we would receive, promptly, without strings attached to our giving. We must give without expectation of return. We must give freely and regularly. We must give in the spirit of God’s giving, and trust Him to fulfill His promises to us.
Close your study with this meditation for whomsoever you especially wish to bless:
You are a radiant center of the Christ light, mighty to attract your good, and to radiate good to others
QUESTIONS LESSON II
• 1. Of what does the law of prosperity consist?
• 2. Should we be anxious about supply?
• 3. Is our good ever delayed or withheld ?
• 4. What, in a practical sense, determines our supply ?
• 5. What should we do if we desire greater prosperity?
• 6. Can we expect knowing the Truth about prosperity to transform our life?
• 7. What is another expression that describes the law of giving and receiving?
• 8. Should we be discouraged when we are faced by apparent lack ?
• 9. Is there ever truly a need without supply?
• 10. How can we set the law of supply into action in our life when faced by apparent lack?
• 11. Is it easy to give wisely?
• 12. What determines the manner in which we receive?
• 13. Name at least four standards of giving that are important in our demonstration of prosperity.
• 14. Shall we look for returns from our giving?
• 15. How can we increase our conception of giving?
LESSON III THE MASTER’S WAY OF RECEIVING
BEGIN YOUR STUDY WITH THIS MEDITATION
All that the Father gives me comes to me, and I receive it in His name, gratefully and joyously.
IT IS a fine art to be a successful giver, and it is more blessed to give than to receive; but it is, I believe, more difficult to receive good gifts graciously and well than it is to give.
In metaphysical literature so much emphasis has been put upon giving as a requisite to prosperity that comparatively little has been said about the equally important subject of receiving. Many persons, conscientious to the last degree in regard to giving, have not yet learned to be good receivers.
Sharing the Joy of Giving
Consider, for instance, the person who always wants to be the giver. Perhaps subconsciously he believes that continual giving establishes him in human thought as a generous, magnanimous, unselfish individual. A certain Truth teacher once had this brought to his attention in an interesting way. He had had several opportunities to assist a member of his flock, a little old lady whose worldly possessions were very meager.
One day, to show her gratitude, she came to him with a love offering—two dollars in nickels, dimes, and even pennies that she had carefully saved to that end. With great happiness and love she proffered it, stumbling through words of appreciation for all that he had done. “Oh, but I couldn’t take it,” he answered awkwardly. “What little I have done has been a joy. I wanted to do it. I enjoy giving.”
“Then,” she said gently, “you must not deny a like joy to me.”
For the first time the teacher realized that he had been holding the woman in bondage to a thought of lack. He realized that he had not been in this instance, or generally, a good receiver, and had been closing avenues of spiritual supply by looking at what seemed to him the limitations of the channels rather than the bounty of the source. He had been selfish in his very acts of generosity and service.
The act of receiving is passive, while that of giving is active. The passive position is more difficult to occupy with poise and grace. The giver has all the advantage of position. He has the spotlight, so to speak. The receiver takes second place. All praise and honor, then, to one who can take second place with poise and graciousness, permitting another to have the joy of giving.
The person who is unwilling for somebody else to “get ahead of him” does not make a good receiver. He is the type that cannot bear the thought of being under obligation, if it be only the obligation of courtesy and good breeding. He is the type of fellow who, if you invite him to have a soda with you, will insist upon taking you to dinner!
A Friendly Attitude
Another test of the good receiver is his attitude toward newcomers and new ideas. If he is inhospitable to strangers, to new acquaintances, to innovations, he may very well be missing some blessing that the Father is seeking to bring to him through such channels. Back of such an unfriendly attitude an inferiority complex may be lurking. It may be merely shyness, or it may be fear of competition or rivalry. In any case, one who seeks to follow the Christ should learn to adopt a more friendly attitude.
Complexes often masquerade in queer ways. For instance, there was the case of two friends discussing a new acquaintance. “You don’t like that man, do you?” challenged the first. “No, but how did you know? Wasn’t I polite to him?” asked the second. “Yes, you were. That is how I knew.”
The good receiver is warmhearted, unselfishly willing to welcome new friends, new ideas, new interests. He is willing, at least part of the time, to let others have first place in human contacts; to give the joy of giving, and be content and grateful to be a receiver, a good receiver, who accepts in praise and joy the blessings of the Father, regardless of the channels He may use.
Snubbing the Familiar Gift
Apparently the opposite of the poor receiver who snubs newcomers, is the one who saves his receptive attitude and friendliness for strangers, and is oblivious to familiar friends and to the value and beauty that are present in daily associations.
Sometimes only the enthusiastic appreciation of an outsider for members of his family, or his home, or his job will arouse him to a sense of their value. It is this type of person which occasioned the saying that “a prophet is not without honor, save in his own country.” He is like the man who, having a celebrity pointed out to him, takes a second look, and says, “What? Him? Why, he cannot amount to anything. Why, I knew him years ago!” And of course there is the greatest of all examples, that of Jesus the Christ. “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” said the scoffers—Nazareth the near at hand, the humble.
“Seconds”
Have you ever tried to give a gift to some one who has no sense of values—an especially fine bit of art work, a garment of superior material, a “gem of purest ray serene”—only to discover that a “second-best gift” would have been appreciated as much or more? To whom, think you, shall God’s choicest gifts go? By the law of attraction, to him who loves them most, of course! Let us be grateful for all gifts, neither so lacking in a sense of values that we cannot properly appreciate the finest gifts, nor so exacting that we cannot appreciate a simple gift and recognize the richness of spirit that gives the gift.
Sunflowers and Ear Muffs
Years ago, a youth scarcely out of my teens, I stood before a congregation to give my first sermon. At its close a number of gifts were presented to me by loyal friends who saw me not for what I was but for what they visioned as an ideal. Among the gifts was a bouquet of flowers; but not ordinary flowers, not an ordinary bouquet—and certainly not an ordinary giver. They were sunflowers! And the giver was the oldest member of the church, who had grown them in her garden, and taken great pains in choosing and arranging them. She had chosen them for a symbolism that she considered appropriate, and undoubtedly they were one of the most thoughtful gifts I could have received.
Was I a good receiver? It happened that I had never admired sunflowers. Receiving flowers in public is at best an ordeal for a very young man; receiving sunflowers was decidedly disconcerting, although I am puzzled now why it should have seemed so. For a moment embarrassment threatened to engulf me. Then some of the impulses that were back of the gift made themselves felt, and I am grateful that I could feel a genuine sense of warm appreciation in accepting them.
The same elderly friend was responsible for another gift that has given me many a chuckle of mingled appreciation of a kindly thought and amusement at the form it took. I was planning to leave my California charge for a lecture trip through the East, and the motherly soul, appalled by the thought of the frigid temperatures I should experience, had prepared a gift patterned on memories of many years ago—a pair of black velvet ear muffs, made with elastic around the puckered edge, so that when worn they could be clamped ingeniously and securely over the ears and would bob out jauntily and very conspicuously at either side of the head!
Truly a test of good receiving, they were, but a test not hard to pass when one viewed the eager, anxious face that awaited approval. Perhaps to receive simple and humble gifts with sincere gratitude is preparation for receiving finer ones; certainly any one who is alert and responsive to the rules for being a good receiver will demonstrate the fact that God loves to give good gifts to His children, and that they become abundantly manifest through channels that are responsive and receptive.
Our Nearest Relative
We can freeze the proffered blessings of Spirit out of our life by too great a formality and politeness. Even in our meditations, which should bring us so closely to the great loving heart of the Father, I wonder if we do not, figuratively, push God away from us by our precise and formal prayers.
