SERIES TWO • Vol. 3
Foundations of Unity
Series II Vol.3
This volume is written around chapters 11 and 12 of the book Lessons in Truth, by H. Emilie Cady. The material found in the commentary and lessons 2, 3, and 4, comes from the original Correspondence School Course, which was originated at Unity School in 1909 and has subsequently gone through many revisions and enlargements.
Those who have been responsible for directing the Correspondence School and who have contributed to the enclosed material include: Charles Fillmore, F. B. Whitney, Celia Ayers, Charlotte Johnson, J. Parker Stokes, Wilma Powell, Vera Dawson Tait.
UMITM
Unity Village, Missouri 64065
Contents
Lesson I........................................ 5
Spiritual Gifts
Lesson II ..................................... 33
Health
Lesson III..................................... 59
Prosperity
Lesson IV...................................... 93
Human Relations
Lesson V ......................................135
Unity of the Spirit Spiritual Diary................................161
“I am the way, and the truth, and the LIFE.”
John 14:6
Lesson I Spiritual Gifts
1.	It is very natural for the human heart first to set out in search of Truth because of the “loaves and the fishes” (Matt. 15:36).
2.	Perhaps it is not too much to say that the majority of people first turn to God because of some weakness, some failure, some almost unbearable want in their lives. After having vainly tried in all other ways to overcome or to satisfy the want, they turn in desperation to God.
3.	There is in the heart of even the most depraved human being, though he would not for worlds have others know it, an instinctive feeling that somewhere there is a power that is able to give him just what he wants; that if he could only reach that which to his conception is God, he could prevail on Him to grant the things desired. This feeling is itself God-given. It is the divine self, though only a spark at the center of the man’s being, suggesting to him the true remedy for all his ills.
4.	Especially have people been led to seek Truth
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for the reward, “for the very works’ sake” (John 14:11), during the last few years, since they have come to know that God is not only able, but willing, to deliver them from all the burdens of their everyday life. Everyone wants to be free, free, free as the birds of the air—free from sickness, free from suffering, free from bondage, free from poverty, free from all forms of evil; and he has a right to be; it is a God-given desire, and a God-given right.
5.	Thus far nearly all teaching has limited the manifestation of infinite love to one form—that of healing. Sickness, seemingly incurable disease, and suffering reigned on every side, and every sufferer wanted to be free. We had not yet known that there was willingness as there was power—aye, more, that there was intense desire—on the part of our Father to give us something more than sweet, patient submission to suffering.
6.	When first the truth was taught that the divine presence ever lives in man as perfect life, and can be drawn on by our recognition and faith to come forth into full and abounding health, it attracted widespread attention, and justly so. Both teachers and students centered their gaze on this one outcome of a spiritual life, losing sight of any larger, fuller, or more complete manifestation of the indwelling Father. Teachers told all their pupils most emphatically that this knowledge of Truth would enable them to heal, and they devoted all their teaching to explanation of the principles and to giving formulas and other instructions for healing the body. Time has shown that there are larger and broader views of the truth about spiritual gifts.
7.	Healing of the body is beautiful and good.
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Power to heal is a divine gift, and as such you are fully justified in seeking it. But God wants to give you infinitely more.
8.	Why should you and I restrict the limitless One to the bestowal of a particular gift, unless, indeed, we be so fairly consumed with an inborn desire for it that we are sure that it is God’s highest desire for us? In that case we shall not have to try to heal. Healing will flow from us wherever we are. Even in a crowd of people, without any effort of our own, the one who needs healing will receive it from us; that one will “touch” (Matt. 9:21) us, as did the one woman in all the multitude jostling and crowding against Jesus. Only one touched Him.
9.	Healing is truly a “branch” of “the vine” (John 15:4), but it is not the only branch. There are many branches, all of which are necessary to the perfect vine, which is seeking through you and me to bear much fruit. What God wants is that we shall grow into such conscious oneness with Him, such realization that He who is the substance of all good really abides in us, that “ask whatsoever ye will, and it shall be done unto you” (John 15:7).
10.	If you are faithfully and earnestly living what Truth you know, and still find that your power to heal is not so great as it was at first, recognize it as all good. Be assured, no matter what anyone else says to you or thinks, that the seeming failure does not mean loss of power. It means that you are to let go of the lesser, in order that you may grasp the whole, in which the lesser is included. Do not fear for a moment to let go of just this one little branch of divine power; choose rather to have the highest thoughts of infinite mind, let them be what they may, fulfilled through
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you. We need to take our eyes off the ends of the branches, the results, and keep them centered in the vine.
11.	You are a vessel for some purpose. If, when the time comes, you let go cheerfully, without humiliation or shame or sense of failure, your tense, rigid, mortal grasp on some particular form of manifestation, such as healing, and “desire earnestly the greater gifts” (I Cor. 12:31), whatever they may be in your individual case, you will do “works” in the one specific direction that will be simply marvelous in the eyes of men. These works will be done without effort on your part, because they will be God, omnipotent, omniscient, manifesting Himself through you in His own chosen direction.
12.	Paul said, “Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I would not have you ignorant. . . . Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. . . . For to one is given through the Spirit the word of wisdom; and to another the word of knowledge, according to the same Spirit: to another faith ... to another gifts of healings ... to another workings of miracles; and to another prophecy; and to another discemings of spirits: to another divers kinds of tongues; and to another the interpretation of tongues” (I Cor. 12:1, 4, 8-10).
13.	The same Spirit, always and forever the same, and one God, one Spirit, but in different forms of manifestation. The gift of healing is no more, no greater, than the gift of prophecy; the gift of prophecy is no greater than faith, for faith (when it is really God’s faith manifested through us), even as a grain of mustard seed, shall be able to remove mountains; the working of miracles is no
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greater than the power to discern spirits (or the thoughts and intents of other men’s hearts, which are open always to Spirit). And “greatest of all these is love” (I Cor. 13:13); for “love never fail-eth” (I Cor. 13:8) to melt down all forms of sin, sorrow, sickness, and trouble. “Love never faileth.”
14.	“But all these worketh the one and the same Spirit, dividing to each one severally even as he will. For as the body is one ... all the members of the body, being many, are one body; so also is Christ. ... If the whole body were an eye [or gift of healing], where were the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling? . . . And the eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of thee: or again the head to the feet, I have no need of you.” “But now hath God set the members each one of them in the body, even as it pleased him” (I Cor. 12:11, 12, 17, 21, 18).
15.	Thus Paul enumerates some of the free “gifts” of the Spirit to those who will not limit the manifestations of the Holy One, but yield themselves to Spirit’s desire within them. Why should we so fear to abandon ourselves to the workings of infinite love and wisdom? Why be so afraid to let Him have His own way with us, and through us?
16.	Has not the gift of healing, the only gift we have thus far sought, been a good and blessed one, not only to ourselves, but to all with whom we come in contact?
17.	Then why should we fear to wait upon God with a perfect willingness that the Holy Spirit manifest itself through us as it will, knowing that, whatever the manifestation, it will be good—all good to us and to those around us!
18.	Oh, for more men who have the courage to
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abandon themselves utterly to infinite will—men who dare let go every human being for guidance, and, seeking the Christ within themselves, let the manifestation be what He wills!
19.	Such courage might possibly mean, and probably would mean at first, a seeming failure, a going down from some apparent success that had been in the past. But the going down would only mean a mighty coming up, a most glorious resurrection of God into visibility through you in His own chosen way, right here and now. The failure, for the time, would only mean a grand, glorious success a little later on.
20.	Do not fear failure, but call failure good; for it really is. Did not Jesus stand an utter failure, to all appearances, when He stood dumb before Pilate, all His cherished principles come to naught, unwilling to deliver Himself, or to “demonstrate” over the agonizing circumstances of His position?
21.	But had He not seemed to fail right at that point, there never would have been the infinitely grander demonstration of the Resurrection a little later on. “Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth by itself alone: but if it die, it beareth much fruit” (John 12:24). If you have clung to one spiritual gift because you were taught that, and you begin to fail, believe me, it is only the seeming death, the seeming disappearance, of one gift, in order that out of it may spring many new gifts—brighter, higher, fuller ones, because they are the ones that God has chosen for you.
22.	Your greatest work will be done in your own God-appointed channel. If you will let Spirit possess you wholly, if you will to have the highest will done in you and through you continually, you
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will be quickly moved by it out of your present limitations, which a half success always indicates, into a manifestation as much fuller and more perfect and beautiful as is the new grain than the old seed, which had to fall into the ground and die.
23.	Old ways must die. Failure is only the death of the old that there may be the hundredfold following. If there comes to you a time when you do not demonstrate over sickness, as you did at first, do not think that you need lean on others entirely. It is beautiful and good for another to “heal” you bodily by calling forth universal life through you; but right here there is something higher and better for you.
24.	Spirit, the Holy Spirit, which is God in movement, wants to teach you something, to open a bigger, brighter way to you. This apparent failure is His call to you to arrest your attention and turn you to Him.
“Acquaint now thyself with him, and be at
peace: Thereby good shall come unto thee”
(Job 22:21).
Turn to the divine presence within yourself. Seek Him. Be still before Him. Wait upon God quietly, earnestly, but constantly and trustingly, for days— aye weeks, if need be! Let Him work in you, and sooner or later you will spring up into a resurrected life of newness and power that you never before dreamed of.
25.	When these transition periods come, in which God would lead us higher, should we get frightened or discouraged, we only miss the lesson that He would teach, and so postpone the day of receiving our own fullest, highest gift. In our ignorance and fear, we are thus hanging on to the old
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grain of wheat that we can see, not daring to let it go into the ground and die, lest there be no resurrection, no newness of life, nothing bigger and grander to come out of it.
26.	Oh, do not let us longer fear our God, who is all good, and who longs only to make us each one a giant instead of a pygmy!
27.	What we all need to do above everything else is to cultivate the acquaintance or consciousness of Spirit within ourselves. We must take our attention off results, and seek to live the life. Results will be “added unto” (Matt. 6:33) us in greater measure when we turn our thoughts less to the “works” and more to embodying the indwelling Christ in our entire being. We have come to a time when there must be less talking about Truth, less treating and being treated merely for the purpose of being delivered from some evil result of wrong living; there must be more living of Truth and teaching others to do so. There must be more incorporating of Truth in our very flesh and bone.
28.	How are you to do this?
29.	“I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6), says the Christ at the center of your being.
30.	“I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth [consciously] in me, and I in him [in His consciousness], the same beareth much fruit: for apart from me [or severed from me in your consciousness] ye can do nothing. ... If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatsoever ye will, and it shall be done unto you” (John 15:5, 7).
31.1 do assure you, as do all teachers, that you can bring good things of whatever kind you desire into your life by holding to them as yours in the
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invisible until they become manifest. But, beloved, do you not see that your highest, your first—aye, your continual—thought should be to seek the abiding in Him, to seek the knowing as a living reality, not as a finespun theory that He abides in you? After that, ask what you will, be it power to heal, to cast out demons, or even the “greater works” (John 14:12), and “it shall be done unto you” (John 15:7).
32.	There is one Spirit—“One God and Father of all, who is over all, and through all, and in all. But unto each one of us was the grace [or free gift] given according to the measure of the gift of Christ” in us (Eph. 4:6, 7).
33.	“For which cause I put thee in remembrance that thou stir up the gift of God, which is in thee” (II Tim. 1:6).
34.	Do not be afraid, “for God gave us not a spirit of fearfulness; but of power and love and discipline” (II Tim. 1:7).
35.	It is all one and the same Spirit. To be the greatest success, you do not want my gift, nor do I want yours; each wants his own, such as will fit his size and shape, his capacity and desires, such as not the human mind of us, but the highest in us, shall choose. Seek to be filled with Spirit, to have the reality of things incarnated in larger degree in your consciousness. Spirit will reveal to your understanding your own specific gift, or the manner of God’s desired manifestation through you.
36.	Let us not desert our own work, our own God within us, to gaze or pattern after our neighbor. Let us not seek to make his gift ours; let us not criticize his failure to manifest any specific gift. Whenever he “fails,” give thanks to God that
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He is leading him up into a higher place, where there can be a fuller and more complete manifestation of the divine presence through him.
37.	And “I . . . beseech you to walk worthily of the calling wherewith ye were called, with all lowliness and meekness, with long suffering, forbearing one another in love; giving diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph. 4:1-3).
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COMMENTARY ON “SPIRITUAL GIFTS”
Living from the Center
The Truth principles which we have discussed in the previous volumes imply a definite way of living. It is the purpose of this volume to discuss the kind of life and living which proceeds out of the view of reality set forth in the material that has gone before.
It is Unity’s teaching that man lives authentically and most effectively when he lives from the center of his being to the circumference. This means that the mind is used in such a way that all thoughts, words, actions, and reactions find their source in a consciousness of God rather than in the events of the world.
Cultivating a consciousness of our oneness with God the Father is much more important than demonstrating things. Jesus said, as recorded in Matthew 6:33,
“Seek ye first his kingdom, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you” (A.V.).
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We can see from this Biblical statement that Jesus was not repudiating things; He was putting them in their rightful place—as the forms that “shall be added” to us as an automatic result of obedience to divine law. The condition of this promise is first of all to “seek ... his kingdom.” Because, metaphysically, God’s “kingdom” is the realm of all spiritual qualities or ideas, it is reasonable to seek the idea first. Whether we are aware of it or not, it is always a God idea seeking expression that impels us to pray to God for the solution to a problem.
Our lesson points out that it is possible for us to bring things into our life (i.e., demonstrate) by holding to them mentally, but that the
“highest . . . first . . . thought should be ... to seek the knowing as a living reality, not as a finespun theory that He abides in you.”
The highest motive in seeking God should not be just to demonstrate things; it should stem from our love for Him. As we seek God because of this love, then “all these things shall be added unto you.” which includes the power to heal, the power to prosper, the power to harmonize, and all the myriad things that go to make up the “abundant life” of which Jesus spoke.
Many things are necessary in our daily living: food, clothing, housing, right work activity, financial supply, and the like. When we demonstrate these things without first turning to God for ideas, there is little to sustain the outer forms. The “things” follow in sequential order when we consciously seek God and the ideas inherent in Him. When we understand this truth we have learned the law of true prosperity, or the law that produces
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good in our life. If we attempt to demonstrate things just by mental practice alone, they will have no roots in divine substance and may not long satisfy us. There is danger of our becoming their slave instead of their master.
