I The Necessity of Mental Discipline. 9/16/17 Chas. Fillmore. Rev.17-9. Eph.4:23. ££ is not usually considered part of mental disciplineto pray - hut so it is. All the thots and all the acts of man tend upward if his mind is quickened in it3 spiritual plane. MBe ye renewed in the spirit of your mind”, said Paul. This renewing of the mind is part its of kfce jnenfcalxdiscipline. If you renew your mind in a choatic way, you will got discordant results; but if you renew and ouicken your mind in a spiritual way you will get orderly results. No, , oar worship is not for the benefit of God, hut for our benefit. Then we should give ourselves to the orderly expression of our mirids in Spirit. Be renewed in the Spirit of your mind. Now, that we may be renewed in the Sj irit of our minds, let us give attention to Siiritual things; in other words, concentrate your mind upon Spirit. ,7e will take as a central, directing tluaaght statement, this: "Divine Will guides and 2 direct all my thots thru the Spirit of Truth." The promise is that the Spirit of Truth will come and lead us into all Truth. That promise is fulfilled in anyone who recognizes that the Spirit of Truth i3 and always has been present. If you recognize trat, your Spirit mind will begin to be renewed. "Divine Jill guides and directs all‘my thoughtstthru the Spirit of Truth." (Silence) ADDRESS: That mind discipline is a necessity our many schools bear witness. Every individual knows th.rt be mu3t control,his mind. Th t is, he must educate it, nd from the birth of the s ild the parents pin for his education. afhere shall he be educated, i3 the first thot. How, this universal recognition of the necessity of disciplining the mind ( education is simply mental edue tion) should give us a clue, to the oft-repeated references in the bible to the jrf. right attitude of mind; to what we might call the evolution of the mind, bringing out 3 into conscious/!/^ expression by man of these innate capacities which were implanted in man by the creative mind. Thi8 brings us to the question of what is the very best system of discipline that we know anything about. You know, we are losing faith in our school systems; there has be<-n a great change in the last few years in these systerrs . Thay have beenccumbersome. Our colleges loaded up the minds of our young people with facts; with courses of study that were not used when they entered practical life, and the question has naturally risen: ",Vhy is this necessary?'^ Why could not these children have been taught practical lessons which they could use in their every-day affairs?” .Veil, the excuse has been that ;he study of dead languages and these various systems of mind culture were necessary to discipline the mind; that it didn’t make so much difference when you came out of college whether you used what you learned there or not, if your mind 4 got the discipline. But, people are objecting to that a little bit. They say they do not want to spend so much time in this round-about way of disciplining the mind; why not learn what you can use in your daily aifairs and "kill two birds with one stone?” There is still a shorter cut to this mind discipline, and that is to get at a complete understanding of the mind - what mind is. The ordinary KitxxBB intellectual citizen of the United states thinks that all of his mind is that which comprehends his daily affairs. That the mnd makes the man is widely accepted, but how much of the m nd makes the man? Oh, well; th t is another nuestion, and it is only in metaphysical fields that the whole man is receiving attention. The ordinary citizen recognizes that his mind is that which he eats and drinks wit-., and reads his newspaper with® nd that doe3 not go very far. //hen it comes to speculating about absolute things, kw l uts that 5 aside; that is imagination and he does not like to deal withthing3 that he cannot get right down to what he calls the realm of facta* So to that man mind is a mixture of sense consciousness with a very small modicum of intellect; very small. And the less of the religious phase of mind you get into his mixture, the better he likes it. Then we have the religious student - the one who* .beginsto think oi' the creative soufceoof existence; he acknowledges his capacity of thot; the mind to him is a much larger and broader thing than it is to the plodder in the world. There is also the philosophical mind - the mind like Sir Isaac Newton that could comprehend causes and look back of the mere appearance of things. When we g t a little further back we strike the minds of the prophets ^nd seers and great teachers of the race. When we reach these we have in a measure comprehenied Mini . We have found that the mind is a sense thing if »e regard it in its 6 bodily manifestation; Again, it is an intellectual thing; it can reason and it can draw conclusions from comparisons. And again, it is a spiritual thing; it can think about God. flow, what department of mind am I using? Is my mind centered upon sense things? If so, I shall only get a sense return. That is good logic. If your mind is taken up with personality, if you are allowing your affections to cluster about the family relations, the race consideration and those events that are changing and passing away, you cannot expect a return any different from those events. Don’t you 3©e, your whole thot is founded on these transitory things, and in the end you get ju3t t at kind of result from your thought. So, thought discipline based upon the world is not enduring. aThen, why not study and discipline your mind in intellectual ways? Take music and art andthose things that do ensure. Are they unchangeable? 