Many who eagerly seek the material gifts of God are inhospitable to His greatest gift, the gift of Himself. Of all men Jesus alone seemed perfectly at ease and at home in the conscious presence of the Father. To Jesus, God was an intimate and friendly presence. The words of the Master unmistakably reveal this sense of intimacy. It was not a pose or an affectation. To Him God was even more vitally present than were His human associates. Witness His words at the raising of Lazarus: “Father, I thank thee that thou heardest me. And I knew that thou hearest me always: but because of the multitude that standeth around I said it.” It was as if He were apologizing for an attitude that seemed not to recognize the truth that He and the Father shared. “You and I know,” He seemed to be saying; “but I must talk things over aloud for the sake of these dear folk who do not understand as we do.” God is our nearest relative. He is our Father, closer to us than our earthly parents, closer to us than any physical environment or condition, nearer even than our bodies.
“Closer is He than breathing, Nearer than hands and feet.”
Yet though God is so intimately near to us, most of us have not been very good receivers of His presence. We think of Him, speak of Him, and address Him, as if He were a great distance away both in respect to space and understanding. In the mind’s eye of humanity God is somewhere out in the great space between the worlds, surrounded by twenty-four elders and a number of strange beasts! They picture Him as an old man and treat Him as if He were a storybook stepfather rather than the loving Father whom Jesus knew and addressed with such appealing trust and confidence. How can we be truly good receivers of the gifts of God, unless we receive God Himself? Do not His presence and His relationship to us constitute the greatest of gifts?
Qualifications
It takes a big person to be a truly good receiver.
He must learn to receive gifts from others without feeling humiliated by being given something.
He must not rob the giver of his joy in giving.
He must prepare himself to receive by being receptive and appreciative. He must be grateful for little things if he would receive the more abundant gifts of the Father.
He must remember God as the great Giver and the great Gift. He must behold the Father through His sons and daughters who act as agents for His bounty and blessing.
He must “rise to the occasion” when some one intrudes at an inopportune time. The gift he bears may be disguised. It may seem that he has come to get instead of to give. The good receiver must look beyond the outer appearance.
He must say: “My time and my service belong to God. I use them in His service, and He brings to me those who can serve me and whom I can serve in God’s service. He who calls forth some good quality in me—patience, kindliness, service—does me a service. He gives me an opportunity to use wisdom, love, and discrimination. I will be a good receiver.”
Christ Jesus said, “No one cometh unto the Father, but by me.” I will say in His name, “No one cometh unto me save by the Father,” and I will think and act upon that realization.
Self-Examination
Would you like to receive more richly and abundantly of the riches that the Father has for you? A kind of self-examination, by which you may readily check up on points that you would like to strengthen in consciousness and others that you would perhaps like to eliminate, is embodied in the following questions:
• a. Do I resemble any of the poor receivers we have considered in this lesson?
• b. Am I unselfish? Will I generously let another have the “more blessed” joy of giving when it is “his turn”?
• c. Am I hospitable to strangers and to new ideas? Do I give them fair consideration? Can I recognize a gift when it comes in unfamiliar guise? Do I welcome it?
• d. Am I friendly? willing to put others at ease?
• e. Am I agreeable to family and friends? Do I express gratitude for familiar blessings?
• f. Am I discriminating? Does my appreciation invite the best gifts or suggest that second-best ones will do as well?
• g. Have I cleared the channels (by giving) for blessings that I desire to receive?
• h. Am I afraid to let down the bars? Do I make it difficult for persons to reach me?
Look upon your answers to these questions, if you answer them, neither as blame nor praise. If you can answer them in a way that reveals a constructive consciousness, be grateful; if not, put this lesson into practice by being a good receiver of the suggestions for development that the questions offer.
Passing the Final Test
The final test of being a good receiver is this:
How do I receive a confidence?
Sometime in a moment of human need perhaps you have felt led to share a confidence with some one. Later, when the crisis of feeling had passed, you looked back upon the experience and realized that you had shared more of your inner thoughts and feelings than you would ordinarily have done. If when thus looking back you feel a sense of ease and gratitude in the assurance that your self-revelation has been understood and respected, you may be certain that your confidant was a good receiver.
To be able to receive a revelation of this kind with such poise and understanding as not to embarrass the one who has come to you, and at the same time to cause him no after concern lest his impulsiveness shall do him injury or cause him humiliation, marks you as a good receiver. Through such a consciousness you will attract to yourself many good gifts; and indeed you have already attracted one of the best—the loving appreciation and gratitude of those whom you have helped.
Recapitulation
Giving is a fine art, but to be a good receiver takes even greater spiritual understanding and unselfishness.
We must learn to receive new friends and new ideas graciously.
We must not snub familiar gifts, familiar blessings.
We must cultivate a sense of values if we would have God’s finer gifts.
We must learn to sense the spirit of the giver, and receive the gift in the spirit in which it is given.
By self-examination we may find out how we qualify as good receivers.
God is our nearest relative. His greatest gift to us is that of Himself as our Father. We can better receive His manifold gifts to us as we learn to receive Him into our life and heart.
The final test of a good receiver is ability to receive a confidence without leaving an aftermath of embarrassment to our confidant.
Close your study with this meditation for whomsoever you especially wish to bless:
You are a radiant center of the Christ light, mighty to attract your good, and to radiate good to others
QUESTIONS LESSON III
• 1. Does a right attitude toward giving fulfill the law of prosperity?
• 2. In our zeal to give, how do we sometimes act selfishly?
• 3. What special grace of the Spirit is demanded of a good receiver?
• 4. How else do we sometimes do others an injustice by not receiving from them graciously?
• 5. How can we link our attitude toward new acquaintances with the law of receiving?
• 6. When does politeness cease to be a virtue?
• 7. How may we lose familiar blessings?
• 8. How may we have God’s best gifts?
• 10. What should be our attitude toward humbler gifts?
• 11. What is God’s greatest gift?
• 12. What was the attitude of Jesus toward God?
• 13. Give at least five points that should characterize the good receiver.
• 14. List eight qualities that we all can develop to help us become good receivers.
• 15. What is the final test of a good receiver?
LESSON IV THE MASTER’S WAY OF HEALING
BEGIN YOUR STUDY WITH THIS MEDITATION
GOD does nothing backwards. Before He gives us some task to perform He equips us to do it—with the necessary inner power.
God does not afflict us with disease or other forms of negation to test us or try the powers with which He has endowed us, but if by thought, emotion, word, or act we choose some form of negation, we may know that even before our need arises, His love and wisdom and power have provided, from within us, an answering supply. The desire for health is universal and is in itself a prophecy of its fulfillment. God in us desires health. God in us is at once the urge to attain and the power to manifest health.
Turning to God in Love
The love of God in you is mightier than any surgeon’s knife or any chemical agent to remove, to heal, and to restore.
The love of God should be made the beginning point of all efforts to demonstrate health. Seek His wise and loving guidance. Do not be afraid to trust Him. Do not be afraid of whatever problem faces you. Fear of evil is not love of God. Do not imagine that turning in fear from negation is the same as turning to God in love. If you go through the forms of prayer merely as a form, whereas you are really dominated by fear, do not be surprised if results are not what you desire. If the conditions that you face seem powerful and adverse, grant that they seem so, but seek a power that is greater than their seeming one. Simple denial of the power of evil is not enough. Too often it is blind and fearful, without understanding. It does not erase the sense of evil’s reality. It simply covers up that sense and may even make the trouble, for a time, more difficult to dissolve.
The experience of a young Truth student who was trying to overcome a seriously contagious disease is a case in point. In the course of the trouble he was afflicted with terrifying hallucinations. He described these to his attendant. “I know that they cannot really be true,” he said between shuddering sobs of human fear, “but they surely seem so!” Mentally he grasped their unreality. Emotionally they commanded his belief. His training as a Unity student helped him in his time of stress. He was wise enough not simply to deny his fears. Granting their apparent reality, he reached past the power of the hallucinations that were so compelling, and affirmed the greater power of God to heal him. His recovery was swift and complete, with no bad aftereffects.
About Denying the Obvious
To arouse the resistance of the intellect, which reasons out the scientific and material reasons for the actuality of disease or some other negation, is unnecessary. The attitude of the “absolute” metaphysician sometimes reacts in this unfortunate manner and retards healing. To deny what is obvious seems to the intellect ridiculous.