Something wonderful happens when we seek a conscious oneness with God as His children and heirs: our whole approach to “things” changes. We have a greater appreciation of them; we do not waste them; we take better care of them. With the new viewpoint we see clothes, appliances, homes, machines as divine substance that has taken form according to the ideas God has given to meet all our needs. Some forms may lose their importance to us, while others will increase in value. Simplicity and divine order will be our goal, producing the beauty of life that each man craves.
Through building a consciousness of oneness with God, we automatically yield to His will, and the result is an inflow into our life of the “gifts of God”; we will demonstrate them without making them our primary objective.
The Meaning of Spiritual Gifts
The spiritual gifts mentioned by Paul (I Cor. 12:4-10) are understood by Unity in a threefold way:
1.	Spiritual gifts are all the ideas of Divine Mind that are our divine inheritance.
2.	As our consciousness becomes aware of the ideas or laws of Divine Mind, they are quickened as faculties within our own mind.
3.	This quickening results in a definite activity of our capacities and talents, which manifests
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as the specific gifts of which Paul speaks. (I Cor. 12:4-10, A.S.V.).
The nine spiritual gifts enumerated by Paul may be understood in a practical way as follows:
The Gift Paul’s	Metaphysical
Understanding Understanding
1. Word of
Wisdom
2. Word of
Knowl-
edge
3. Faith
4. Gifts of
Healing
5.
Working
of
miracles
Speaking	The practical application
wisely	of spiritual principles by
a person in his everyday life.
Speaking out of what one knows factually. Inner conviction of spiritual things.
The acceptance and expression of spiritual principles (laws of God).
Steadfastness and assurance in following spiritual principles (laws of God).
Capacity to be The ability to release a channel for mistakes and be open to spiritual heal- spiritual healing in mind, ing.	body, and affairs.
Ability to manifest evidence of the power of God (healing, etc.)
Showing how divine law works to produce good in our life—a process which may seem miraculous to the unenlightened.
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6.
Prophecy The capacity for divinely inspired utterance. The enunciation and interpretation of the will of God.
The unveiling of the working of Truth in everyday life. Revealing what results may be expected through use of divine laws.
7.
Discern- The ability to Ability to understand in-ing of tell the differ- tent and purpose back of spirits ence between attitudes and acts, those attitudes of mind which promote the spiritual welfare of the Christian community, and those which do not.
8.
Divers Speaking in kind of ecstatic utter-tongues ances which signify the presence of the Spirit in the believers.
The ability to express and communicate Truth enthusiastically. An expanded understanding of this gift (taken in the context of Acts 2:4-11) is the ability to reach people in different states of consciousness. Speaking with love in the lan-
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guage of spirituality, which may be verbal or nonverbal.
9.
Interpretation of
tongues Ability to Ability to understand the explain the	intended meanings back
spiritual	of attitudes and words,
meaning of “ecstatic utterances.”
There have been times when man thought of these “talents” as something special, given only to certain individuals. However, we now know that God’s gifts (ideas) are equally available to all. In God, there is no great or small either in ideas, persons, or gifts. Each has its own significance. According to our concepts, or our needs, at any given time, we value some of the underlying gifts of God more than others.
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Gal. 5:22, 23).
Divine ideas with all their potential are “gifts” to us for the simple reason that they can neither be purchased nor obtained through physical effort (work). They can only be accepted and used. When the Fillmores began their work they emphasized that it was to be practical Christianity, and this is why we are taught to put into expression our spiritual gifts by using them.
“I have a standard of faith which is true and logical, and I must conform to it in my teach-
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ing without compromise. We call it Practical Christianity, and under this name we shall henceforth do our work” (The Story of Unity, p. 104).
By “practical Christianity” Charles Fillmore meant the principles or laws of God, as taught by Jesus Christ, expressed in daily living. We may say that our mission is to “express” the spiritual gifts that make up our divine heritage, and this is done by actual “use” of the laws back of these gifts. “Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; if service, in our serving; he who teaches, in his teaching; he who exhorts, in his exhortation; he who contributes, in liberality; he who gives aid, with zeal; he who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness” (Rom. 12:6-8).
According to our stage of soul unfoldment we shall evolve the divine gifts in the way that is right for us at that time. For example, there may be a period in our life, in a certain set of circumstances, where we need to exercise faith and patience primarily; at another period, love and understanding may require first place. Perhaps we meet with situations that call forth our ingenuity, thus requiring the exercise of creative imagination. At other times we find that we call forth appreciation, good judgment, gratitude.
Our Greatest Gift
Our own divine nature, called spiritual man, the Christ, the I AM, is our greatest gift, because it is the gift of God Himself. This “gift of God” is the
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all-inclusive gift because as the whole nature of God it includes all of the divine qualities or ideas.
Whatever is required of us at any given time, we are actually bringing into manifestation the “gifts” that make up the one great Gift—God Himself in us as a living Presence. Just as the seed contains within itself the nature (image) of the parent plant, which will come forth as roots, branches, leaves, so shall we bring forth the likeness of God’s nature as manifest abilities.
At any given moment in a person’s experience, he might feel that life (health) is the most important gift to him. At another time, he might need harmony. In another instance, he might feel that abundance is the greatest gift that could be bestowed upon him. However, in the overall picture we see that it is only the completeness of the God-nature that can fulfill all the needs of everyday living.
There is nothing wrong in desiring the fulfillment of some outer need. It may be that the particular idea needed to supply that need is being unfolded in an orderly way. However, to put our attention on any one of the God qualities to the exclusion of others leads to imbalance. There is a sense of security when one is aware of the truth that there is an all-sufficiency for every need. We can feel assured that God will guide us in bringing forth the supply in divine order.
Supply, a Gift of God
Supply to meet our every need is a “gift,” so long as we understand clearly the meaning of this teaching. Our real supply is all the ideas of Divine
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Mind, and they are “gifts” to us from our loving Father. The tangible forms that we commonly consider supply are but the products of those ideas.
Money and material things bring physical comfort and pleasure but underlying these outer forms, whatever they may be, are divine ideas. A gift must , be accepted, and the gift of God’s ideas is accepted by us through the right use of our mind activities and our hands. Expressing an idea in mind, or by the hands in creative work, should be a joy and not labor. Therefore, we cannot think of our supply as coming from the work done by mind and hands, but only as coming through these channels of expression.
God has a plan, a purpose, for each of us. We call this God’s will. It is His law of universal good operative in all creation. When we conform in thought, feeling, word, and deed to God’s will, or law of universal good, then the “gift” of supply in the form of ideas is ours to be used. In the right use of these ideas, we give full, free, and happy expression to the God nature inherent in us.
When we understand that our inheritance is all of the good of God, we see that supply to fulfill our righteous needs is just as much a “gift” as is the life that produces health in our body; as the love that brings harmony and happiness in our human relationships; as the intelligence that leads to skill and success in our work or profession. Probably the reason religionists have often warned against wealth is that there is often a lack of wisdom in our use of it.
Any gift may fail to bring satisfaction if it is misused through lack of understanding. A person can misuse even the health of his body by doing
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things that are against the laws of nature. The brilliance of the mind can be expressed with lack of understanding, so that the mental powers are directed into purposes other than good. If one’s love for relatives and friends forges bonds of possessiveness or narrowness, the use of the divine quality of love has been lowered from its true character. The same is true of supply. If, through ignorance, men have viewed and used wealth wrongly, this has not changed the essential nature of supply. With understanding of the truth that outer supply is founded upon ideas that are free and accessible to all men, we see it as a “gift.” Though we reach the understanding that supply is not dependent upon the labor of head or hands, we recognize and bless our minds and hands as channels through which God expresses the needed supply.
“The law of supply is a divine law. This means that it is a divine law of mind and must work through mind. . . . when you continue to think about God as your real supply, everything in your mind begins to awaken and to contact the divine substance, and you mold it in your consciousness, ideas begin to come which will connect you with the visible manifestation” (Prosperity, pp. 67, 68).
The Development of Our Spiritual Gifts
One of the important aspects of developing our gifts is the way we think about ourself. The kind of image we have of ourself determines the way we will use our gifts and hence, the kind of life we will live.
Since our greatest gift is the divine nature at the
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heart of our being, it is important to think of the human phase of ourself as a vessel, or channel for this divine nature. This means that God works through us rather than outside us to accomplish His good in our life. This way of thinking has great implications for the way we live our life. No longer do we look outside of ourself for the source of the good we are seeking, but the first thing we do in any situation is to seek God as a living reality in ourself and in the situation. No longer do we blame others if things do not work out.
Another important way of thinking of ourself is in the image of a seed. The divine nature is in us as a seed is in the earth. Therefore it must germinate and grow if we are to be what we are meant to be. It is our part to cooperate with the guidance that our divine nature reveals to us. Just as a seed reaches roots down into the earth and puts shoots up through the earth to produce fruit, so our own divine nature will unfold through us if we will let it. We let it by expanding our thinking about ourself, others, and the world, instead of restricting it. We let it by trusting our real Self in the midst of the challenges of life. We let it by moving out into life instead of away from life. We let it by using the abilities we have right now, no matter how insignificant they may seem to us.
Looking Anew at Difficulties and Apparent Failures
Difficulties, or what we often term “problems,” come in many categories such as sickness, poverty, unhappiness, failure. After we have exhausted outer means in an effort to alleviate our problems,
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we frequently question why they have come into our life. When the desire to be free from unbearable conditions impels us to seek a way out of them through prayer, we are on our way to the solution. Then the difficulties or problems can be seen as “angels in disguise.”
“God always has a blessing for us in every experience, no matter how trying, and we must not let go of Him until we receive it”
(Let There Be Light, p. 51).
A wise statement was made over two hundred years ago that holds just as true today: “Man’s extremity is God’s opportunity” (John Flavel). It is only when we are willing to face the fact that our problems have accrued because of our own lack of understanding of God’s laws and the law of our being, that we provide the opportunity for God to guide us in their solution. As our mind is turned Godward we begin to use His laws (His gifts) in the right way.
Therefore, our difficulties and apparent failures sometimes result in good to us if the desire to be free from them causes us to seek God. Of themselves they cannot produce good; they are good only as they serve to point us to God as the source of their solution. Too often we judge only by the initial appearance of a situation, rather than following the teaching of Jesus, “Do not judge by appearance, but judge with right judgment” (John 7:24). Right judgment means judging according to the Truth in every situation.
Many are the stories of people who have seemed to fail in some particular endeavor, but through their apparent failure have been impelled into their right place in life where they became successful.
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For example, a businessman has become an artist; an artist has become a writer; a lawyer has become a statesman; and all this because something in the first chosen profession seemed to point to failure, but in reality only opened the door to a different field of service that brought success. The story of Joseph as recorded in Genesis, beginning with the 37th chapter, bears out this truth. Joseph, in expressing his forgiveness to his brothers said, “And as for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good” (Gen. 50:20).
We may feel we have failed to demonstrate over our difficulties, but this seeming failure has sparked the impulse to seek our indwelling Father-God. This contact enables us to receive the particular spiritual gifts that can produce in mind, body, and affairs the good we long for. The small child may walk well when upheld by an adult, but there comes a time when he must begin to walk by himself. He may fall a few times before he is able to depend entirely on himself. The same thing often happens to us in our spiritual growth, but we must come to know that anything that causes us to grow spiritually is essentially good because it makes active one or more of the spiritual gifts of which we were not previously aware. We can make the apparent periods of failure into opportunities for the fuller expression of our Christ self.
Standard of Measurement
We cannot truly measure our work by what others are doing—for to do so would be using the wrong standard. The most important “measuring stick” is our own indwelling Christ. Measuring
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from this standard will develop the divine potential of each individual.
In the world there are various standards by which we measure our life. We have, for instance, educational requirements, health standards, moral codes, and religious rules. The laws of our society are standards against which we measure our everyday conduct. There are standards of “good taste,” art, and music. There are standards that are determined by our individual values and our cultural upbringing. These kinds of standards by which most of us, in one way or another, measure our life, are in a continual process of change. But God’s standard never changes.
How are we to understand this idea that there is a standard for measuring all of life which is absolute, to which we have access, and which never changes? It is precisely the understanding of this which is at the heart of what we mean in Unity by “living a spiritual life.” Instead of our lives being measured by temporal concerns and values, we are open to a way of living that is measured by spiritual values.
It is obvious to anyone who seriously studies the life of Jesus that, while He accepted many of the basic tenets of His Hebrew culture and religion, He was profoundly moved in His decisions and goals by a standard which included yet overshadowed the limited values of the world in which He found Himself.
Jesus was brought up in a society which tried to live by the ten commandments and the thousands of other laws that developed from them. Yet for Him there was a standard beyond the letter of the law. When He was asked by a lawyer what the
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greatest commandment was, He answered: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend the law and the prophets” (Matt. 22:37-40).
By emphasizing love as the primary commandment, Jesus is pointing to a spiritual value which includes the law, but goes beyond it. The law is fulfilled in love. Paul, in writing to the Romans, makes this clear when he says;
“The commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery, You shall not kill. You shall not steal, You shall not covet,’ and any other commandment, are summed up in this sentence, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law” (Romans 13:9-10).
In another way, Jesus directs our attention away from our limited values and concerns to a standard of loving which includes all. He says:
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you. Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; ... For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you salute only your brethren, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?” (Matt. 5:43-47).
It is clear that Jesus has gone beyond the ordi-
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nary human standards by which most of us guide our lives. This standard of which He speaks is not one that can be intellectually apprehended by the mind and then put into practice. It lies in the spiritual dimension of our being, and it is when we have felt loved and fully accepted by God’s love that we are set free to love in the universal sense of which Jesus speaks. It is in prayer, meditation, and a deep intuitive knowing that we come in touch with God’s absolute love for us. It is in the moment that we come face to face with the divine love of God for us that we have apprehended the absolute and changeless standard of God.
It is this love that defines our very being, that tells us who we are. When Jesus was baptized and came out of the water He heard the words, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” With these words Jesus came to know who He really was, and He was able to begin His ministry. These words are for us if we will hear them. It is in the moment of feeling fully loved by God that we come to know our real Self. It is this Self which was recognized in Jesus as the Christ. It is in us as the indwelling Christ. This is God’s standard for us.