7 No. The same systems that we had even ten ye^rs ago are not in jise today in these departments of man’s evolution and develoiment. Se are constantly changing them. The best intellectual standards are temporal things. Then, we must find a still deeper foundation -ani thi-t deeper foundation is creative law. We want to get back to the source of thought — and where shall we find this source: In the mind of Spirit. The Mind of S irit is Just a name for that inner consciousness that lays hold of the formless; that makes its realm of thought, God. There is a mighty difference between the concepts ofGod. Lets of people have a personal concept of God. That kind of a God will pa3s away; that kind of a God will never endure because he is not the Heal thing. Then you can see that we must get back to an understanding of what the creative principle is. We must understand God. People say - especially those on the intellectual plane - "The finite -Manat. oonoaive of the infinite.". But. are you a finite being? No. 8 Xra came forth from the infinite; then I must be infinite inyself. I must have a place in ray consciousness where the infinite expresses itself. Have I found that plaeev Not unless I have identified myself with it. Then until you indety identify yjTrself with your real being which is Spirit you have not begun real mental discipline. You are in the outer courts of the temple. Then'let us get right back to what iaul wrote to the Phillipians; 'Be ye renewed in the Spirit of your mind." This would indicate that there is a spiritual part of the mind, ..nd that it is that Spiritual part that we need to renew - that needs quickening in us. Metaphysicians find that they can, thru turning their attention to the inner realm of the mini get certain results. You can feel with your mind. Someti, es it is called vibrations; well, there is something in that, but the mind ha3 a more interior way of expressing itself - that is, knowing and feeling. 9 You can know and feel with your mind when you begin this research of the mind. That is, the identity-- what we call the I AM in man -can run up and downthe whole gamut of his being and discern the different planes of consciousness. As Jou go on in this renewing of your mind you.will exercise that ability to feel the intellectual man, and the sense man, and the spirit man, and you will know when you have quickened the mind of the Spirit. And when you have quickened this mind of the Spirit you have come into that same relation th t Jesus Christ did when hea said: "This that I am speaking to you is not of myself." In other words: it is not that man that you see; it is not the intellectual man - that was John:- The spiritual man recognizes that there is an intellect thru which it expresses itself, but does not give that man authority and power. Ho. The intellectu 1 man ftimself when he sees the 3firitual manback of him says: "I am not the real T . 10 thing; there i3 one to follow me that is greater than I." o IO in all ofhi8 acts he paid no attention to the standards set up by human law. He used the law as it came to him from itnin. In other words, he was quickened in the Spirit of hi : mind. How, we take hi.ni a3 a standard, • nd we say whatever our need rray be we can have it supplied by usiagthis Spirit of the Wind. If I want to know a certain thing, I will call upon the Spirit of my mind, and I will find out that thing. Hobody can hide anything from me when I put this discerning ]irit of the hind into action. Hobody can keep from you an education, /or anything that you wish to accomplish if you do it in the floirit of your Mind. Someone may say: "Could I learn to dance thru the Spirit of ny mind*: Don't I have to go to a dancing master to learn to dance:’ Ho. Dance by yourself. Dance in your mind first and it will begin to work in your feet. Dance in your mind and you will find M* that 17 every part of your body will begin to go thru a rhythmic expression. It will then not be mere pkyatxxxi muscular exercise; it will be real. Spiritual expression of divine harmony in what we call the realm of things. Everything in the universe had it3 origin in this Spirit of the Mind. Not he intellectual mind, but the Absolute Mind; the formless, all-powerful realm of idead. >Yhen we open ourselves to it, it begins to form in tis what we call harmony, poise, mastery, dominion; that is the real spiritual mind expressing itself, tfe must trust this mind end give it a chance.