In a certain way such denial is ridiculous, for in their own plane negative results may be as actual as positive results. Negation is not real in final and ultimate Truth. There it has no existence at all. It is like a shadow that has the semblance of life and truth in a plane of shadows, but is seen to be unreal in a higher realm of space. Such understanding will dissolve the inner conflicts of mind and spirit that confuse a student. Do not therefore resist evil or the sense of reality that it impresses upon the intellect, the body, or human affairs. Instead affirm what is so easily understandable—the greater power of God. If you use denials, use them understandingly or not at all.
The first step in affirmation is spiritual, the next is mental, the next emotional, the final step the physical. The demonstration of the healing Truth works progressively from the spiritual conception to actual manifestation in the physical plane where improvement is visible.
Do you seek healing? Begin then by turning to the one power that is greater than any adverse condition, however real or powerful it may seem—or may, to your human sense, actually be.
Do not fight the evil.
Affirm the good.
Your demonstration of results will be in proportion to the strength and thoroughness of your desire and of your persistence. In meeting some need for healing with the aid of practical Christianity, though your first object may be simply to be free of a handicap, you have the opportunity of finding something much greater. To know the power that heals is far more important than making your demonstration of healing. By centering your attention on the power that heals rather than on the physical need, you will include the answer to your need, and may gain something far greater.
Praying Through
Many a person who consults either a physician or a metaphysician for co-operation in healing is really seeking an easy way out. He hopes that he can place his troubles in some one else’s hands, and go on without any changes or concessions in his own life. He would go on thinking, feeling, and doing the wrong or mistaken things that have caused his trouble, merely being freed from their bad effects.
Any reputable physician will affirm the impracticality of such an attitude. The metaphysician is equally positive. “I will help you all I can through instruction and prayer, but your healing depends upon your conscious contact with your inward healer, the Spirit of truth,” he may say. Knowing the truth, being willing to face it and to govern our life accordingly is our salvation from our ills. “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free,” said Jesus. So says also the scientist of today.
Fearfully shutting our eyes to seemingly adverse conditions in our mind, body, or affairs does not change such conditions. Worse than that, it places us at a disadvantage in meeting them. It is comparable to cutting telephone wires if we are expecting bad news. The bad news is not changed, but we are prevented from doing anything to help matters.
Prayer whose object is healing should not be considered as merely an inexpensive and comparatively painless substitute for medical or surgical aid. It should be an improvement on other methods, or it should lead to an inspired choice of auxiliary help if that, in the light of spiritual guidance, is indicated. Nor should it stop with thought and feeling. It cannot, if it is deeply sincere and understanding. We cannot think a thing or feel it deeply in our heart without its making a difference in our life and affairs, reaching over into our actions, into our body. What we feel affects our body, our words, our life activities. Whenever we become thoroughly imbued with some idea of prayer, that idea is certain to be fulfilled, not by the intervention of a God who changes laws to conform to our pleasures and comforts for the moment, but rather by the release of greater energy and illumination into our life and affairs.
There is only one healing power, whether we invoke it through an osteopath or a chiropractor, a dentist or a surgeon, a pill or a prayer. There is only one power that heals and that is the power of God Almighty, and no surgeon in the world, no medicine, no physician could help us if it were not for that power and presence which is mighty within us! The success of these agents is in their stimulation or release of the healing power that is resident within us. Physicians recognize a phase of this truth when they speak of “the will to get well.” You have often heard physicians say, or heard them quoted as saying, “I cannot help this man, because he doesn’t want to get well. He hasn’t the will to live. Under such circumstances a physician is virtually powerless.”
On Matters of Method
What we should do if we become ill, what method we should use, must in the last analysis be left to each individual. Unity does not say that we must not use material remedies or that we must. We must seek to find our own inner guidance concerning how to meet our problems. But we should realize that God’s help does not stop at the boundaries of human knowledge. There is spiritual help that reaches past human verdicts of disaster, and understanding faith is the means of making contact with that help. This is as true today as it was in the days of Jesus’ ministry.
The Greatest Healer
The accounts of Jesus’ remarkable healing powers form one of the most interesting phases of His ministry. He healed all manner of diseases. He was absolutely sure of Himself and His powers. He spoke as one “having authority, and not as the scribes.” The matter of physical agencies for healing seemed of small account to Him. Obviously the power He invoked was superior to them, and evidently independent of them. He did not prescribe material remedies so far as we know, nor did He condemn them. In most cases He simply spoke the word; in some He touched the afflicted with His hands, or extended His hands toward them. In one recorded instance He mixed clay with spittle and put it on a blind man’s eyes.
Why, if He could heal without material agencies the clay and spittle, or the touch of His hand—did He ever use these? Certainly it was not for the virtue resident in them. He who had raised Lazarus from the tomb did not need to resort to a mixture of mud as a healing agent for the blind man’s sight. But the man had been blind for a long time—since birth, John tells us. Possibly Jesus felt the need of arousing his faith. He put mud on the man’s closed eyes, and told him that when he had gone to the Pool of Siloam and washed, he would be able to see.
Can you imagine the blind man’s state of mind? “When I get this clay off my eyes I shall be able to see,” he would be thinking. As he scrubbed his eyelids in the waters of the pool, “I’ll soon have it off and be able to see,” he would be saying to himself. His thought would be turned from the acceptance of blindness to the acceptance of sight. Perhaps he would also see what Jesus may have wished others to understand: that the clay was a symbol of the falsities of life that blind our sight to Truth. As we dissolve them, wash them away in the cleansing waters of thought, we shall see again. No sin of commission was responsible for his blindness, Jesus implied. He was blind that God might be glorified in him. Glorified by the demonstration that God can heal blindness? No, glorified by men’s clearer vision of His truth. “One thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see,” the healed one said.
He spoke for all of us who, having been blinded to spiritual Truth by material things, at last arise and rub the clay from our eyes, and see! “I have been blind long enough. Now I see,” we say; and this process is repeated times without number as we mount upward in spiritual attainment. What once seemed the vision of all knowledge pales before the brighter light of higher things.
What Jesus Did—and Why
As the fame of Jesus spread, every act of His assumed a special significance. When He healed the Gadarene demoniac and swine ran down the hillside and perished in the sea, witnesses declared that Jesus had cast the afflicted man’s devils into them. When He stretched forth His hand in kindly compassion while He spoke to them or prayed for them, and they were healed, observers saw special significance in the Master’s touch. It should not be thought strange if there had been special significance in His touch, or in anything else about Him, but obviously His touch was not necessary to the healing process. He prayed, He spoke, He sent His word, and the afflicted were healed according to their faith. According to their faith! Faith was the channel by which the healing power of Jesus was invoked. “Thy faith hath made thee whole,” He said on one occasion; and on another, “According to your faith be it done unto you.” He explained that the failure of the apostles to heal was caused by their lack of faith.
Jesus’ act of stretching forth His hand to touch those to whom He ministered was a natural, spontaneous act of compassion, significant of the love He bore them, and showing that He did not fear either physical or spiritual defilement by the touch of the “unclean.” In seeking to follow Him in the ministry of healing today, Unity students do not rely upon the laying on of hands to heal those to whom they minister. They invoke the power of God through Jesus Christ, and they avoid any act that might be misleading to patient or observer.
Divine Order in Activity
Following the Master, the attitude of the practical Christian is not to offer worded prayers for self-improvement, and then let things go at that. Sometimes a clearly realized and positive affirmation of the Truth is sufficient to dispel negation. Often, though, the prayer needs to reach further than that.
The beginning point is in the spirit, but the desired result is desired not merely in the spirit but throughout the whole being. Then the prayer must be equally pervading. Go first direct to God therefore. Go next to man or the material world, as—and if—God directs! God knows more about you than any person can know. He is more powerful than any human agent or any instrument. He may or may not employ these agencies. Without fear, turn to Him, and fearlessly make such changes in your thoughts and emotions and life activities as His guidance, united with your best present understanding, indicates. If some outward help is strongly indicated, do not let your prejudice against material help restrain you from doing what, in your highest and most practical understanding, you believe to be best. God will be with you all the way if you seek Him in the beginning and keep close to Him in your inner life.