THEREFORE, if we attempt to measure our work, our stage of spiritual unfoldment, first by that of another, we are taking our attention away from the pattern (or plan) God placed in us. It would be as foolish for the daisy to look at the rose and feel that it had not accomplished a laudable work because it did not have the beauty, color, or perfume of the rose.
However, we may use the lives of others as examples of what can be done individually. Jesus is our “Great Example,” and we are to seek to unfold
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our divine pattern or nature as He did. We may view the lives of those who have added to the world’s progress and see that each one followed his own inner divine urge. Many a person whom the world does not acknowledge has done his work quietly, faithfully, successfully, and has indirectly made possible for another what the world acclaims as success. How many fathers, mothers, teachers, ministers have gone quietly about the work given them to do, and produced in others a desire to do a work that contributes to the welfare of all humanity! Who is to say that the one who receives the world’s acclaim has done a greater work than the one who gave him the impetus to go ahead?
Our true work is the expanding of our own consciousness, the developing of our own talents and abilities. To do this we must go further than measuring our life or our work by what another person has accomplished. As already mentioned—our “measuring stick” should always be our own indwelling Christ.
No two of us unfold or grow in the same way, and it is the diversity of the expressions of God in men that gives zest to life. Each man’s goal should be to cultivate his own “gifts” that they may be brought forth under grace and in divine order, knowing that this is God’s plan, or will, for him.
“Lord, let my work contribute to Thy plan,
My labor serve Thee and my fellow man . . .
Be this my goal: a perfect work expressed,
Each task completed at my present best”
—(Best Loved Unity Poems, p. 161).
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■if I I
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Lesson I I
Health
Let Healing Through
By James Dillet Freeman
THERE IS a healing power. It works for us, but no one can make it work.
To get it to work for us, we can do everything in thought and word and act that we know to think and say and do.
We can do the physical things we need to do; we can think the thoughts we need to think.
But we cannot make healing happen.
Only God can make healing happen.
Only God heals.
The life force heals.
The healing principle heals.
God heals.
Healing is a creative act.
Only creative love and intelligence can make a creative act happen.
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Can you make a poem happen?
Can you make a sunset happen?
Healing comes from the unseen into the seen.
Healing comes from the unconscious into the conscious.
Healing comes from the within into the without.
Healing comes from the spiritual into the physical.
Healing always comes this way—no matter how many doctors, medicines, and surgical procedures are used.
No matter how many special diets and exercises are used.
No matter how many amulets and incantations are used.
No matter how many psychiatrists, diagnostic tests, and psychoanalyses are used.
No matter how many affirmations, denials, counselors, and healers are used.
The healing of the simplest scratch and the deepest malignancy comes this way.
God heals.
No one can heal himself or another.
He can only think, say, and do things that let the healing force heal, that let God heal.
Healing is a creative act.
It is like the writing of a poem.
It is like the germination of a seed.
It is like the birth of a child.
We fulfill the conditions necessary to the writing or the germination or the birth.
Then we let.
We let the invisible forces of creation bring forth.
Healing is a river that flows from the heart of
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God through the heart of man, from the heart of life through the heart of every living creature. Thence it flows forth into visible expression.
It cannot be made to flow, but it can be let flow.
What stands in the way must be removed.
Hatred stands in the way.
Fear stands in the way.
Disappointment stands in the way.
Feeling frustrated stands in the way.
Feeling inadequate stands in the way.
Feeling unloved stands in the way.
Feeling unworthy stands in the way.
Self stands in the way.
Resentment, jealousy, suspicion, lack of faith in life, lack of joy in living—these stand in the way.
Dis-ease is just that.
Love lets healing through.
Faith lets healing through.
Turning disappointment into God-pointing lets healing through.
Meeting frustration with trust-expectation lets healing through.
Feeling God’s love in your heart lets healing through. Feeling God approves of you lets healing through.
Selflessness lets healing through.
Faith in life and joy in living—these are the essence of a healthy mind and body.
Why Do We Seek Health ?
1.	Health is a blessing greatly to be desired. That people appreciate it is shown by their efforts to regain it when once it seems to be lost. The
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question is: What is the true method of gaining health?
2.	Everyone instinctively feels that there must be a way to health, an exact, sure way founded upon principle. There is such a way. It may be found by the earnest. student in the doctrine of Jesus Christ.
3.	The foundation principle upon which the universe was created was that “it was very good” (Gen. 1:31). This principle should be understood and applied in order to produce a like effect. When the mind of man is trained to believe in the good, the true, the perfect in self and in others, a like effect will be produced in the body and will show forth as health or wholeness. Jesus knew God; He knew the principle, the law, lying back of every man’s being. He, the great Teacher, was perfectly competent to instruct men in the expression of the law of their being.
“Then the real object of existence is to attain the consciousness of eternal life . . . Jesus was the great Way-Shower to the attainment of this realization of Spirit” (Atom-Smashing Power of Mind, pp. 151, 152).
4.	Man achieves health by returning to the source of life, learning and obeying the laws that govern this state of purity and soundness.
5.	To be whole, one must not only learn the laws of universal good but must also be obedient to them in every thought, feeling, word, action, and reaction. Since the perfect idea can produce only perfect results, the one who wants to have such results in his life must watch the thoughts or concepts in his mind that he has built around the divine idea. He needs to entertain only healthful
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thoughts, because the law of manifestation for man is the law of thought. He needs to form good mental habits and to establish right attitudes toward all of life. This is the doctrine that Jesus taught and proved by His living. This lesson explains how the laws of God may be made practical by everyone in the demonstration of health.
Health—Your Birthright
6.	Health is the natural state of man. The Truth of this statement is not mere theory. Unity’s understanding of this Truth is rooted in the healing experience of Charles and Myrtle Fillmore. One cannot overemphasize this point. The healing principles in this lesson are based upon the actual demonstration of health in the lives of the Fillmores and in the lives of thousands who have applied these principles. Myrtle Fillmore says in her Healing Letters, pages 16,17:
7.	“I myself was once an emaciated little woman, upon whom relatives and doctors had placed the stamp TB (tuberculosis). And this was only one of the ailments—there were others considered beyond any help, except possibly the changing of structures through an operation. There were family problems too. We were a sickly lot, and came to the place where we were unable to provide for our children. In the midst of all this gloom, we kept looking for the way out, which we felt sure would be revealed. It was! The light of God revealed to us—the thought came to me first— that life was of God, that we were inseparably one with the source, and that we inherited from the divine and perfect Father. What that revelation did
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to me at first was not apparent to the senses. But it held my mind up above the negation, and I began to claim my birthright and to act as though I believed myself the child of God, filled with His life. I gained. And others saw that there was something new in me. And they asked me to share it. I did. Others were healed, and began to study. My husband continued his business, and at first took little interest in what I was doing. But after a time he became absorbed in the study of Truth too. Then we consecrated ourselves to the Lord, and kept doing daily that which we felt led to do. We began to prosper, a little at a time, and our health continued to improve. Life became sweeter and more interesting, and we began to see a new world. In all these years, our interest has not lagged, and we have continued to enjoy the unfoldment of God’s plan in our lives.”
Charles Fillmore says,
8.	“Health is the normal condition of all things, and there is a fundamental principle of health, or harmony of structure, pervading all forms. Health is not something that has to be manufactured from without; it is in the very essence of Being, and therefore enduring and universal, as God is.
9.	“Everybody recognizes that health is fundamental in Being and that it is therefore the only orderly state of existence, yet not all use this knowledge for sustaining health.
10.	“If health is one of the foundation rocks of Being, and if we are sustained by Being in all that we are, it must follow that we can find health only by looking to Being.
11.	“The fact that false education has led us away from this fundamental truth should have no
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weight in our pure logic.
12.	“If life and intelligence are derived from God, it follows that our knowing how to put life and intelligence together in harmonious expression must emanate from the same source; in other words, there must be a Spirit of healing, or wholeness, of harmony, pervading all creation.
13.	“That there is such a Spirit omnipresent is evidenced on every hand in the so-called healing power of nature. It is constantly healing and restoring the cut, bruised, and broken in all creation.
14.	“The mark of the woodman’s ax on the forest tree is as carefully healed over as is the cut on the finger of the little child. The healing Spirit is no respecter of persons or things, but does its work effectively wherever and whenever it has the opportunity” (Heal the Sick).
15.	Life is real, abiding, eternal, unchangeable. Thus we can say that life produces health or wholeness which is every man’s birthright. “The spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life” (Job 33:4). It is important to remember this because the thought of man has so built up the belief in the power and reality of sickness and disease that these conditions seem impossible to overcome. These negative beliefs become the “mental equivalents” that produce disease in the body. God does not compel man to claim his birthright. Because each person is essentially spiritual, the potential is within him to claim eventually his full inheritance of life which produces health in the body.
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Health as God's Will
16.	Sickness is never the will of God, in the sense of its being intended by Him. If sickness were the will of God, then to seek healing would be to fight against God. Obviously, such a proposition does not make sense. God is on the side of health, because He is life.
“Jesus showed by His life and teachings that it is the will of God for men to be well. A clear understanding of this is necessary if one wants to demonstrate health. Where there is a belief that God wills sickness and suffering, His love and power are shut out of consciousness” (Atom-Smashing Power of Mind, p.76). Since the will of God is health for man, the process of healing is a natural process.
17.	We experience sickness for many reasons. If the will of God for man is health, why do we experience sickness? Because man has the capacity to separate himself in consciousness from the life of God, he often ignorantly allows himself to believe in sickness. Although in reality he is never separated from the life of God, man often finds himself in a separated state of mind. The solution is to restore the mind to a consciousness of God-life.
“Some persons are afraid to ask for the will of God to be done in them because they are afraid of God’s will. The will of our loving Father-God is good. Study the teachings of Jesus and you will see that God is a loving Father and that His will can mean only good for His children. Therefore we must not be afraid to have the will of God done in our body and affairs. The Lord’s Prayer says:
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‘Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.’ This is a healing statement, and if we will enter into the spirit of it we shall be blessed by His loving, healing power” (Thinking and Healing, Lowell Fillmore, p. 6).
18.	It must be remembered that there is no power or reality in disease, for God did not create it. If mental and physical discords were real they could not be healed, because that which is real is enduring, unchangeable. Disease does not have a divine principle behind it as a pattern for its formation. Therefore, any belief or condition of disease can be changed because it is not a God creation.
19.	Disease is a condition brought about by man consciously or unconsciously—thinking out of harmony with the universal laws of life. This is especially true of the forms of sickness which have been stamped “incurable.” There are no incurable diseases. Every appearance of ill has a cause, and that cause can be handled with Truth.
20.	Through the will of God the body wants to express health and works to do so. However, we do not heal ourself, but we cooperate with the healing process of God which is going on in us all the time. Our job is to know and feel that healing process as the reality of our being.
“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
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or release of the healing power that is resident
within us” (The Great Physician, p. 43).
21.	Only the Word of God can possibly bring healing. When we have made our consciousness (thinking and feeling) a receptive channel, the Word of God acts to bring about wholeness in the mind. Wholeness in body and affairs follows. When we say that we are “holding to the Truth” or “knowing the Truth,” we mean that we are conscious of the Word of God bringing forth wholeness, reality, for the Word of God is His Truth or plan of good in action. Truth is the steadfast fulfillment of the divine intention, the will of God being done in the individual life or in mankind in general. As God is All-Perfection, His will or plan must be wholeness for His creation, whether it be a tree, a bird, or a man.
22.	When a skillful surgeon sets a bone, he can do no more. He must wait for the life forces in the body to knit the parts of the bone together. If these bodily forces do not function properly, then there is little he can do to make the bone whole.
23.	When a man cuts his finger he takes it for granted that the wound will grow together and heal, and so it does. The healing life in the body is at work all the time, and it heals when it is not too much inhibited by fear and other emotions. It is continually repairing many frazzled and ragged fringes that we never know about. This service of nature is the working out of the perfect idea of God’s life in us, and by consciously cooperating with it through harmonious thinking we may keep open the way for God’s perfect healing power to work in us in full measure.
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What about Heredity ?
24.	The belief in heredity as the determining factor of man’s state of health keeps many persons in bondage to disease. “And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven” (Matt. 23:9). This Biblical statement emphasizes that man inherits his true being from God. As we are the offspring of God, our true inheritance of life is from Him. In Truth there is no such thing as a hereditary disease, and appearances of such in the body are due to man’s limited belief about his inheritance of life. If man is ignorant of the truth that God is his Father, and he insists upon claiming man as the source of his life, he limits the possibility of God’s healing power working through him. Myrtle Fillmore found freedom from the belief in heredity as the determining factor of her health through grasping the idea: “I am a child of God and therefore I do not inherit sickness.”
A Truth Insight into Health Problems
25.	It is a fact that human beings experience illness from time to time. In the study of Truth it is important to understand what an experience of illness can mean for us in our life.
26.	In the Adam and Eve story, in Chapter 2 of Genesis, Adam is given the capacity to name everything in his world; whatever he named a thing, that is what it became. This is a Biblical way of saying that the experiences and conditions of our life will be for us whatever we “name” them to be. Naming something means taking an attitude toward it, or
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regarding it with a certain state of mind. A common Truth teaching is that it is not what happens to us which is decisive for our life, but how we react to what happens to us. Another way of saying it is “life is consciousness.”
27.	If a health problem comes into our experience it makes quite a difference how we regard it, not only for the eventual outcome of the problem, but for our own spiritual growth. Health problems may be understood in the following ways:
A.	As opportunities for the healing activity of God to be expressed.
Jesus was asked by His disciples about a man who had been bom blind, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was bom blind?” Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be made manifest in him” (John 9:2-4).
B.	A signal to take positive action.
“Every bit of human suffering is a spiritual alarm clock” (Florence Scovil Shinn).
C.	A focus for God life.
Since there is “no absence of life, substance, or intelligence anywhere,” we understand that within the health problem is the very presence of God as life seeking perfect expression. Therefore, we call forth the life that is there and we do not have to regard the illness as a power opposed to God.
28.	We can see from these ways of understanding a health problem that “having an illness” is not to be understood as “bad” or “wrong” or “punishment.” It is what we do with what happens to us that matters. A positive understanding of such
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situations, if they occur, leads to growth and un-foldment. The tendency to condemn ourself for having an illness only binds us more closely to the problem.
The Body
29.	Since it is the body that is most often involved in needs for healing, it is important for us to understand what the body is and its place in the whole framework of life. Out of this understanding will come the right attitudes toward the body which are necessary for maintenance of health. It should be remembered that the body outpictures the consciousness of the individual—the way he thinks and feels about himself.
“The body of man is the visible record of his thoughts. It is the individual’s interpretation of his identity, and each individual shows in his body just what his views of man are”
(Atom-Smashing Power of Mind, Charles Fillmore, p. 118).
“Your body is a temple beautiful. It is the living temple of God. Every cell in your body should be radiant with light, love, and peace. When it is, you enjoy the perfect health that is God’s will for you. The very joy of living animates you. You radiate the spirit of wholeness to others” (You Can Be Healed, Clara Palmer, p. 11).
30.	The body of each one of us is a temple of God because God’s presence is within it as the life principle. At the center of our being, the first phase of our threefold nature (i.e., spirit-soul-body), is a “Holy of Holies” (Heb. 9:3). This is
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where God lives as the life, substance, and intelligence that causes and sustains the body.
31.	We have the words of Scripture attesting to the body of man as being God’s temple, for we read, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. . . . But he spoke of the temple of his body” (John 2:19, 21).
32.	Sometimes in our spiritual study we are so engrossed in Jesus’ teaching concerning the state of the soul that we overlook His teaching concerning the body. The number of physical healings Jesus performed indicates His realization of the body as an instrument for the expression and manifestation of God-perfection. Charles Fillmore caught this truth for himself for he spent many hours of prayer for his own healing. His conviction of the need to have the body worthy of the divine Presence within is brought out in the following words:
“When Jesus came teaching that the body is the temple He brought to man the revelation of the enduring temple. ... Jesus Christ taught the beauty and continuity of the body temple. This was one object of His ministry.
He first proclaimed that His mission was to preach and to heal, and all of His work was to demonstrate perfection of the temple, to establish the true worship of the living God throughout the body, which is God’s temple” (Metaphysical Bible Dictionary: pp. 650, 651).
33.	Since the body is a creation of God composed of His life, substance, and intelligence, it is “very good” (Gen. 1:31). Often we tend to think of the body as unimportant or “just human.”
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Health depends on positive attitudes toward the body.
The Cause of III Health
34.	Since disease has no foundation in God’s will, in Divine Mind, or in Truth, the cause of disease finds its origin in man’s own consciousness. The life of God is available to man all the time. “Your father knows what you need before you ask Him” (Matt. 6:8). It is the nature of man’s consciousness of the life of God, which varies according to the development and choices of the individual, that determines the expression of this life to either health or ill health.
“It is possible for man to form states of consciousness that are out of harmony with the God principle, but these do not endure, and through experience man learns to adjust his thought to that of God. ‘I will be what I will to be’ is basic in all creation and it proves itself in the face of human reason and logic. God is free to do as He wills, and He has implanted that same freedom in man”
(A tom-Smashing Power of Mind, Charles Fillmore, pp. 18-19).
35.	It is important, therefore, to keep in mind that healing must begin with us—with our attitudes, feelings, and beliefs. If there is anything that we think, feel, or believe that keeps the life of God from expressing to its full extent through us, it must be released. In its place we will develop a full consciousness of the life of God and all that is meant by the full expression of that life in our minds, bodies, and affairs. Beyond this general
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understanding of the cause of ill health, it is not necessary to know all the specific causes of particular ailments, but to know the primary solution for healing: a return in consciousness to God.
The Meaning of Healing
36.	While healing usually means to us the curing of a particular disease or ailment, its ultimate meaning has to do with the totality of us, as thinking, feeling, and acting beings. The deepest sense of healing is the restoration of wholeness in our mind and heart, inner and outer selves. It goes beyond the curing of particular diseases (although including it) to the establishment of a free flow of life and energy throughout man’s being. The evidence for the beginning of true healing is not always first in the body, but first in the depth of the mind and heart. Included in this is the sense in which a person feels “new” in himself, eternally healed of whatever disease he may encounter, and one with the Father of life. He is in tune with an absolute sense of being “on the path” of his own growth and unfoldment as a spiritual being.
Methods of Healing
37.	The problem with the healing systems of man lies in the fact that men have tried to cure disease without handling the cause of it. Causes are not remedied by dealing only with effects. To find a remedy, we must go to cause first. If a cause is removed, its effect is eventually removed.
38.	At the heart of the Unity approach to healing is the Silent Unity method of healing prayer:
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“Prayer is an art. Most things that a person learns to do well are accomplished, because he has learned to take certain steps or to follow a definite procedure.”
There are three important steps:
39.	“Positive Thinking: Positive thinking is a definite step toward healing. God has given man the power to think, and his thoughts can either hinder or put him on the forward path. If you have let your thoughts dwell on sickness and ill-health, it is important to change the pattern of your thinking. [This is known in traditional Christian thought as ‘repentance.’] This will take conscious effort on your part. You must refuse to let thoughts of inharmony and negation enter your mind. Center your thoughts on God; think about God and His healing, cleansing, vitalizing life flowing in and through you. Let go anxious, fearful thoughts, for they keep you from thinking about wholeness and perfection. Remember that God created you in His image and likeness. His life and health fill every part of your being. Every cell is alive with energy and vitality. Remember that the organs and functions of your body were created to work together in order and harmony. These are the kind of thoughts that comprise ‘positive thinking.’ ”
4 0. “Speaking the Word: Speaking positive, faith-filled words helps to establish you in the consciousness of the healing life of God mighty within you, mighty within every person. If you are praying for your own healing you may wish to take the word life and repeat it over and over. Say to your body: ‘Life, life, life.’ Say this until you actually feel this life! . . .
41.	“Affirmative prayer calls for more than just
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repeating words of life, strength, and healing. You must believe in the power of the spoken word and you must pray until you feel an inner quickening, a stirring up of the life that is within you.”
42.	“Beholding Health: As you pray for health, remember that you are to see only health and perfection. You are to behold God’s perfect manifestation of life and health. Instead of focusing your attention on the condition as it appears, try to keep your thoughts centered in God. Trust Him and know that His will is life, health, and strength. . . .
43.	“Remember that you are to behold only the good, only the perfect, for this is what you desire to see brought forth” (The Art of Healing Prayer, Silent Unity).
Healing Related to Forgiveness
44.	In the healing work of Jesus, forgiveness was prominent. We can readily understand why forgiveness plays so important a part in the life of man. Charles Fillmore states:
“No one can understand how forgiveness sets
free the sin-bound soul and the sick body
unless he studies mind and has some understanding of its laws” (Jesus Christ Heals, p.
60).
45.	We need to remember that the body is primarily the “temple of the living God,” but the appearance it takes on is determined by the individual’s thoughts, so forgiveness is related to healing as a cause-and-effect relationship.
46.	Forgiveness is the giving up, erasing, and releasing (through denial) of all concepts and
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beliefs about ourself or about others that are contrary to the divine standard of good. All thought about and belief in sin and evil must be given up— because forgiveness is “giving” Truth “for” error. Forgiveness is therefore a combination of both denial and affirmation.
47.	In order to achieve healing, we must think in accordance with divine patterns (God ideas) and feel in unison with our divine nature. When we do this, all parts of our being will be restored to health and harmony. Thus we see how essential forgiveness is to healing.
48.	Charles Fillmore made the following suggestion concerning forgiveness and health:
49.	“Here is a mental treatment that is guaranteed to cure every ill that flesh is heir to: Sit for half an hour every night and mentally forgive everyone against whom you have any ill will or antipathy. If you fear or if you are prejudiced against even an animal, mentally ask forgiveness of it and send it thoughts of love. If you have accused anyone of injustice, if you have discussed anyone unkindly, if you have criticized or gossiped about anyone, withdraw your words by asking him, in the silence, to forgive you. If you have had a falling out with friends or relatives, if you are at law or engaged in contention with anyone, do everything in your power to end the separation. See all things and all persons as they really are—pure Spirit—and send them your strongest thoughts of love. Do not go to bed any night feeling that you have an enemy in the world.
50.	“Self-condemnation is also a great error, leading to dire results. If you have accused yourself of ignorance, foolishness, fear, sickness, anxiety,
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poverty, anger, jealousy, stinginess, ambition, weakness, or if you are melancholy and indulge in the ‘blues,’ ask forgiveness, for each, of the loving Father in whose image and likeness you spiritually have perfect life” (pamphlet, Curing Colds).
Healing Related to Love
51.	Love is a healing balm. Our knowing God as our Father and as the Father of all men will take away the great burden of condemnation from our mind. When condemnation of self or others is removed from mind, many of the ills of the flesh will disappear, because condemnation, criticism, and faultfinding make sick bodies. Instead of judging by appearances we shall practice seeing ourself and others as we are in Truth. Thus, we shall remove the appearance instead of condemning it.
52.	As the unifying principle, love contributes to the increasing demonstration of life because it attracts and unifies those spiritual qualities or ideas that are conducive to the expression of life. Charles Fillmore deals with “love” as related to the body in these words:
“The physical representative of love is the heart, the office of which is to equalize the circulation of the blood in the body. As the heart equalizes the life flow in the body, so love harmonizes the thoughts of the mind”
(Christian Healing, p. 130).
53.	Every form of hate and envy and jealousy is a burning fire, a disintegrating force that disturbs the mind and tears down the body. But love will restore us when we enter the silence, affirm our oneness with love, and express it.
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Healing Related to Faith
54.	“Those who turned to Jesus for healing discovered an astonishing thing about themselves. They discovered that they had faith! They discovered that they were not bound to sickness. Even to death itself! We, too, when we look to God, when we have faith in the Christ within us, feel a new surge of faith, the scales of doubt and disbelief drop from our eyes, and we see ourselves as God has always seen us, whole and perfect. We know ourselves as God has always known us, His beloved children, created in His image and likeness, and meant for life, health, wholeness. . . .
55.	“When you pray for healing, pray first for increased faith. Sometimes when a person needs healing, he thinks that if only he could be relaxed and at peace he would be healed more quickly. This is true, but if he seeks first for relaxation and peace without a conscious realization of God’s presence and power with him, he is sometimes crying, ‘Peace, peace; when there is no peace.’ Peace of mind and body, calmness of heart and emotions follow naturally when we know, with all our being, that God is with us when we have faith in His healing, freeing life within us. Where before we have been fearful, anxious, or tense, now we are serene, calm, and sure. We are tranquil and at peace, not because we have lulled ourselves into a kind of trance, but rather because we have come alive to Truth, and are awake to the healing Christ within us” ( Believe and Be Healed, pp. 2, 3, 4, Silent Unity).
56.	The faith being spoken of is understanding faith, which has been discussed in a previous
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lesson. An important insight of understanding faith is that it sees beyond the facts of illness to the truth of the God-created-reality which is in every man. This reality is, among many things, life and wholeness, and our belief in and affirmation of this reality moves our whole being toward health. “Many have learned how to hold the truth about health steadily in faith even in the midst of the most adverse appearances, and they clearly understand that they are not telling falsehoods when they deny sickness right in the face of the appearance of it” IJesus Christ Heals, p. 103).
57.	Once we realize that we are claiming an absolute Truth and not a falsehood about man, we ^re set free from the power of negative appearances and are able to lay hold of and use the power of God.
Healing Related to Joy
58.	Unity emphasizes that it is the conscious expression of joy throughout the whole being that fosters the healing process. Since true joy finds its source in God, its capacity for expression in us is natural and unlimited.
“Joy is inherent in our soul but we must develop it. All of us relate joy to the things that happen in our lives rather than trying to find the source of joy within us. The joy of the Lord is a wellspring within that we can let flow out into our lives by cultivating a joyous spirit” (Dare to Believe!, May Rowland, pp. 127-128).
59.	Joy is a spiritual quality expressed through
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man as an attitude of mind and a buoyant feeling of the heart. Joy is the welling-up and bubbling-over feeling that man experiences when he is in rapport with life, his fellow man, and his God. There is an inner joy that is not expressed in emotionalism, the joy that Jesus Christ spoke of when He prayed “that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full” (John 15:11).
60.	The true source of joy is God, and only as we enter into the consciousness of our oneness with the Father can we find real joy. True joy takes hold of man’s consciousness when he awakens to the realization of his divine nature and to the blessings that accompany that realization.
61.	Many persons have been disappointed in their search for joy because they have looked outside themselves for happiness, not realizing that spiritual fulfillment can come only from the God presence within. This is not to imply that the things of the world do not contribute to our joy and well-being! They do, but they take second place, and we are not dependent on them for true and lasting joy. Joy cannot be found without but comes from within, even though it will express itself through people, things, and circumstances in the outer. The joy of the artist seeks expression on canvas, on marble, in music or dance. The joy of the parent expresses in loving acts to the children. Yet, in each, the joy is not found by searching for it in the painting, the sculpture, the marble, the music, the dance, or in the children, but through allowing the True Spirit of the individual to come forth through these avenues.
62.	Charles Fillmore expresses his feeling about the importance of joy in the following quotation:
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“That there is an intimate relation between happiness and health goes without question. When you feel good you sing either audibly or silently. Singing promotes health because it increases the circulation and a good circulation is a sign and promoter of health. If the blood stream were never congested and all the nerves and pores were open and free and were swiftly carrying forward their appointed work, there would never be an abnormal false growth in the body. It follows logically then that we should cultivate those mind activities which stimulate naturally the currents of life in our body. One of these, and a very important one, is joy. . . . Back of every true song is a thought of joy. It is the thought that counts in the end, because it is the thought that invites the healing Spirit” (Jesus Christ Heals, pp. 169, 170).