If you have a sliver in your finger, it is easier to pull it out with a pair of tweezers than to “think” it out; and common sense dictates the former course. If you have a dental cavity, and your seeking of God’s help in meeting the need is not accompanied by a demonstrable improvement, such as the actual restoration of the tooth without material help (which I am told has been accomplished but have never seen demonstrated beyond question, it is the part of wisdom to have the tooth cared for by the very best possible dentist, looking upon him as an agent of God in your healing, and then try to keep your thought and life activities—which includes keeping your teeth clean and possibly some other consideration for your teeth—in such good order that you will not need further fillings.
Most students need encouragement, not in employing material helps when good sense indicates their use, but rather in freeing themselves from too great a dependence upon them.
Many persons have little or no idea of the vast power of prayer and right thinking in correcting negations. Only by very faithfully applying themselves to the study of spiritual powers and laws can they free themselves of the thrall of material thinking. They must come to know the powers of Spirit as well as, if not better and more thoroughly than, they have known or believed in material powers. They are unlikely to develop such freeing knowledge by continual dependence upon material aids.
How We Delay Our Freedom
A certain student is a very good, or very bad, example of this point. She underwent an experience in which one of her ankles was broken, and she was compelled to use a crutch for some time. The crutch, originally a real help, finally became a liability. She used it not only to help support her weight, but to pamper the injured foot long after its need for pampering was past.
She found that carrying a crutch got her attention that she could not so easily command without it. People waited on her. They “babied” her. The crutch served as an obvious alibi for a number of shortcomings. She was loath to give it up. When finally she did so, she carefully put it away in a closet “just in case ” It was not long before she had opportunity to use it again, for the other ankle! Life became to her, a succession of accidents, all invoking the same useful crutch.
At last she approached a Truth teacher and asked his help. “I have so many accidents,” she explained. “What must I do to be free of them?” “Throw away your crutch!” the teacher answered.
Like the rich young ruler in the story of Jesus, she “went away sorrowful.” She thought the teacher unfeeling. Perhaps she knew but preferred not to admit the logic of his advice. The rich young ruler had many possessions; she had many concessions because of her crutch! So she kept it, for the time at least. How often we hold ourselves under bondage to troubles from which, if we chose, we could be free! We let our vanity, our desire for sympathy, our prejudices, even our faith in the law of cause and effect, bind us.
Correction, Not Punishment
A little knowledge sometimes is a dangerous thing.
We come out of the belief in chance only to accept a new bondage when we see that life is ruled by law. We interpret that law according to our own vision, and we say: “I have made physical mistakes; I have spoken negative words and thought negative thoughts. Therefore I must suffer evil results.” But God is better than we have yet realized. We make a grievous error in assuming that God punishes us for the mistakes that we have committed and that nothing should interfere with that reaction until it has done its complete work. The purpose of such reaction is not punishment, but correction. We suffer not that we may be punished but that we may learn.
When a teething baby chews his little fingers, if there were no pain, he would chew them off. Chewing his fingers helps to bring his teeth through the gums—which is good. Pain, which checks him from chewing too hard, also serves a good purpose. If we have gotten our life into a distressful condition and we can realize why that condition exists and can see the logic of its appearance, already then, in some degree, the law has fulfilled its purpose in our life and we may with perfect justice and logic invoke the healing law of God.
Healing from Within Out
How long will it take me to be healed? Healing is instantaneous in Spirit; usually it is progressive in the consciousness and in the body that expresses consciousness. In cases of instantaneous healing one of two things evidently happens. Either the one who is healed has let go of all that bound him to disease and embraced that which identifies him with health, or else he has come into healing under a strong stimulus—that of a healer’s faith and power, or his own faith or fervor. When stimulus is the immediate cause of his recovery, the patient must do after the healing what the other type of patient has done previous to the healing.
The real healing is concerned primarily with the inner man, secondarily with the outer man. When God heals, the healing process is from within out. A remarkable case of healing is reported by a teacher who ministered to one afflicted with a very repulsive and terrifying bodily condition, an open wound that would not heal and seemed to become continually worse. The teacher recalled a statement that she had read: “In all spiritual endeavor the place to begin is with God.”
Resolutely she closed her eyes to the discouraging appearance and turned to the inner principle of life working within the patient. She knew his body to be the temple of the living God, and she proclaimed the glory of the Lord filling His temple. She thought of the innate, central essence of Spirit working even within the ugly wound; she knew that principle to be holy, pure, and powerful. It was easy then to realize that that innermost principle was working mightily out through the diseased condition to establish health and peace and purity. She outlined this method of prayerful thought to the patient. “God works from within outward. He does not heal by halves. What He does He does completely.”
The patient responded to this conception of the healing power, and gradually the ugly wound began to improve and heal, until finally the last vestige of trouble had disappeared and he was restored to wholeness.
Modern Healing
True religion, in the thought of Unity, ministers to the whole man; not just to his spiritual and emotional nature, not merely to his mind, but to body, mind, soul, and spirit. “Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness,” sang the Psalmist. We are to worship Him as the God of our whole being, and we are to worship Him with our whole being. Hezekiah long ago discovered this secret of successful demonstration, and we read that “in every work that he began in the service of the house of God, and in the law, and in the commandments . . . he did it with all his heart, and prospered.”
The miracles that Jesus performed are still being performed. People are being raised from the dead, they are being healed of all manner of diseases. I have many times seen people rise up from the very shadow of death through the power of Spirit. I have seen the lame made to walk—and I do not mean figuratively or symbolically but literally. I have seen people come into Unity meetings blind and go out with their sight, I have seen people healed of all manner of diseases. These things are happening on a larger scale than most of us realize.
Even those of us who are Unity students scarcely realize how mighty is the present influence of that wave of spiritual energy that quickens life in people. Physicians are realizing it more and more. In a recent Unity class in Kansas City seven doctors were enrolled as members.
“God is no respecter of persons.” His arm is not shortened that He cannot help. That is just as true today as it ever was. It does not mean that we are not to use common sense, not to do everything in our power to keep our bodies well and make them well if they are ill, but it does mean that God will increase our understanding of this power to heal, that what is impossible to man is possible with God. There are thousands upon thousands of testimonies to that truth. The majority of healings in Unity are of cases that have been given up by every other agency of healing and that have turned as a last resort to God for help. If only we would not wait so long to do so!
Recapitulation
The love of God is mightier than any surgeon’s knife or any chemical agent to remove, to heal, and to restore. Do not fight the evil. Affirm the good.
Cutting the telephone wire does not change the bad news. Fearlessly to face, to meet, and by the power of Truth to transform conditions is wiser than to deny them.
There is only one healing power, however it is evoked. The highest way of using it is that of Spirit, “deep calling unto deep.”
To walk with a crutch is better than not to walk at all, but to lean too long upon it may delay your freedom.
God works from within outward. He does not heal by halves. What He does He does completely.
Close your study with this meditation for whomsoever you especially wish to bless:
You are a radiant center of the Christ light, mighty to attract your good, and to radiate good to others
QUESTIONS LESSON IV
1.Of what is some manifest need in our life the indication?
2.How should we look upon the forms of negation that human sense reports?
3.Where should we begin in our efforts to demonstrate health?
4.Does this mean that we should do nothing in an outward way to remedy conditions?
5.Should we deny appearances of negation?
6.Where does healing begin?
7.What is more important to us than a specific healing?
8.What phases of our life should prayer affect?
9.Is prayer a substitute for medical treatment and surgery?
10.Did Jesus ever use material remedies?
11.What was the psychology of His use of the clay mixed with spittle?
12.What is the safe rule for the Truth student regarding healing?
13.Must we suffer from disease to atone for our transgressions?
14.How long will it take us to be healed?
15.Cite a strong and helpful healing statement.