63.	Above all things “Let us not be discouraged or deterred in our efforts to lay hold of the Truth about spiritual healing. Let us know that healing is possible, that with God there are no incurable diseases. The power that causes instantaneous remission in the course of a disease is miraculous in the sense that it is a power beyond ourselves, a power that works through us, a power that is greater than drugs or treatments, or anything that we or man can do. But it is not miraculous in another sense, for a miracle is something outside the law. Healing is not unnatural, it is not outside the realm of possibility. It is right and natural and always possible to be healed. Health is our normal state. That this is so may
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be the most miraculous fact of all! When we know this and accept it, when we can open ourselves freely, willingly to the power of God, when we can let go of fear, of stress and strain, of striving for results and say simply, ‘Thy will be done,’ we give the healing power in us a chance. We hear the loving Christ saying to us, ‘Your sins are forgiven.’ ‘Rise, take up your bed and walk.’ And we are healed!” (Halfway Up the Mountain, Martha Smock, pp. 94-95).
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Lesson III Prosperity
1.	The Unity teaching on prosperity is not a teaching about how to get things for the sake of things. Nor is it a series of methods about how to “get rich quick.”
2.	These lessons are about the nature of the prosperous state of mind and the way in which that prosperous state of mind expresses itself in the living of everyday life.
The Meaning of Prosperity
3.	Prosperity is a rich state of mind. It is the enrichment man gains both inwardly and outwardly through the right use of divine ideas. Inward enrichment includes such attitudes as a fundamental optimism about life, a sure confidence in one’s abilities to do a good job, a curiosity and desire to learn new things, a desire to give of one’s talents and abilities, and so forth. All of these proceed out of a sense of security in one’s relationships with God.
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4.	Outward enrichment includes all the forms of good that result from the expression of one’s inward enrichment. This includes food, clothing, employment, housing, etc. Divine ideas and their use form the foundation of both of these types of enrichment.
5.	In his book Prosperity, Charles Fillmore expresses clearly the idea that true prosperity is fundamentally a rich state of consciousness:
6.	“Prosperity does not mean the same thing to any two persons. To the wage earner an increase of a few dollars in the weekly income may seem like wonderful prosperity, for it means an increase in the comfort and welfare of his family. The man who engages in vast enterprises reckons prosperity in larger terms, and does not consider himself prosperous unless things are coming to him in a big way. Between these extremes are many ideas of prosperity, which shows quite plainly that prosperity is not in the possession of things but in the recognition of supply and in the knowledge of free and open access to an inexhaustible storehouse of all that is good or desirable. . . .
7.	“We are sometimes asked whether we advocate the accumulation of riches. No. The accumulation of riches, as has been explained, is futile unless it is the outgrowth of a rich consciousness. We advocate the accumulation rather of rich ideas, ideas that are useful, constructive, and of service to the well-being of all mankind. The outer manifestation of riches may follow or it may not, but the supply for every need will be forthcoming because the man of rich ideas has confidence in an allproviding power that never fails. He may not have an extra dollar, but his ideas have merit and he has
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confidence, a combination that cannot fail to attract the money to carry him forward. This is true riches, not an accumulation of money, but access to an inexhaustible resource that can be drawn on at any time to meet any righteous demand. . . .
8.	“The sin of riches is not in the possession but in the love of money, a material selfishness that leads to soul starvation. . . .
9.	“The real search of all people is for God. They may think they are looking for other things, but they must eventually admit that it is God they seek. Having once felt His presence within them, they are keenly conscious that only God can satisfy. The place where we meet God should be made so sure and so pure that we can never mistake His voice or be hidden from His face. This place we know as the mind, the inmost recess of the soul, the kingdom of the heavens within us.
10.	“It is not sufficient however to sit down and hold thoughts of abundance without further effort. That is limiting the law to thought alone, and we want it to be fulfilled in manifestation as well. Cultivating ideas of abundance is the first step in the process. The ideas that come must be used. Be alert in doing whatever comes to you to do, cheerful and competent in the doing, sure of the results, for it is the second step in the fulfilling of the law. . . .
11.	“A stonecutter sees a block of marble as so many hours work, while Michelangelo sees it as an angel that it is his privilege to bring forth. This is the difference between those who see the material world as so much matter and those who look on it with the eyes of mind and the imagination that
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works toward perfection. One who paints a picture or makes a piece of sculpture first sees it in his mind. He first imagines or images it. If he wants a strong picture he makes force one of the elements of his image. If he wants beauty and character, he puts love into it. He may not see the perfect picture until all these elements are combined, then it requires but little effort to transfer it from his mind to the canvas or to the marble.
12.	“There are opportunities everywhere, just as there have always been, to produce all that you need financially, or otherwise. God wants you to be a producer of new ideas. New ideas come to you from within. Do not think for a moment that you are limited to the ideas that come from without. Many of those ideas are outgrown anyway and have outlived their usefulness. That is why we go through periods of change; so that old outworn ideas can be discarded and replaced with new and better ones. There have been more inventions since the beginning of the so-called depression than in any previous similar period of American history. This shows that new ideas are within man, just waiting to be called out and put into expression. We can find new ways of living and new methods of work; we are not confined to the ways and methods of the past. When we commune with the Spirit within and ask for new ideas, they are always forthcoming. When these ideas from within us are recognized, they go to work and come to the surface. Then all the thoughts we have ever had, as well as the thoughts of other people, are added to them and new things are quickly produced. Let us quit slavishly depending on someone else for everything and become producers, for only in that direc-
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tion lies happiness and success. Let us begin to concentrate on this inner man, this powerful man who produces things, who gets his ideas from a higher-dimensional realm. . . .
13.	Change your thought and increase your substance in the mind, as Elisha increased the oil for the widow. Get larger receptacles and plenty of them. Even a very small idea of substance may be added to and increased. The widow had a very small amount of oil, but as the prophet blessed it, it increased until it filled every vessel she could borrow from the neighbors. We should form the habit of blessing everything that we have. It may seem foolish to some persons that we bless our nickels, dimes, and dollars, but we know that we are setting the law of increase into operation. All substance is one and connected, whether in the visible or the invisible. The mind likes something that is already formed and tangible for a suggestion to take hold of. With this image the mind sets to work to draw like substance from the invisible realm and thus increase what we have in hand. Jesus used the small quantity of loaves and fishes to produce a great quantity of—loaves and fishes. Elisha used a small amount of oil to produce a great amount of—oil. So when we bless our money or other goods, we are complying with divine law of increase that has been demonstrated many times. . . .
14.	“It is not advisable to hold for too specific a demand. You might visualize a hundred dollars and get it when a thousand was coming your way. Do not limit the substance, to what you think you need or want; rather broaden your consciousness and give infinite Mind freedom to work, and every
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good and needful thing will be provided you. Make your statements broad and comprehensive so that your mind may expand to the Infinite rather than trying to cram the Infinite into your mind.”
Su bstance
15.	Unity accepts the idea that true prosperity is grounded in the conception of universal spiritual substance.
16.	Substance is the unformed Mind essence out of which every form is produced. It is also termed Omnipresence because it is the essence in which “we live, and move, and have our being” (Acts 17:28). This substance is of such rarefied nature that it is not tangible to the physical eye of manifest man. However, through the power of thought this Mind essence can be cognized. It can then be formed by man’s conscious and subconscious (thinking and feeling) phases of mind, and the resultant manifestations are recognized by the senses.
“In universal God-Mind is a substance that includes the seed of all visible substance. It is the only real substance, because it is unchangeable, while visible substance is in constant transition. God as substance does not mean matter, because matter is formed; God is formless. The substance that God is lies back of all matter and all form. It is that which is the basis of all form, yet enters not into any form as finality” (Keep a True Lent,
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pp. 14-15).
17.	Scientific study has revealed that there is one basic substance out of which everything proceeds, and that the form it takes will depend upon the formation of the atoms. Spiritual observation agrees with science, but goes further by saying that this one basic essence is God as substance, supplying the needs of His creation. Substance is one of the elements of the nature of God as Absolute Good and is, therefore, part of our divine inheritance. We need to make it a habit, part of our life-style, to turn to the God Presence within, through prayer, for the fulfillment of our needs.
18.	It is vital that we know what divine substance really is. It is not some mysterious essence beyond the reach of man, but is the reservoir or storehouse of God ideas.
“It is essential that you fix firmly in your mind the value of ideas. Because, if you do not believe . . . that ideas are the gold coin of God’s kingdom, you are likely to throw away a fortune. . . . The closer your contact with God is, the more ideas you will receive. . . . Thus the first step in claiming the prosperity of God is seeing ideas for what they are: blueprints that show you how to build success, detailed maps that lead you to all the buried treasure of the ages” (Magnificent Decision, James A. Decker, p.76).
19.	Substance is related to manifest objects as the raw material out of which every form in creation will take shape. Let us consider milk as an illustration of substance. Cream, butter, buttermilk, cheese, whey, and the like are derived from milk by means of certain processes. Universal Mind
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substance contains the elements or ideas that are the origin of all forms, and the initiators of all action in our manifest world. Certain processes are necessary to produce the different products from milk. By the same token, the ideas in substance await certain processes of mind action (the law of right thinking and feeling) in order to come forth in the forms that will supply the needs of every species of creation. We may say, then, that ideas in substance are the causes, and the manifest objects we see are the effects that have been produced by mind action on the ideas.
Substance and Ideas
20.	Everything that we see in this manifest world had its origin in Spirit substance as an idea. Each idea is endowed with the life and power necessary to make itself manifest. The idea, under the right conditions of thinking and feeling, will manifest through the law of expression within it. The ideas are always available to us. However, we bring the ideas forth in abundance as we consciously know God’s presence as the source, or the Fountainhead. Health manifests in our body temple when we know God as the source of life and ourselves as heirs to that life. When we know that God as wisdom indwells us, our minds use intelligence in whatever we undertake. Also, we must come to realize God as the source of our outer supply as well as the fulfillment of our inner needs. This enables us to understand that prosperity is the sum total of all the things needed to fulfill our own particular desires.
21.	Let us consider the processes of nature from
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seed to full-grown plant. We understand that it is the image or idea within the seed, determining its particular species, that supplies the growing plant with the fulfillment of all its needs. We know that the soil provides the nutriment, while sun, rain, wind, and heat all contribute to the growth of the plant. However, in the final analysis, it is the light that causes the life principle (image or pattern) within the seed to draw sustenance from the soil and to send forth the roots and shoots as part of the growing process. In us it is the light of God moving through us as the Holy Spirit that stirs us to seek the good that God has prepared for us “from the foundation of the world” (Matt. 25:34).
22.	Each person’s manner of expression will be in the way that is right for him. The light of Truth may impel one soul to seek his expression through the arts. Another may feel the urge within to enter business or government service. The desire in still another person may make him a good husband and father, or make her a good wife and mother. The fulfillment can never come from outside the person, only from the inner Presence.
“For with thee is the fountain of life:
In thy light shall we see light” (Psalms 36:9). The help we need for any endeavor, the light on any subject, can come only from the one Light-God in us. This contact is made through prayer. We must find our own way of praying, even though we are willing to be taught techniques or steps in prayer that will be helpful.
“We should realize that in every soul there is undoubtedly present ... a great reservoir of radiant Spirit substance, which is ready and eager to be tapped and freed so that it can
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supply our every need.
23.	“To gain control of Spirit substance we grasp it with our mind; that is, lay hold of the idea back of it. Right thinking is necessary in using the mind constructively to bring about right results” (Teach Us to Pray, p. 40).
How May We Become Conscious of Substance'?
24.	It is through our acceptance in thinking and feeling that we become conscious of substance as the living Presence of God. This Presence sustains, provides, protects, and is the ever available source of visible supply for all creation, not just for man.
25.	Primarily, we are conscious of anything when we feel it within our own being. Our soul is composed of the substance of God; all the God elements (ideas) are inherent within our spiritual nature in a latent state, awaiting the soul’s claim upon them.
26.	We can have the manifest things in our experiences that go to make up a purposeful and satisfying life. To do so, however, we must make conscious contact with the spiritual patterns that produce the things. These “patterns” are all the ideas of the kingdom, or realm of divine substance.
27.	Mentally, we may become conscious of substance through meditation, affirmation, contemplation, concentration, which result in the illumination that comes through the silence bringing the light of understanding, or knowing, to our own human consciousness.
28.	Spiritually, we may become conscious of substance by entering our “inner chamber” and seeking an understanding of the law that governs
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the use of substance for the good of all creation. In “the secret place of the Most High” (Psalms 91:1) within us, we identify ourself with the nature or substance of God by dwelling in thought and feeling on the reality of substance which contains the underlying elements (ideas) of Being. We need to come to the understanding of ourself as fundamentally and elementally all that the nature of God is, because we were created “in the image” and “after the likeness” of God. We need to behold the one creative Spirit as the only Source, and know our oneness with it.
29.	Recognizing the source, God indwelling, we affirm the presence of divine substance in and around us. We claim its power to clothe our thoughts with that which is substantial and lasting. With every silent thought and every spoken word we are “telling” the omnipresent substance what to do, and it carries out whatever commands we project into it. Understanding of the law governing substance leads to faith in it; faith becomes assurance or conviction; acknowledgment develops into praise of God as the one source of substance and ourself as heir to it.
The Relation of Substance to Supply
30.	Divine substance is the basis of man’s supply, whether he is aware of it or not. Substance is the source, the great reservoir of unexpressed good in the form of divine ideas. These ideas are the spiritual patterns that when rightly used will mold the substance to produce man’s supply us food, shelter, employment, success, harmony, health—any good he desires.
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31.	Man is a channel through which the blessings (ideas) of God may flow; but he does not become a truly effective channel until he has received the revelation of himself as a child of God, heir to the ideas that make up divine substance. Man’s health, happiness, abundance—his supply of all good—are related so directly to divine substance that any attempt to gain these good conditions in any other way results in failure. All the unhappiness that mankind suffers comes from man’s belief in supply as being separate from him, and obtainable only outside himself. When man realizes that divine substance is the only basis for his supply, he then begins to claim that which is his by divine right. He learns to use his faculty of imagination to form a “mental equivalent” of the good he desires. His supply, whether it be some good for mind, body, or affairs, is then attracted to him through the action of his own mind moving upon substance. Man makes the choice as to the manner in which he will combine divine ideas and divine substance. If he allows himself to be guided by God, then he will build the right “mental equivalents” that will draw his good to him.
“The law of supply is a divine law. This means that it is a divine law of mind and must work through mind. . . . when you continue to think about God as your real supply, everything in your mind begins to awaken and to contact the divine substance, and as you mold it in your consciousness, ideas begin to come which will connect you with the visible manifestation”
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(.Prosperity, pp. 67-68).
God as Supply and Supplier
32.	As supply, God is the substance out of which every species of creation, including man, is created. This substance holds together all the elements or divine ideas that are the spiritual patterns for the fulfillment of every species.
33.	For us, as sons of God, Divine Mind provides all of the ideas that we may consciously lay hold of to mold this substance, now and throughout eternity. God as supply is always available to us, but the portion of this supply that we receive depends upon our awareness, acceptance, and use of it.
34.	As supplier, God is the creative law that stands ready to fulfill the supply needed by His creation. The principle of mathematics becomes a good illustration of this: we may say that the principle of mathematics stands ready to provide the needed answers of the mathematician. However, the student of mathematics must make a demand or call on the principle. So it is with us and with the rest of creation. There must be a demand in order that God, as supplier, may send forth the supply in the form of the ideas that make up His nature of Absolute Good.
35.	God Himself is the urge back of every demand. It is the movement of God as the Holy Spirit seeking to express life, substance, intelligence, love, power and so forth that causes the demand on the part of creation. This must be kept in mind when one is considering God as both supply and supplier. The demand, in a sense, “triggers” the supply that is awaiting the call into manifestation.
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“All that the Father has is yours, but you alone are responsible for the relationship of the Father’s good in your life. Through conscious recognition of your oneness with the Father and His abundance you draw the living substance into visible supply” (Prosperity, p. 68).
36.	Just as God is the supplier of all the needs of creation, so our words of affirmation present our demand on (or claim to) the supply for these needs. There are those who have been quite willing to recognize God as supply, but have somehow felt that they must struggle or labor to get hold of this supply. Some have thought that God has to be begged, entreated. When we know God as supplier as well as supply, we are better able to put ourself into right relation with God, so that the supply comes forth at our word of affirmation, to be followed by intelligent action. We no longer think of health, abundance, harmony, joy, success as whims of chance, but we know them to be the “fruit of the Spirit” (Gal. 5:22).
The “Shape, ” the “Time, ” and the “Quantity” of Our Supply
37.	Desire governs or determines the “shape” of our supply, while faith, the perceiving power of the mind, sets or determines the “time” and the “quantity.”
38.	The desire may be for a home, a college education, a change of jobs, increase in finances, or friends. Desire works through the faculty of imagination so that there is a definite understanding of what we want to manifest in our life. If one were
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to go to the grocery store without knowing what he wanted of the foodstuffs on the shelves, he would not make his claim for the food. So it is with us, and our spiritual needs. Our desire determines the “shape” of the supply we need in our life.
39.	After desire has determined what type of supply we need at any given time—shelter, food, clothing, and so forth—it is the faculty of faith that fixes both the time and the amount (quantity or degree). If our faith is coupled with understanding, we will not think of the supply as existing somewhere in the distant future, but we will know with certainty that God’s good awaits our claim.
40.	Understanding faith helps us to conduct our life in divine order, so that we have no anxiety about the supply being late or any doubt of its coming into our life. The same truth applies to the quantity of our supply. Faith, as the perceiving power of the mind, is able to decide on the amount required. An industrialist, dealing in vast sums of money and goods to run his enterprises, will use his faith to see all that is needed coming in the right way to carry on his business. Parents use faith to determine just how much supply is needed to maintain the household and care for the family. The professional, office, or factory worker will use both desire and faith to decide the type and quantity of supply needed to fulfill the specific requirements of his life. It is vital for a teacher to have certain books or supplies to continue good teaching; the professional person may require additional training in his specialized work. To each of these the supply comes according to his individual desire and faith.
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41.	In tracing desire to its origin, we see that metaphysically it is primarily the urge of God seeking expression of His own nature of Absolute Good. Such expression will come forth in the varied forms of good required for all creation. One may have a vivid awareness of what he desires— food, clothing, shelter, trips, education—but if the faculty of faith has not been stirred sufficiently for him to know that what he desires is rightfully his, the desires remain unfulfilled. Unless a person has faith that he can have some specific good at the right time, and in the right amount, he becomes frustrated and unhappy. Such an attitude can in turn keep him from his good, no matter how he may long for it. This is why all Truth teaching emphasizes the need for faith to be coupled with understanding in order that man’s desires may be fulfilled under grace and in divine order. We need to know that God withholds no good from His children.
“Thou hast given him his heart’s desire,
And hast not withholden the request of his lips” (Psalms 21:2).
42.	Even one who has strong desires never gets beyond mere “daydreaming,” unless his desires are backed up by an understanding faith. Desire is related to vision of some hoped-for good, but faith measures man’s capacity to receive that good; faith has been called the “measuring cup” that sets the time and quantity.
“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
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your good opposed by persons and circumstances, that too is your vision” (The Great Physician, p. 22).
Because imagination is the faculty that actually molds and shapes substance, we may sometimes overlook the fact that it takes desire to determine the shape that imagination will work with. Our desire, the yearning for some good, comes alive under the action of faith and sets the imagination to work.
Worry about Supply
43.	Worry is giving the mind over to anxiety and fear. It is interesting to note that the root meaning of the word worry is “to strangle.” Certainly, if there is worry over one’s supply it has the effect of strangling the mind, keeping it obsessed by fear of lack, and there is no opportunity for God’s good to flow in. It is true that God has already “given” a divine inheritance to man, but man has not really “received” it so long as he has not accepted it in consciousness. If there is worry over supply, then man has not accepted the Truth that God is the source of his supply. He may even have reached the point of recognizing God as the storehouse of all good, yet may not have recognized himself as entitled to that good.
44.	The habit of prayer must become established in the individual if he would overcome worry about supply. Outer possessions cannot give a person the security that comes through knowing God as the one presence and power of good. Prayer becomes the line of communication between God and man, and without it man only stumbles in a
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maze of misconception. One writer said very aptly, “Worry is the ‘don’t-trust-God’ disease.”
Jesus and Prosperity
Was Jesus Poor?
45.	No! He was wealthy with riches that the average individual is not fully aware of. Jesus did not need to possess “things” in order to enjoy or appreciate them. He found enjoyment in many simple ways overlooked by others. He saw in life healing and abundance where others saw a lack. Those who can see as Jesus did “inherit the earth” in a fuller sense than does the owner of land. Jesus wore a seamless robe so valued that after His crucifixion the soldiers cast lots for it. He was intimately acquainted with the omnipresent, omniscient substance of God-Mind, and so understood the omnipotent Word of God that He was able to speak the word of Truth and call forth what was needed to heal the sick, feed the multitude, pay the taxes. He told His disciples to do likewise, since the loving Father had given them this power also. “Verily, verily, I say unto you. He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto the Father” (John 14:12).
46.	Poverty could have no place in Jesus’ consciousness, for it is a state of mind that believes in separation from good. Jesus believed in oneness with God, the source of all good. It is true that Jesus lived the simple life. Charles Fillmore states on pages 106, 107, and 108 of Prosperity:
47.	“There is a great difference between
the simple life and poverty. The two have
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been associated in the minds of some people, and this is the reason they shun the idea of the simple life. . . . All those who base their prosperity on possessions alone have a purely material prosperity which, though it may seem great for a time, will vanish because it is founded upon the changing of the external and has no root within the consciousness. The simple life is a state of consciousness. It is peace, contentment, and satisfaction in the joy of living and loving, and it is attained through thinking about God and worshiping Him in spirit and in truth.”
This was the secret of Jesus’ wealth. He worshiped God in Spirit and in truth; He knew peace, contentment, satisfaction, joy, love because His mind was centered in God.
Jesus' Teaching
48.	Many of Jesus’ teachings relate directly to prosperity. “But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well” (Matt. 6:33).
49.	A kingdom implies a sovereign ruling power, in this case the will, law, of God in authority, having dominion over manifest man’s whole being. “His kingdom” is God indwelling, or the realm of divine ideas in man which is within and around manifest man. By these words of Scripture Jesus was directing man’s vision Godward, to divine ideas. He knew that manifest man often looks to the world of appearances as the source of his good. He knew also that supply could not be secured in that way. The kingdom of God (or “His kingdom”) means the perfect ideas of the entire God-nature.
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By seeking first these ideas and using them righteously, manifest man becomes poised and balanced, and he attains the dominion that his soul craves. Then “all these things shall be [his] as well.” He who comes consciously into “His kingdom” understands the nature of substance and how the Word of God moves in and upon universal substance to produce the visible forms of good.
50.	Jesus, as a manifest man, knew how to contact the true source within Himself. He showed man the way to realize (“seek first”) and bring forth his divine birthright. Through prayer man enters “His kingdom,” God within him, and lays hold of its seed-ideas, learns their nature, and makes them a conscious part of his own human consciousness or mind. Man’s aim should be to use divine ideas for the highest good. The Father then supplies his every need.
“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matt. 6:19-21).
51.	This teaching has back of it the truth that man is not to look upon effects, forms, and treat them as though they are causes. It is a warning to those who put their trust first in “things” rather than in divine ideas inherent in God substance that produce the “things.” Things that are manifested as results are destructible, changeable, hence temporary; but divine ideas are permanent heavenly riches in man’s divine nature. Divine ideas are
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above the laws of physical disintegration.
52.	The man who lives only in the confines of personal consciousness can accumulate vast possessions; but things so accumulated are uncertain in their tenure. Of themselves they do not convey the peace and happiness, the security and freedom that man really seeks. However, when “His kingdom” is sought first, the ideas of that kingdom satisfy man’s soul and produce the things as a natural course of events. Then man is able to appreciate the “things” as the outer forms of God ideas.
53.	The meaning of “Do not lay up . . . treasures” is that divine substance (with the inhering ideas) is present everywhere, so outer forms need not be hoarded. Man in touch with God’s constant, adequate bounty (divine substance) needs seek no other source of supply, for the ideas inhering in substance can produce all the outer supply that man needs. The heavenly treasure (ideas) is a hidden treasure. The “hiddenness” may be explored and the treasure possessed in mind, together with its outer, visible form, by anyone who, forsaking the old way, is ready to give the new way a trial.
Giving and Receiving
According to Law
54.	The law of giving and receiving is the law of balance.
“There is a law of giving and receiving ... It is a law of mind action, and it can be learned and applied the same as any other law . . . The law of giving and receiving that Jesus taught, ‘Give, and it shall be given unto you,’ is found
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to be applicable to all our commercial as well
as our social relationships” (Prosperity, pp.
145-146).
55.	In his true being man is both producer and consumer. Unless he maintains a balance between the two he produces discord and inharmony. It is a spiritual law as well as sound economics that balance is necessary in every phase of experience. Where man seeks to retain more than he can use, he causes not only disease in his own being, but he also upsets the balance for the rest of creation. All humanity are members of one body and therefore interdependent. Jesus’ statement of the law of giving and receiving, as mentioned in the quotation, “Give, and it shall be given unto you,” is very clear and admits of no doubt as to the receiving when the prerequisite of giving has been completed.
56.	The law of giving and receiving is the universal law of supply and demand. It is the law of reciprocity between God and His creation, including man. God is the source of all man’s good (divine ideas), and man’s own consciousness must be the outlet that allows divine ideas to produce his outer supply in the forms of health of body, food to sustain his body, shelter to house himself and his family, education, and all the many things that make for the “abundant life.”
57.	As man learns to keep the outlet in his own life open through giving to his fellow man, to creation in general, he has cleared the inlet that allows more of God’s blessings to flow into and through him. When man realizes that he is a chosen channel for distributing God’s good, he does all that he can through prayer, through right thinking, feeling,
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speaking, and acting to make of himself a worthy channel. He becomes a conscious co-worker with God to bring His kingdom on the earth.
58.	While it is true that man must first receive of God, giving becomes his first act as a co-worker with God, as a son in partnership with his Father. Because giving is only one part of the law, the receiving or acceptance of more of God’s blessings must follow. This is made possible through those moments of prayer when man enters the Silence and receives the inspiration of God through the revelation of divine ideas. These in turn are given forth in daily living and produce the harmonious conditions that make a “heaven” here on earth. If one attempts to receive from God, yet does not give in daily living the ideas he has received, he causes a damming of the channel. By the same token, if an individual gives, yet does not allow himself the moments of prayer whereby he may receive from God, there can be no inflow of the rich ideas to fulfill his needs. No one can give what he has not yet received in consciousness. He must receive divine ideas such as life, power, success, love, and so forth from God. Then he can form the “mental equivalents” in consciousness that can bring forth the manifest forms.
59.	If we fail to keep the law of giving and receiving, the consciousness becomes stagnant and tained. The outlet is blocked by thoughts of fear, negligence, ignorance, selfishness, or some other error belief. These sins act as a dam in the stream of consciousness and stop the outflow of the good we are seeking. On the other hand, if the soul is closed through lack of faith in God, nothing can flow in to enrich it, and there will be nothing for
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the soul to give. The more we are able to give, the more we increase the consciousness of our supply. Life is consciousness toward knowing God, and knowing our fellowman.
60.	Jesus communed often with the Father, but He also understood that His inspirations must be made practical in daily living on the earth. First, through prayer He talked with the Father; next, He mixed with the multitude, blessing them with the knowledge that He had received.
61.	A man cannot open his mind to the inflow of the elements of divinity and at the same time not feel his nature respond in love toward his fellow men. Neither can he be consciously one with the laws of Being (God) and at the same time not feel at one with his fellow men. Only as man understands the twofold nature of the law of giving and receiving, and keeps the law, will he experience true and lasting prosperity.
Giving and Love
62.	Giving is the natural outflow of love. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son” (John 3:16). God gave Himself as the reality back of all creation. In man this reality is the “only Son,” or the Christ Spirit indwelling.
63.	Paul has referred to love as the “fulfilling of the law” (Rom. 13:10). In order that any law may be fulfilled, the principle back of it has to be expressed. The very nature of love requires its inclusion in the expression of any divine law in order for fulfillment to take place.
64.	A gift is never truly a gift if love is missing. Unless the giving of the outer form has been prompted by love, it is nothing more than a trans-
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action. When the heart is filled with love—love for God, love for man, love for all creation—giving becomes a natural impulse. True giving is sharing God’s substance, not giving merely to fill places of lack. In selfless giving, all thought of “mine and thine” has gone, and “ours” takes the place of this implication of division.