LESSON V THE MASTER’S WAY OF LOVE AND HAPPINESS
BEGIN YOUR STUDY WITH THIS MEDITATION
Christ in me rules my emotions. I love as I would be loved, unselfishly, impersonally, in the spirit of Christ.
HE WHO was so loving taught us the secret of love; love that is gentle but strong, kind but wise, deep but unselfish. You may be one of those who have “love problems” —and who has not, if we include in problems of love the sensitive business of getting along with people, of growing up emotionally in such a way as to grow with others instead of away from them?
Is there any one of us who has not at times felt the limitations of human response, and longed for the satisfaction of a deeper understanding? Do we not all find ourselves inarticulate in trying to voice the deepest feelings of the heart?
Do we not find some dregs of bitterness in most cups of happiness, and long for some magical fountain of living water from which to drink deep to the refreshment of the inner man?
Yes, yes, we do, if we are growing. Human fickleness and inconstancy in the relationships of love are often weaknesses, but not always so. Sometimes they are symptoms of strength, strength that may not be well managed and understood, but strength nonetheless, the strength of growth. Persons of spiritual perception learn to expect symptoms of growth and change in the affections of the heart as in other things. Mankind pictures love as an infant, but they expect him, unlike other infants, never to grow up. He must, they think, be always as he has been. That he is not confuses them and makes them feel panicky. They act foolishly, unkindly, blindly. They cause others unhappiness that is needless and could be avoided because they do not understand themselves or the nature of the force that, unmastered, masters them.
They need among other things the inspiriting realization of spiritual dominion:
Christ in me rules my emotions. I love as I would be loved, unselfishly, impersonally, in the spirit of Christ.
Love Finds a Way
Love serves; it heals; it reaches past imaginary boundaries between person and person; it reaches past self-interest; it finds ways when to human sense there is no way; it may be hidden from the very wise and revealed to the very simple, as in the case of an incident that is said to have happened in one of the public school of New York some years ago.
According to this story, a little girl had been severely burned in an accident; burned so severely that new skin would have to be grafted upon the burned places if she was to be well again. Some of her little schoolmates volunteered to supply the needed skin, among them a little colored boy. “But you couldn’t help her,” one of his schoolmates said. “Your skin is black.” The little chap reached out his arms. “The palms of my hands are white,” he said.
Servant or Master
Lowell Fillmore tells the story of a student who went to a great teacher with a problem. The problem was that he had so many wonderful ideas that he could not possibly work them all out. He was much troubled.
The teacher seemed sympathetic. “I can help you,” he said. “I will conjure up a genie who will help you carry out your ideas if you think you can keep him busy.”
“There is no doubt of that,” answered the student.
“Be very sure,” cautioned the teacher, “for you must keep him always busy or he will slay you.”
The student was overjoyed at having such a servant. He had merely to give the genie an idea, and in no time it would be worked out in full detail. The poor student soon became more of a slave to his servant than the servant was to him. He must be always busy thinking up new ideas. The genie worked out ideas faster than his master could devise new ones and his manner was becoming threatening. Finally in terror the student hastened back to the teacher and begged for freedom from his bargain.
“I cannot alter the bargain,” said the teacher, “but perhaps I can help you out. Look for a puppy dog with a curly tail, and ask your genie to straighten it.”
“I don’t see _____ ” began the student.
“He will succeed, of course. But as soon as he lets go of the tail, it will curl up again!” It was the genie who finally had to beg to be released from the bargain!
Our point in the story is reached before the story’s end. In the conquest of love and happiness there is no trick solution as in the story, but there is a genie whom we must learn to keep constructively busy lest he slay us, and that genie is our emotional nature. To suppress this nature is unwise, to allow it uncontrolled expression is inadvisable. We must learn instead to grant it legitimate expression and to respect and appreciate its value.
“There Is Love and Love”
Any discussion of the subject of love is complicated by the fact that one may legitimately approach the theme from so many varying angles. One is reminded of the public speaker who invited questions following an address. A very prim, severe little woman arose, and demanded, “Professor, exactly how is your subject related to the question of morals ?”
“What morals ?” was the speaker’s significant rejoinder.
So when we speak of love, some one may well come back at us with the demand “What love?” For “there is love and love.” There is, for instance, self-love, and conjugal love, and parental love, and filial love, and universal love. And while in a way it is true, as Paul said of spiritual gifts, that “all these worketh the one and the same Spirit,” it is also true that they divide “to each one severally even as he will.”
Self-Love
Of all these forms of love, the first, self-love, is most often viewed with disapprobation. Its abuses are very apparent. We see how easily self-love may become conceit and pride and selfishness. “He loves himself,” people say of the vain, arrogant, selfish person. But if a man truly love himself, he will not be vain or arrogant or selfish. These are attributes of the lower, unreal, and transient nature of man.
Correctly to evaluate self-love we must learn to distinguish between love and its counterfeits. If God is love, then love is good, and as all forms of God are good, so are all forms of love. What we see in love that is not good is not, then, truly a part of love. It is a misinterpretation of love, as jealousy and vindictiveness and hatred and revenge are misinterpretations of God.
Constructive Self-Love
Self-love has a proper place in our life, a place that may extend through our evolution of the Christ ideal; but we can most readily see the importance of self-love in the beginnings of the race and in the beginnings of our own life. On the physical plane it is manifest most simply as self-preservation. On the mental plane we see it as the zeal for knowledge. On the spiritual plane it is the recognition of spiritual identity. These are all good, and important to our progress.
Our desire to avoid pain and death, our desire to improve, our desire to persist, are manifestations of self-love. They can lead to great heights of unselfish attainment and, out of balance, they can lead to less admirable things. But let us say not that self-love is wrong, but that it often is wrongly expressed.
Self-love is wrongly expressed when it is love of the lesser self.
Our lesser self is unsure of itself and therefore often acts erratically. It is fearful of its life and in panic may act without regard for others. It tries to get by violence what it should get by intelligence. It is most conscious of outerworld values, and acts from the viewpoint of these. It seeks pleasure and content and tries to possess and hold to that which has proved pleasurable. Consequently it often resists growth and change. It tempts parents to cling to their children and discourage their development into maturity and independence. It tempts children to resort to childish artifice in gaining favors and attention that they had better win on merit. It bids us grieve for our loved ones when they are taken out of our physical life, because it sees the physical predominantly and is impressed by ideas of separation, loss, and death.
These characteristics once occupied a constructive place in human growth (some of them date back to the age of tooth and claw) ; but we have or should have outgrown them.
Love’s Growing Up
Self-love, like other forms of love, has to grow up. Love is depicted as an infant, avers Edward Carpenter, because we are emotionally immature. We are least grown-up, he thinks, in our love nature.
Nevertheless, self-love still has constructive importance. We must dignify that form of love by loving ourselves more. We must love ourselves enough not to stoop to physical violence in attempts to assure our good.
We must be inwardly and spiritually so assured of that good that we are not overcome by outward appearances of loss or disadvantage. We must love ourselves so much that we shall be loving and unselfish toward others and unwilling to insure our own good at their expense. We must transform foolish pride into pride of such dignity that it will not stoop to anything mean or common or unworthy of the kind of person we spiritually sense ourselves to be. We must love ourselves too much to betray the higher self to the lower.
Love and Marriage
When we come to even a cursory consideration of the second form of love, we are impressed again with how great a part the emotion of love plays in human life and destiny. In one form or another love rules on the thrones of the world, in its commerce and industry, in its council chambers, in its homes, everywh The redemption of love from selfish and unworthy motives, from weakness and ignorance, might well be the solution of those problems which most vex us as individuals and nations.
As Ian Maclaren says, “It is a chief moment in life when two people who were strangers to one another, are drawn together by an irresistible attraction, so that their souls cannot be henceforth divided by time or space; when one sees in a single woman that dream of purity and sweetness which has ever haunted his soul; when in a single man she finds the rest and satisfaction her heart has been unconsciously seeking. It is a revelation from above, and makes all things new; it is the hand of Providence, and annuls every argument of worldly providence.”
Jesus had a very high vision of the love that finds its fulfillment in marriage, and described it in the 19th chapter of Matthew when He said, “Have ye not read, that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together let not man put asunder.”
The question arises in every thinking mind “What has God joined together?” How often is marriage really a divinely ordained union, and how often is it merely a legal bond against which all too frequently the members chafe? Can a person sensibly look to marriage as an assurance of happiness that he does not find otherwise? Is happiness, indeed, an assured bequest of any human relationship? There are persons happily and unhappily married. There are others happily and unhappily single. Surely happiness is a conquest, and not a bequest.
The Pursuit of Happiness
People crave companionship and association, thinking they will bring happiness. The heart cries out for great attainment, for freedom from bonds that seem to tie the spirit; humanity usually follows the line of least resistance and runs the gamut of sensation in some human relationship where the beautiful desire of the spirit languishes and dies.
Man feels the stir of love; he interprets it in terms of personal attachment; and when the allurement that first attracted him is gone, in many cases nothing but bitterness and disillusionment are left to take its place.
Love is a universal phenomenon, which we mistakenly feel has its source in ourselves and its satisfaction in others. It is something far loftier than this, something that we mentally grasp only in our moments of highest vision. The sensual nature of man counterfeits everything of the Spirit, including love, which it presents as passionate desire for possession. So long as man is a slave to desire he will be unhappy. Only as he discovers the love that is of the Spirit can he find happiness either in marriage or out of it.
Symptoms of Love
A person usually interprets his attachment to some person as an indication that he loves. The more thoroughly another has the power to make him happy or unhappy, the more certain it seems to him that he has found that which will make him happy. This is an illusion. Only as such an emotion is raised to a point of freedom can we really express love.
Love gives; it frees; it is a universal spirit. When we love most truly, we are most unselfish Our love is big in proportion to its inclusiveness. It is small as we narrow it to some person or to some thing. Discovery of this impersonal, universal love does not destroy our human love, the love that makes marriage happy. Rather it fulfills the old love and is the way to happiness.
“Love . . . seeketh not its own.” What we fight to get we must fight to keep. What comes to us by love is ours by divine right. It is held by invisible bonds, stronger than any outside power. ” ‘Tis mightiest in the mightiest.” Where resistance is met only with resistance, love wins. Love wins because it seeks not its own.
But we cannot successfully use this power of love selfishly. If we think, “I will use this power of love to force others to my will, to get my own way, to attain selfish advantage,” we court unhappiness. These are not the ways of love but of selfishness and greed. They deny and contradict the very power they desire to invoke.
We cannot bargain with the forces of God. When plotting and scheming would force the coffers of heaven, they grow impenetrable to the plotters. Love is a key, not a jimmy.
True marriage is a union of souls; it must find its being in an accord of ideals, a harmony of purpose. It is of this marriage that we read, “What therefore God hath joined together.” We can scarcely claim seriously to believe that God is responsible for the abuses that often are cloaked by the word marriage, but which are an empty, vicious mockery of the word.
Marriage Problems
An understanding of this truth and a thoughtful consideration of what marriage actually involves would do much toward solving the problems arising out of the association of man and woman, and we must frankly recognize that while marriage should be an ideal association of spirit, sometimes it is anything but this. Among those who find themselves in unhappy marriages, the desire for divorce is not so often the desire for freedom from marriage as from a particular marriage; in fact the desire is for freedom to marry another, and often on the same plane of association as that on which the present marriage was undertaken.
In such cases the persons have still to discover that human happiness cannot be found in selfish love that consists in an attachment to a person. Often it may be better that the couple work out that discovery together than that they obtain a divorce and simply try another combination based on the mistaken idea. In such a case the unhappy ones should set about to find some more worthy expression of love.
Our idea of love must grow if we are to find happiness in it. We must lift love to a spiritual plane of expression. Lift up or give up is the law of life. We cannot remain long at a dead level of expression. In us is that which grows constantly in its demand for expression. When we attempt to limit it, to circumscribe it, unhappiness results; we lose what we will not let grow. This accounts for much unhappiness among married people whose children have grown up, who lack that tie of common interest which has held them together. Unless they find new and higher interests, they are doomed to drift apart. Common ideals, the furtherance of a common purpose, companionship, and personal freedom give to marriage the semblance of that holy marriage wherein the soul is wedded to God and two souls unite to serve His purpose of good.
Love’s Second Generation
In the annals of love the deep affection of a man for a maid and a maid for a man finds its fulfillment in parental love and filial love, the love of parents for their children and of children for their parents. Again we see that the conquest of love, whatever the form of that love, demands of us conformity to underlying principles of forbearance, tolerance, kindliness, wisdom, strength.
As children, how much we owe to the love and guidance of our parents, symbols to us of the ever watchful, unfailing care of our heavenly Father! Indeed, when Jesus Christ tried to think of some way by which He could convey to His hearers the nature of God, He could think of no better way than to describe God as Father. How wonderfully near to us God has come through that revelation of His nature! How many terrifying pictures of God as judge or avenger or destroyer were wiped out by that tender picture! How great a tribute did Jesus thereby pay to Joseph, the forgotten man of the sacred drama of the birth of Jesus! For surely Joseph must have been a wonderful father to inspire such a tribute. And we, by our acceptance of the concept of God as Father, thereby offer unconscious tribute to our earthly parents.
Motherhood is glorified almost beyond sonship in much of Christian theology, and is the object of more widespread humble veneration than almost any other human state of being.
One of the great religions of the Old World, that of Confucius, was largely based upon the veneration of parents by their children, described to us sometimes as ancestor worship. It is not strange that this should be so when we reflect upon the great number of blessings that come into our life through the agency of our human parents.
The love of children for their parents, too, has called forth some of the most beautiful qualities of character with which humanity is endowed. This is epitomized in Jesus’ tribute to Joseph and in His last tender care for His mother, when from the cross He bade John be as a son to her. How must that thoughtfulness and love have comforted her!
God’s Children
How many human problems would be solved if parental love were always as wise as it is strong and deep! If only, as parents, we could remember: That our children are God’s children before they are our own!
That they are not necessarily “little souls” because they are born into little bodies.
That they are individuals, associated with their human parents for the working out of life experiences, perhaps as much for the parents’ benefit as for the children’s.
That we keep their love best by freeing them instead of by binding them.
That love should guide and direct but not dominate children as they grow up.
Parents do not always understand their children or children their parents. Love is not always so articulate as it is deep. Sometimes it is misled by outward circumstance. For instance, it is apparent that Mary did not always understand that great son of hers. He did not follow the traditions that she, as a devout Jewess, had been reared to revere.
Against established custom and authority He took a stand upon occasion that must have seemed to her not only dangerous and unwise, but even heretical. Her few timid words of remonstrance apparently fell on deaf ears. Ever since the time when as a boy of twelve Jesus had lingered behind the family in Jerusalem to be with the priests and sages in the Temple, and had uttered those half-gentle, half-rebuking words “Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business,” there had been something strangely “different” about Him, something unfathomable. She could only love Him, and trust Him, and follow after Him on the brave and lonely way that wrung her heart with fears for His safety and well-being and, helpless except for prayers, watch Him as the grim shadow came closer and closer.
Did Jesus sense this? Did He sometime long for a deeper understanding on the part of His family? “Who is my mother? and who are my brethren?” He once asked. Perhaps He understood better than we know. He had chosen a path of life that few could follow. It would have been as wrong and needless for them to go His way as it was essential for Him to go the way He had appointed. May not His very love for them have bidden Him push them away? Away from needless trial and hardship. Surely His love never faltered or the last tender token of it could not have been unfolded.