“In his second letter Paul . . . made a stirring appeal to the Corinthians. ... He suggests some principles of giving . . . that adds to the spiritual growth of all men in all times. Without giving the soul shrivels, but when giving is practiced as a part of Christian living, the soul expands and becomes Godlike in the grace of liberality and generosity. . . . Therefore, it is not surprising that Paul classes the grace of giving with faith, knowledge, and love” (Prosperity, p. 133).
65.	The mother with love-filled heart yearns to give to her children all that will bring them happiness. The father who loves his children works to provide all that he feels will add to their lives in the way of food, shelter, education, travel, and satisfying experiences. The truly dedicated minister, teacher, government official, and social worker seeks to give of the best he has toward the goals set before him. Dedication to a purpose or a cause stems from love within the heart. This love in turn seeks to give in service to others.
“But I Don't Have Anything to Give”
66.	All of us have had the experience of desiring so much to give to another, yet feeling that we have no manifest substance to share. In order to give as inspired by the Spirit within, we must have
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faith in ourself as heir of God and distributor of His riches. Such a faith can be built as we enter into periods of prayer and become consciously acquainted with God. It is at such moments that God whispers to us the truth about ourself as a spiritual being, as His child, and inspires us to share the wealth of Spirit.
67.	Whether we know it or not, there is always something for us to give. We only need to be inspired to look around us and within us to discover what we have. This is graphically illustrated in the story of another prophet and a widow—this time, Elijah:
“So he arose and went to Zarephath; and when he came to the gate of the city, behold, a widow was there gathering sticks; and he called to her and said, ‘Bring me a little water in a vessel, that I may drink.’ And as she was going to bring it, he called to her and said, ‘Bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.’ And she said, ‘As the Lord your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of meal in a jar, and a little oil in a cruse; and now, I am gathering a couple of sticks, that I may go in and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it, and die.’ And Elijah said to her, ‘Fear not; go and do as you have said; but first make me a little cake of it and bring it to me, and afterward make for yourself and your son. For thus says the Lord the God of Israel, “The jar of meal shall not be spent, and the cruse of oil shall not fail, until the day that the Lord sends rain upon the earth.” ’ And she went and did as Elijah said; and she, and he, and her household ate for
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many days. The jar of meal was not spent, neither did the cruse of oil fail, according to the word of the Lord which he spoke by Elijah” (I Kings 17:10 16).
68.	The woman felt she had nothing to give. She was preparing to give up completely and die. But Elijah showed her that she did have something to give, and if she would give it there would be plenty for Elijah, herself, and her son. Not only that, but by discovering the principle of prosperity, she had in her grasp the very method which would insure that she would never lack again.
69.	Even with an empty pocketbook, we begin to give mentally of the “fruit of the Spirit” as thoughts and blessings of life, joy, plenty, peace, freedom, and the like. When it becomes necessary for us to give the visible forms of good to our fellow man, we will find the manifest substance is available.
70.	If we have not consciously taken hold of some divine idea and made it ours, we cannot “give” it, much as we might long to do so. Before we can “give” of love, we have to be conscious of love. Before we can give the blessing of health, freedom, harmony, understanding, we have to be conscious ourself of these qualities being part of our divine heritage and the heritage of every person. “You must have what you would bestow; you must be what you would have others become” (William A. Clough).
71.	Once we have accepted the Truth that God’s abundance is available to every man, we will discover that we have unlimited supply to give.
“As thy substance is, give alms of it according to thine abundance: if thou have much,
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according to the abundance thereof, give alms; If thou have little, bestow it, and be not afraid to give alms according to that little” (Apocrypha, Tobit 4:8).
No Strings Attached
72.	In the matter of giving, it is well to remember that the law of giving and receiving is universal and not personal. You should not be disappointed if those to whom you give do not recompense you, and you should not be anxious because you feel that you cannot give to those who do something for you. The law will take care of all that. The unchangeable law is, “Give, and it shall be given unto you” (Luke 6:38). The exact way in which the return shall come is not specified. If you serve your neighbor, it may be that the most direct way for you to receive will be for him to do something for another. “We must not try to fix the avenues through which our good is to come. There is no reason for thinking that what you give will come back through the one to whom you give it. . . . The law will bring each of us just what is our own, the reaping of the seeds we have sown. The return will come, for it cannot escape the law, though it may quite possibly come through a very different channel from what we expect. Trying to fix the channel through which his good must come to him is one of the ways in which the personal man shuts off his own supply. The spiritual-minded man does not make selfish use of the law but gives because he loves to give. Because he gives with no thought of reward and no other motive than love, he is thrown more completely into the inevitable operation of the law and his return is all the more certain. He is
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inevitably enriched and cannot escape it” (Prosperity, pp. 143-144).
Understanding the Channels of Supply
Your Income
73.	Unless one has understanding that God alone is the Source of supply, the income one is receiving regularly may be viewed as a source, rather than a channel. Thus his attitude toward the income becomes an obstacle to receiving a bountiful supply. A regular income—salary, dividends7 from investments or property—can cause the recipient to become so used to it that he thinks that only as this arrives on its designated date will he be able to have a sense of meaning and purpose to life and enjoy the benefits of life. When such an income is viewed as a channel only, ahd accepted as such, it continues to be one of the many channels God can use to bring His good into manifestation. We give our thanks to God as the Source of all our good, but we must never fail to give our thanks also for the channels He uses to bring it forth.
Luck and Supply
74.	Luck implies something that comes to one by chance. As all things in the universe occur in a lawful and orderly sequence, there seems little opportunity for luck or accident. Every effect must partake of the nature of its cause. Without law and order the universe would be chaos.
75.	The explanation for what is termed “luck” is plain to the one who understands the laws of mind and knows how they work. Just as there are
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specific laws in the domain of electricity, mathematics, chemistry, and the other sciences, so there are specific laws of mind. In the human consciousness, men operate under the mental law of what is termed cause and effect; that is, whatever the character of the cause that is put into operation, the effect will be consonant with the cause which produced it.
76.	When a human being has what he calls “good luck,” his mind has been conforming to the laws of good, whether he is conscious of it or not. If a person has what he terms “bad luck,” he has allowed his thoughts to dwell upon failure, sickness, unhappiness, or any negative belief or condition. In accord with the specific laws of mind, the mental causes that he puts into operation produce according to their kind. Like produces like. When man can hold the vision of abundant good as his rightful inheritance, that is what will be his portion. The good he reaps will not be according to “luck” but according to law.
Your Work
77.	In its true sense, work is the process by which man expresses or releases into constructive, worthwhile activities the God ideas that are his divine inheritance. This process begins first in the thinking and feeling phases of the mind, then continues through man’s words, hands, and actions.
78.	Jesus recognized His part in God’s plan
for He said, “My Father is working still, and I
am working” (John 5:17).
God as Principle “works” in the radiating or expressing of His ideas throughout creation. He “works” in us by revealing the ideas upon which
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we are to base our thinking. If we have accepted the truth that God is our supply, we will know that He “works” in the sense of being Himself the law of supply that moves substance to answer our prayers. We will work with God by thinking, feeling, speaking abundance, then opening our life to the inflow and outflow of supply.
79.	The ways in which we work with God are varied. There are many channels for the expression of the ideas that make up the nature of God. Whatever our skills or abilities, they are primarily channels for the expression of ideas. When we are enlightened, the work we find ourselves called upon to do will never be labor in the accepted sense of the word; we will look upon this work, no matter what it may appear in the eyes of the world, as a channel for the expression of God qualities. The realization that our work is service for God removes all sense of drudgery, or of being bound. Our work becomes satisfying and fulfilling.
“Work is the general term for effort consciously directed to an end. It is universally recognized as a law of life, because the necessity for human development and progress is through self-activity. The true interpretation of work is self-exercise, self-expression. Man’s work is an extension of himself—a revelation of his inner life, both to others and to himself. No work is degrading; it is only our false conception of it that humiliates us. It is not what we do but how we do it that will advance us from something we have to do to that which we want to do. As you give and express your contribution to humanity, no matter how humble it may be, you must
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eventually find that place ‘prepared for you from the foundation of the world.’ That person is happiest who likes to see his work well done for its own sake” (Richard Lynch).
80.	The belief that the “labor of head or hands” is required to make a living is reversed with the understanding of what work really is. Life is; we are already living, so we do not have to “make a living” or to toil for that which is already ours. With awakened perception we see God working through us to bring His kingdom, or plan of good, on earth so that His will may be done, “as in heaven, so on earth” (Matt. 6:10). We come to know ourselves as co-workers with Him in the accomplishment of this mission.
81.	We have already said that work is a process by which we use our inner qualities. If we are able to look at the most routine job as an opportunity for expression of these inner capabilities, and if we then begin to use them, our whole outlook toward our work will change. It may still be the same type of job, but it will no longer be dull or tiresome to us. It will take on the nature of a challenge, no matter how routine it may seem. However, having reached this inner change, we may be ready for a new type of work, or an expansion of the work we are already doing.
82.	This point is brought out well in the following words:
“Does your job seem too small for you, unworthy of your abilities? Strive the more to give it your best. . . . Look upon your work as a learning time. . . . When you have grown too big for your work, you will find your way into other work. When the chicken grows too
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big for the egg, the shell breaks and he finds himself in a new world” (Ernest C. Wilson).
83.	Sometimes prosperity is not demonstrated because of unfaithfulness in work. The reason is not that labor is the source of prosperity, but man has not worked in harmony with the law of loving service. Whatever the work may be, the whole heart should be put into it and it should be well done. Fault-finding, complaint, or dissatisfaction with one’s occupation makes a poor workman. When dissatisfied with one’s work, one cannot do his best. The compensation is poor because he has not observed the law of giving and receiving.
“You demonstrate prosperity by an understanding of the prosperity law and by having faith in it, not by appealing to the sympathy of others, trying to get them to do something for you or give you something. Faithfulness and earnestness in the application of the prosperity law will assure you of success” (Prosperity, p. 50).
84.	If you cannot see in the work you are doing an opportunity to help others, change your work; but unless you are doing that which is directly harmful to men you can always feel that in some respect, however slight, you are benefiting mankind. The woman who makes clothes, the man who farms, and the miller who grinds are all doing their share of the world’s work. Do your part and be glad. If you are not doing so much as you would like to do, rejoice and give thanks for the privilege of doing the little and the larger opportunity will come—but it never can come through your finding fault with your opportunities. Blessing and praising the good increase your consciousness of good.
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Praise is cumulative. Man magnifies and expands that which his mind dwells upon with approval. As he mentally sees how valuable anything good is, it naturally increases in worth.
Prosperity
R. H. GRENVILLE
It is not having store beyond our need But knowing of no lack God cannot fill That constitutes a true prosperity;
Not storing up against some future ill But drinking deeply of each moment’s joy;
Not acquisition but the power to find Beauty and blessing in the near-at-hand.
A strong, sound body and a healthy mind Are blessings past the power of wealth to buy,
Yet God bestows them freely and outright.
No lack or limitation can be ours
When we walk momently by faith’s clear light, Trusting and thankful, knowing that we are Heirs to a kingdom that is infinite.
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Lesson IV
Human Relations
1.	While Unity would seem to put the entire emphasis on man’s individual unfolding, nevertheless the thread of his relationship with his fellow man runs through all of the teachings. In these Home Study lessons the attempt has been made to bring the Truth seeker back to realization of his conscious oneness—or unity—with his Creator. Such consciousness of the Fatherhood of God must of necessity reveal the “brotherhood of man.” The outgrowth of this understanding is that the individual comes to see how he is related first in a universal, impersonal way to others who inhabit this planet, then to those who touch his life in a more personal way in his daily activities in home, at work, and in social contacts.
2.	Man can see himself not as an isolated expression of life meant to unfold for his own satisfaction and fulfillment but as part of a plan involving all other individuals, each fitting into the pattern that can produce “thy kingdom ... on earth ... as it is in heaven.”
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3.	Of all of the problems we face as human beings, perhaps none seem quite as difficult when we are meeting them as do those involving human relationships. When someone dislikes us, when we dislike another, when we seem unjustly treated, when people “get on our nerves,” when a loved one seems to go wrong, when we live in an atmosphere of hostility, when we contemplate the nature of war, it often seems as if there is little that we can do. This is particularly so because we do not seem to control the situation as readily in human-relations problems as we do with, say, health or prosperity challenges.
4.	With healing needs for ourself, we can recognize that our body is our own and we have control over it.
5.	With prosperity needs, we often grasp the individual nature of prosperity problems. But with human relationship challenges, we are faced with another ego or personality over which we have little control.
6.	This is not to say that health and prosperity problems are only individual problems having no social context. Many health and prosperity problems have their beginning in difficult human relationships or social conditions. But the way we respond to the external world is under our own control. As with all other problems, we begin with ourself and our own consciousness.
MAN WITH HIMSELF
“You shall love the Lord your God . . . and your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:27).
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A Healthy Regard for Ourself
7.	Effective and happy human relationships begin with a healthy regard for ourself. Jesus makes clear that love of self is an important part of our whole attitude toward life. We are to love God, neighbor, and self. The motivation for having a healthy regard for ourself begins with the fact that “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him . . . And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good” (Gen. 1:27, 31). “Do you understand how important you are? You are a special creation of God, and only in you can God fulfill Himself. You are a living soul, original and unique, wonderful and strange”—James Dillet Freeman.
8.	Many people think that love of self is a selfish attitude. In recent years this assumption has been questioned with great insight by a number of researchers in the field of human relations. Eric Fromm, in his book “The Art of Loving,”* says,
“The selfish person is interested only in himself, wants everything for himself, feels no pleasure in giving, but only in taking. The world outside is looked at only from the standpoint of what he can get out of it; he lacks interest in the needs of others, and respect for their dignity and integrity. He can
♦“The Art of Loving,” by Eric Fromm; used by permission of Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc.