Love “came of age” in Jesus as in no one else that we know about. It was not childish affection. It was not a love limited to the narrow circle of the average person. With Him it did not exclude human, friendly expression, nor did it stop there. He loved Mary and Martha and ‘ Lazarus. John is spoken of as His “beloved disciple.” But the love of Jesus reached past them to embrace the world. Here is the secret of His seemingly unfeeling question “Who is my mother? and who are my brethren?” It was not that He loved them less, but that He loved all mankind past common understanding. He did not reject His family by His question. He simply included others. He loved with a universal, all-embracing, selfless love, that was big enough to include us all, yet he did not forget to love John, and His mother, and Joseph, and the thief on the cross, and little children, and most of all His Father in heaven. Is this then the way to happiness ? Yes, I believe that it is. The antithesis of much that we have thought to be the basis of happiness, it is nevertheless a way that proves itself as we put it into practice.
We may never know it at all from reading or hearing about Jesus, because what seem to us the tragedies of His life loom large in the outward picture. That unfortunately is all that most of us see. However, if we could view the inner life of Jesus, I think none of us would dare to call Him sad or unhappy. He was doing the will of the Father within Him. He was not forced to say that He did not find in His life the joy of which He often spoke. Perhaps happiness would not lie for any of us in circumstances like those of Jesus’ life; but surely happiness for us does lie in being as true to our own highest self as He was true to the Christ within Him, and in loving as He loved, as wisely and unselfishly and completely.
Recapitulation
Love must be gentle but strong, kind but wise, deep but unselfish. It must grow from the infancy of Cupid to the maturity of Christ.
We must love ourselves not less but more; enough to refrain from pettiness. When we love others most truly, we are unselfish.
Love is a universal phenomenon. Love is a key, not a jimmy. What comes to us by love is ours by divine right; what we fight to get we must fight to keep.
Universal love does not destroy, but rather uplifts our human love.
True marriage is a union of souls, and is manifest in accord of ideals and harmony of purpose.
Our children are God’s children before they are our own. Our parents are individuals before they are parents.
Family ties do not necessarily determine who is closest to us in understanding.
Close your study with this meditation for whomsoever you especially wish to bless:
You are a radiant center of the Christ light, mighty to attract your good, and to radiate good to others
QUESTIONS LESSON V
1.Is human love constant?
2.What is the sure evidence of love?
3.How can we master the emotions of love?
4.Is there more than one kind of love?
5.Is any form of love evil?
6.What is the constructive phase of self-love?
7.Is marriage a guarantee of happiness?
8.What makes man unhappy?
9.What is true marriage?
10.When a true bond of marriage does not exist, should the legal bond of marriage be dissolved in divorce?
11.What is the pattern for the relation of parents and children? 12.What should parents remember?
13.Add your own ideas of what children should remember.
14.To whom do we look as the great example of love?
LESSON VI THE MASTER’S WAY OF OVERCOMING
BEGIN YOUR STUDY WITH THIS MEDITATION
“God works in me to will and to do whatsoever He wishes me to do, and He cannot fail.”
EVERY one in his human nature makes mistakes, but every one in his divine nature has the power to overcome them. Oftentimes neither the mistakes nor the overcoming of them is so important as what happens to the mistake maker in the overcoming process.
How often the lesser conceals the greater. We work for some little goal and take steps toward a bigger one. It is almost as if some benign power were giving the little self of us some blocks to play with while our giant self builds a skyscraper.
Our Efforts Open Ways to Bigger Things
A man stumbles over a rock and finds a gold mine.
Columbus sets out to prove the earth is round by going the “wrong” way to India, and bumps into America.
A clerk quits his job only to learn that his promotion was imminent; but he is virtually forced into a much better position, and the course of his life is changed.
Yes, even our so-called mistakes seem to be of divine direction. But are they? Suppose the mistake had never been made? Should we have missed the blessing? For the time, perhaps; but evidently there is something mightier than circumstance working through our life. As water seeks its level and despises no channel however humble or circuitous to reach its parent sea, so does that something in our life work through varied circumstance to bless us.
We are one with the inescapable good. What difference, then, what course we take through life? Simply this: That it is possible to use a very great deal of time and energy in learning ways not to do things! If for some real or fancied reason we do not learn otherwise than by the trial and error method, we must learn through that method. In the process of learning we shall find many blessings. We shall grow in matters of tolerance and patience and courage and faith—no mean growth! But by choosing our course of thought and action with deference to the spirit within us we shall learn with less effort and stress will be our peace and joy, the speedier will be our demonstrations, the more rapid our advancement in spiritual attainment.
Meet Circumstance with Faith
To the practical Christian, however, life is not simply a series of lessons, decisions, overcomings. He meets with faith and courage what comes into his life, and he knows that how he meets these things is more important than what he has to meet. He is not afraid, because he knows God’s presence. He trusts God to guide, direct, and prosper him. He is not misled and overcome by the panicky senses, that cry wolf at every outward change. His reliance is on the underlying verities that are unchanging. He knows that everything that ever was real or true is still real and true. The laws of mathematics have not changed. The law of action and reaction is the same. The stars still “come nightly to the sky.” The heavens still “declare the glory of God.” Before he gives way to fear of the future, or of the present, or of the past, he remembers these things.
Yesterday, today, tomorrow—these belong to man. He does with them what he will. He grows through them into an awareness of something that transcends them and in which he finds his happiness, success, perfection. Eternity, the ever-present now, is God’s. Back of man’s more or less imaginary world, back of the things he hopes and fears, is God’s world, steady, sure, unchanging. Back of man’s thought about himself, is God’s faith in him, secure and changeless. Lean back upon this larger, truer world of God’s. Rest in it for a moment. Imagine, if you can, what He thinks about the things that trouble you. Is God discouraged? Is He disappointed with His world? With humanity? With you? Has He given up? Is the depression too much for God? Are human problems too great for Him? Too great for Him in you? You know that they are not!
It is human to be afraid sometimes. Whenever we forget for a moment the real truth about life and ourselves, we are likely to be fearful. That is not overly important. But how we meet our fears may be very important. The story is told of the private in the World War who had to take part in an advance upon the enemy. He cowered and whimpered, “I’m afraid!” “How do you think the rest of us feel ?” a young officer asked, slapping him on the back. The private took new courage from the retort. They were all afraid, but they did not succumb to fear.
Fear of Evil Is Not Love of God
Unity does not advocate dwelling upon lack, or limitation, or any form of negation. “Fear not . . . it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom,” said Jesus, and we believe that He meant what He said. We should center our attention upon what we desire to make manifest. If we want abundance we should dwell upon abundance, not upon lack. If we want health, we should center our thought, our feeling, our imagination and interest upon well-being, not upon disease. But we should not be self-deceived. Fear of evil is not love of God.
We should not dwell upon our fears, but sometimes it is very helpful actually to face them, instead of merely denying their reality. So often we shall find that like the little boy’s bogey man in the garden, our bogey too is only a shadow. To face it and know that it is only a shadow is better than to run from it, denying that the bogey is there at all.
Nothing Works Against Us
What are you afraid of? Have you tried facing your fear? Most of our fears resolve themselves into a few general classes that almost every one is called upon to meet in some form or other. Not what we have to meet, but the way in which we meet it, is the determinant of our status in life.
Times of change are times of fearfulness and times of opportunity. Which they may be for you, depends upon your attitude toward them. Remember that life is not fighting you. No natural powers work against you. They work for everything and every one that works with them.
Men used to fear the lightning; but one man faced that age-old fear, and found out how to make the lightning serve him and others. Men feared the uncharted spaces of the seas, until one brave soul set out to face that fear, and found a new world. The oceans that kept continents apart have become lanes of intercourse.
Men feared the skies. They pictured witches on broomsticks, hobgoblins, demons in the air. Intrepid fliers faced the fear and banished the fearful fancies.
Overcoming Personality
Men have feared other men. They have dreaded to meet those in power and authority, yet have usually found that the truly greater they are the more approachable they are. The fear of personality is a false fear.
If you are self-conscious in the presence of others, if you believe that some one keeps your good from you, that others do not understand you, you are not seeing the truth clearly.
In truth you are not under bondage to any one, no one can keep your good from you, and there is a common basis of understanding—beyond personality–between you and others. If you will persistently and patiently reach beyond personal consciousness, you will find that persons no longer affect you adversely. The person who has a sore toe always finds a rocker on which to bump it. Persons who are “sensitive” are always getting their feelings hurt. They imagine slights and offenses where none are intended. They needlessly worry about giving unintentional offense to others. Such persons are “sensitive” to the wrong things. They need to become sensitive to the love of God, which seeks expression through them and through other persons. They need to nourish and develop faith that through God each one is identified with his own good, the good that God has for him, and that nothing and no one can keep that good from him. Self-consciousness is often a form of conceit. It springs from the desire to appear more experienced, more successful, or wiser than we are, or else from the belief that we are not endowed with the same qualities as are those with whom we feel ill at ease.
We may not have made such good use of our opportunities, or we may not have worked so long or so persistently in developing our abilities as others have, but that which in Truth we are is as fine and as wonderful and as much to be reverenced in ourselves as in any one else. We all are the children of one Father. We have potentially equal powers. We are blessed alike by His grace and love. To permit ourselves embarrassment in the presence of others betrays a doubt of this truth, a doubt of God.
Perhaps some one impresses us as being more successful in some way than we are. If his success is real, we may be assured that he has earned it. We should admire it and accept it as an inspiration to greater effort on our own part. If it is not real, we should be foolish to let ourselves be disturbed by it. No one of real attainment will seek to make others uncomfortable. If another seeks to make you uncomfortable, that in him which does so is unworthy of his success. That self is a false self, not his true one. If he does not seek to embarrass you, then the fault lies in you, and you are like those who “flee when no man pursueth.”
The belief that others can impose upon you or keep your good from you is equally false. Actually, your good comes to you from God. No one can keep it from you. You yourself, by your own unresponsiveness or your fears, simply delay it or minimize it. If you are disturbed by the greater good that others have or appear to have, you need to know that possessing the form of good that belongs to another person cannot make you happy. The one thing that can make you happy is the good that God has for you. That good is not to be compared with others’ good. It is to be appreciated and nourished and welcomed and brought forth into expression through love and wisdom, in co¬operation with the Father.
Expressing Your Best
Are you not better than the personality that you express? Have you ever done anything that you felt expressed your real self perfectly? No, always there is something more, something better, that you would like to manifest. No, you have not yet expressed yourself perfectly and completely. Remember, then, that what is true of you is true of others. Do not condemn others for what they express. Try to help them to express their real self better. If some one troubles you in any way whatever, try to do something for him. You will help to heal him of his limitations, and you will help to heal yourself of misunderstanding, resentment, fear, or jealousy.
The way to meet personality is with impersonality. To meet personality successfully, you must go beyond it in consciousness. The errors or other shortcomings of a child seldom offend you, because you recognize that he has not yet learned to express himself completely. Neither have adults, although they have usually learned to express more of themselves.
We hope that others will not judge us by our errors, nor even by our successes, but only by what we are striving to become. We should be as tolerant in our estimate of others as we wish them to be toward us.
“I will not let my grievous past
With vain remorse torment me.
I can’t help feeling that my acts
Don’t really represent me.”
Impersonality is power. But powerful impersonality is not cold and unfeeling. True impersonality is more loving, more understanding, more gracious, than personality, because it is less selfish.
Whatever the nature of the problems we have to meet and overcome, they have this in common: They follow as we flee them. They stop as we stop running. They recede as we advance upon them. Vash Young, in his book
“A Fortune to Share,” tells of the problems that he encountered. They became worse and worse the more he sought to escape them. He exhausted alibis, he took to drink, he went from one job to another, but not until he determined to face his fears did they begin to diminish. Even then they did not all capitulate at once. He did begin to make progress at once, however. Gradually he built up the habit of facing things and working them out. This was the foundation of his progress.
The Man with the “Soft Spot”
In “The Soft Spot” Hutchinson tells about a man whose strength of character was undermined by his fear of facing things. His habit of running from what he thought would be unpleasant took such hold upon him as to wreck his career, besides causing much unhappiness to those who loved him. An itinerant preacher, Sim Paris, showed him the way to re-establish himself. Hutchinson quotes his own character:
“Let me drop into my subconscious mind the materials which will give me moral courage, and automatically, in every moment of my need as it arises, they will surge up in me to support me.
“What are the materials? The materials are suggestions, determinations, wishes, efforts —suggestions to myself that I have moral courage, determinations that I will have moral courage, wishes to have moral courage, conscious efforts at moral courage. Let me feed my subconscious mind with thoughts of such, with efforts at such, and in form of power to perform such they will automatically be returned to me.
“Will is a habit; and all my feeding of my subconscious mind with stuff to give me moral power resolves itself, in its simplest word, into the word habit. “Let a man consistently show timidity and he will acquire the habit of timidity: consistently show courage, and automatically, ‘naturally,’ he will be courageous. Consistently shirk issues and he will become incapable of fronting an issue; consistently face the facts of a situation and automatically he always will face facts. Consistently give way to temptation and he will always give way to temptation: consistently resist temptation andautomatically, without effort, he will resist temptation.
“Let me feed my subconscious mind with the habitof moral courage, with the habit of overcoming my infirmities of character, and automatically, without effort, I shall have it!
“And interspersed among this tabulation of the subconscious mind and the methods of its development are our man’s records of his mental healing and of his moral building up by exercise of its principles.
“New power (he goes about assuring himself) is streaming through me, helping me in all my contacts.”
How Very Little Helps Much
New students of practical Christianity often express wonder that the daily practice of meditation and prayer, over a period of only a few minutes, can be expected to accomplish very much in human life. Hutchinson gives the answer in the passage from his book that we have just quoted. Daily meditation upon statements of Truth forms a powerful habit.
It transforms one’s mental outlook.
It arouses dormant powers of the inner man.
It inspires faith in the resources of Spirit that reach beyond the often limited resources that are apparent to human sense.
It gives a man greater courage.
By freeing him from the paralyzing effects of fear, it enables him to use more fully and freely the powers and abilities that he discovers himself to possess.
These activities of mind and spirit take place largely beneath the surface of consciousness. The student may not be aware of what is actually taking place within him. He goes on day after day faithfully observing his periods of meditation and prayer. He adds daily to his equipment of true, rich thought. Then one day some crisis occurs in his affairs. Some one calls upon him for help, or he is offered an unexpected opportunity, and all that he has learned and studied rises up in a wave of power to help him.
This is a common miracle of Truth, but one that never ceases to be thrilling and mysterious. The study of practical Christianity and the daily practice of meditation and prayer invariably work agreeable changes in the life of people.
Recapitulation
Every one in his human nature makes mistakes: every one in his divine right has power to overcome them.
God does not “bring us . . . into temptation,” but delivers us from evil.
The practical Christian trusts God to guide, direct, and prosper him. He trusts in the eternal verities and is not overcome by his own human fears. Not what we fear but how we meet our fears is the real test of our spiritual growth.
The fear of personality is a false fear. Others cannot keep our good from us, nor would their good make us happy. We must find and trust the power of God within ourselves.
The habit of meeting little fears and problems unfalteringly, in the light of Truth, will help us to meet greater emergencies with poise and power, if need arises.
Close your study with this meditation for whomsoever you especially wish to bless:
You are a radiant center of the Christ light, mighty to attract your good, and to radiate good to others
QUESTIONS LESSON IV
1.Do we ever reap success from seeming failure?
2.Can we avoid our good?
3.What should we do in the absence of any definite leading?
4.Should we fear making wrong decisions?
5.What is more important than what we have to meet in life?
6.Where does the practical Christian place his reliance?
7.When are we most fearful?
8.What is a practical way to deal with our fears?
9.How may we overcome fear of personalities?
10.Can others keep our good from us?
11.How can we overcome dislike of others?
12.How should we meet personality?
13.How can we learn to master big problems?
14.Why is a few minutes’ meditation each day very valuable?
The End