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see nothing but himself; he judges everyone and everything from its usefulness to him; he is basically unable to love. Does not this prove that concern for others and concern for oneself are unavoidable alternatives? This would be so if selfishness and self-love were identical. But that assumption is the very fallacy which has led to so many mistaken conclusions concerning our problem. Selfishness and self-love, far from being identical are actually opposites. ”
9.	In giving positive reasons for self-love, he says:
“If it is a virtue to love my neighbor as a human being, it must be a virtue . . . and not a vice ... to love myself, since I am a human being too. There is no concept of man in which I myself am not included. A doctrine which proclaims such an exclusion proves itself to be intrinsically contradictory. The idea expressed in the Biblical ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself!’ implies that respect for one’s own integrity and uniqueness, love for and understanding of one’s own self, cannot be separated from respect and love and understanding for another individual. The love for my own self is inseparably connected with the love for any other being.”
10.	In the Unity approach the motivation for love of self includes but expands upon this sense of common humanity. We love ourself not only because we are a creation of God, or a part of the human family along with every other human being, but because of a common divinity which is at the heart of every human being. It is this divinity
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which we greet in another, and with which we commune at the deepest level of communication with others. Also, it is this divinity (which we spoke about in Volume I of this series) which is the inheritance we have been given by our Father-God, and which demonstrates the love of the Father for us. Therefore, “We love, because he first loved us” (I John 4:19).
“When we even faintly realize the love of God we begin to love our fellow men. There is a fervent love among Christians that is not found among any other group. Love is a divine ordinance, and those who let the love of God pour itself out in charity do truly cover and forgive a ‘multitude of sins,’ not only in themselves but in others” (Charles Fillmore, Keep a True Lent, p.35).
11.	It is more important to emphasize that love of ourself is not something we begin with. Love of self is a by-product of our awareness of God’s love for us. While we must love ourself in the sense that we have value for and understanding of our total being, we can authentically love self and others only through an awareness of God’s love for us. Our relationship with others is inescapably bound up in our relationship with ourself.
“We are told that we should love our neighbor as ourself. Many persons emphasize the loving-our-neighbor part and overlook the loving-ourself part that is included in this commandment. To love yourself is an objectionable suggestion to many, because they associate such love with egotism, with the person who is always trying to make us see how good he is. But the fact is that the ego-
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tistical person does not love himself, or he would not feel the impelling need to impress others with his importance and worth. To love yourself means to love the self of you that God created in His image and likeness, the Christ self.
“When you love and appreciate the Christ within you, you are not egotistical, neither are you timid or retiring. You are a confident and poised person, sure of your place and purpose as a child of God. And when you have this knowledge and certainty about yourself, you see that to love your neighbor as yourself means to see in others this God-created self, the Christ, to see and appreciate the inner spiritual self of every person. This is to truly love your neighbor as yourself.
“One of the most helpful ideas that Truth gives to people is that of beholding the Christ in others. Even when it seems that there is nothing at all in another person that it is possible to praise or to like, much less to love, we can look beyond the outer self that the world sees and behold the God-created self, the Christ, that is surely there, no matter how hidden or buried beneath an accumulation of negative thoughts, beliefs, or actions. If we find it difficult to behold that real self of another, we will find it helpful to remind ourselves that it is through the Christ in us that we are able to behold the Christ in others. We can use this affirmation: ‘The Christ in me beholds the Christ in you’ ” (Martha Smock, Halfway Up the Mountain, pp. 155-156).
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Knowing Our Whole Self
12.	Good human relationships depend not only upon our consciousness of our divine nature, but upon our capacity to know and accept our human self. It is important that you know both selves of you. You must know your divine Self, as well as your human self. This enables you to know your strongest, God-given qualities along with some of your human shortcomings. This is important, because self-improvement is a matter of seeing what needs improving in your life, so that you are able to take some decisive action in overcoming what needs to be overcome.
“We cannot forever live in a fool’s paradise. If we have some area in our life that needs improving, we must have the courage to face the matter and do something about it ... To acknowledge a limitation we may have about ourself is not wrong, if (and it is a big if) we intend to do something about improving it” (William L. Fischer, How to Gain Self-Mastery, p. 18).
13.	It is the acknowledgment of our human self and our willingness to unfold our divine nature which help us to keep a proper perspective in human relations. People will sometimes react adversely to our human nature. If we recognize this tendency in our interaction with others, and if we are aware of what needs to be changed in ourself, then the divine Self of us can work through us to unfold us and thereby improve the quality of our human associations. Not only will this help us be more understanding of ourself, but we will be more understanding of others.
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MAN WITH OTHERS
“You shall love the Lord your God . . . and your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:27).
14.	In Jesus’ teaching He emphasizes the idea that the whole person has a genuine relationship not only with God and self, but also with his fellow man. Actually, Jesus’ teaching shows us that we can become complete in our relationship with God or ourself only when we begin to develop a genuine relationship with others.
15.	Until spiritual enlightenment comes, it seems difficult to remember that all persons are created equal; that God has implanted His Spirit (I AM, or Christ) in every human being. Each of us is responsible for living his own life as he sees it; but always we must have regard for the rights of our fellow men.
16.	While we may grasp the truth that God is working in us individually, we quite forget that the same God is working equally in our brother. The starting point in our own unfoldment of the divine pattern (or God’s will) in us must be the realization that all of us are here on this planet for a purpose. Through study and time spent in prayer, we gain new understanding. We see that just as the purpose of any seed is to reproduce itself, so we, as the “seed of God,” are here to reproduce our true Self. This true Self is the God nature in us, our own indwelling Lord or law of our being. We must not, however, assume from this that we are not to have loving concern about other persons. When we are willing to recognize that there is but one indwelling Spirit in every man, we begin to realize that we are
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unified in that Spirit. Our love reaches out in understanding so that we become open channels through which God may do His work. Many times the greatest service we can render is to wait in silence and hold to the Truth for another person. The “hands off” policy is not intended to make us indifferent or uninterested. Knowing the Fatherhood of God, we become increasingly aware of the brotherhood of man. Inspired by such a realization, we will be eager and willing to do whatever our own indwelling Lord leads us to do in helping others.
17.	While all of us have gratitude for those who have helped us along the pathway of Truth, we often feel a sense of rebellion when someone seeks to force spiritual study on us. In her healing ministry Myrtle Fillmore, cofounder of Unity, wrote many letters that helped people to lay hold of the Truth. On page 97 of her Healing Letters, she is quoted as writing to one person desiring help for another:
“We are asking you to place him confidently in the care and keeping of his own indwelling Lord and to take your mental hands off! . . .
So long as you are trying to force something into him, you keep his attention divided, and he doesn’t really get within and quiet enough to let his own soul commune with God . . . The Spiritual light . . . will reveal to him the right relation of things spiritual and things manifest. And he will see clearly how the right mental attitude and physical poise and health will result in instant and constant progress and prosperity and satisfaction. You can’t give him this ... It is the free gift of the
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Father within him.”
Ami My Brother's Keeper? (Gen. 4:9)
18.	We are not our “brother’s keeper” in the sense that we are to protect him from the experiences of life that his soul needs to grow into spiritual maturity. His own indwelling Lord is the one to perform this work. We are not his “keeper” in that we are to hold a mental picture of him as limited, weak, unable to succeed without being told by us everything he should do. When we hold such thoughts we are actually encouraging him in his weakness. We make it more difficult for him to overcome and conquer through his conscious acceptance of the power of his own I AM or Lord.
19.	However, we are our “brother’s keeper” in the sense that we are to watch our own thoughts, and in our own mind “keep” the true picture of our fellow man as a son of God. We “keep” alert to God’s guidance for the ways in which we may be helpful to him when he indicates that he needs our help in his spiritual growing.
“Every man, by his example and word, is his brother’s keeper. Jesus said, ‘Even so let your light shine before men; that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.’ This does not nullify the innate freedom of your brother, but rather strengthens your ability to cooperate with the good and make it manifest in your life” (Charles Fillmore, Mysteries of Genesis, p. 61).
20.	The wise teacher presents principles with instructions for their right use, then leaves the
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student free to apply those principles. Such a teacher stands ready to give whatever help is required. However, he does not do for the student what he knows the student can do for himself through application of his own inner resources. We are not our “brother’s keeper” in the sense that we refuse to allow him to go forward into life by his own innate power. We are our “brother’s keeper” in that our faith and understanding can provide inspiration and encouragement. Our own alertness to God’s guidance can lead us to give whatever physical help is warranted.
Freeing Others
21.	A free person is no longer in bondage to limited beliefs. He is willing to grant the same freedom to another that he desires for himself. He allows the other person to “find” God, to unfold his own spiritual resources in his own way according to the needs of his own soul. With the dawning of this consciousness, the free individual sees working in his fellow man the same God who is working in him, to bring each one into the consciousness that “the Father who dwells in me does his works” (John 14:10).
22.	Since we are created in the image and after the likeness of God, spiritual freedom is given to us as our birthright. However, while this freedom is ours in essence, it is like any inherent right—it is ours only as we fulfill the conditions that enable us to claim it. Inability to grant the same liberty to other unfolding souls—the “freedom which we have in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 2:4)—prevents our being free in actuality.
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23.	The mental, emotional, and physical freedom we grant to another must be granted without condemnation of mistakes he may be making. He can only experience according to his understanding and use of the principles of life. The Christ pattern in us will have one way of unfolding, while the Christ pattern in another will require a different method, each depending on the individual’s stage of soul development. The truly free individual says in effect to his fellow man:
“For freedom Christ has set us free: stand fast therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (Gal. 5:1).
24.	Love and understanding become vital qualities in our freeing of others. Added to these qualities must be the faith that each individual has in his own Lord or law of being. There must be faith in the inherent right of every person to choose the way of soul development that is right for him at any stage of his soul’s awareness.
25.	Refusal to grant freedom to others to discover their own inner source of strength might be likened to our desire to keep the acorn on the surface of the ground, for fear that it might get hurt or lost if it should sink down into the wet, dark earth! If the acorn is to develop into a full-grown tree, it must sink to a level sufficiently deep to enable it to push its roots into the earth, from whence it can draw the needed substance, strength, and stability to produce a strong oak tree. So it is with the individual. He must find his own level and must learn to be “rooted and grounded” (Eph. 3:17) in Spirit within. Only in this way can he produce an outer structure (body and affairs) that will bear the spiritual fruit for which he was cre-
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ated.
“As we think of others as God’s children, we see them in a new light. We understand how it is that they are trying to unfold and use the faculties and powers God has implanted in them, and we have compassion if they seem to fall short at times. We also have power to speak Truth for them, to bless them, and to help them” (Myrtle Fillmore, How to Let God Help You, p. 19).
26.	If we have found a way to step out of bondage into freedom in mind, body, and affairs, it seems only natural to want to proclaim that this is the way others must go. However, there is no Biblical evidence of Jesus forcing His message upon anyone. When John the Baptist sent some of his disciples to ask Jesus if He was the Messiah, Jesus said to them:
“Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them” (Matt. 11:4, 5).
There was no attempt on Jesus’ part to proselyte, only to present the truth of what His ministry was accomplishing.
27.	If our particular way of growth has brought definite results in our life, then these results can stand as evidence of the effectiveness of this way of spiritual unfoldment for us. However, it does not necessarily follow that our path will be the right path for another individual. Each person’s development, or releasing of his spiritual powers, is an individual matter. No two species of plants develop in exactly the same way. As no two
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persons are exactly alike in consciousness, or in their human experience, so their spiritual expansion will not necessarily follow the same method.
28.	Once we have started on the pathway of Truth, a vital point we must learn is that it is not our responsibility to interfere with the specific process of soul unfoldment in another. Our responsibility is to allow ourself to be guided by God to render whatever service is needed as another person seeks to bring forth the divine pattern in his mind, body, and affairs.
“Loose Him and Let Him Go" (John 11:44, ASV).
29.	In another way Jesus acted out the principle of freedom at Lazarus’ tomb when He said to those standing around, “Loose him and let him go.” We “loose him and let him go” every time we erase our misconception of an individual and instead conceive of him as the son of God. “Loosing him” belongs to the process of denial, and “letting him go” belongs to the process of affirmation. By the former we deny reality to the wrong mental picture we have of another who apparently does not measure up to the Truth. By the latter we affirm, silently or audibly, the freedom which is his as a spiritual being.
30.	Our uplifted consciousness may be the only open door that God can use at that particular time to help another to develop the divinity within himself. Our willingness to “loose him,” by releasing from our own consciousness any limited concept of him, may be the first step in lifting a burden from his mind. Our Scripture says, “no longer have any consciousness of sin” (Heb. 10:2). Then we go
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further and “let him go” into the Truth of his divine nature. In this way, our understanding and compassion can be used as channels for God’s love to touch his heart and stir him into seeking the Christ within himself. Love is a solvent that can melt the hardest heart, making it receptive to the inflow of God’s blessings of illumination, health, harmony, abundance, and success.
31.	Nearly all of us, desiring to help friends and loved ones, feel that there must be something we can do.
“Yes, there is something you can do, and a very effectual something, too ... You can, whenever you think of your friend, speak the word of freedom to him ... You can tell him mentally that Christ lives within him and makes him free, forever free” (H. Emilie Cady, How I Used Truth, p. 53).
32.	We may ask, “What is the word of freedom?” It is declaring the friend or loved one free from the negative beliefs and habits that are enslaving him in undesirable conditions of mind, body, and affairs. It is declaring that he has the Christ power within him that enables him to take dominion and authority over all his thoughts, feelings, words, conditions, circumstances. To “speak the word of freedom” is to declare, with deep conviction, that this one is the beloved of God, of the same nature as God, free with the freedom of Spirit.
33.	Part of the action we take when we “loose him and let him go” is seeing the friend or loved one as an evolving soul as well as a spiritual being. When we can do this, we see him gaining the right guidance to learn and grow spiritually. We keep our
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eyes on the divine pattern that is emerging, and not on the appearances that have come forth during the growing process. When we truly “loose him and let him go” we find ourself following Jesus’ profound instruction:
“Do not judge by appearances, but judge with
right judgment” (John 7:24).
34.	It is important to remember that the principle of “loosing and letting go” should never be used as an excuse for abandoning human relationships when they become difficult or challenging. “Loosing and letting go” applies to the binding attitudes of mind we may hold about another and to actions which may express our anxiety about another. The purpose of this principle is to leave the other free to unfold according to his own divine pattern. This may mean ending certain aspects of our relationship with the other person, but it might also mean developing even a closer relationship, one which is more authentic and honest. In either case, it means a change in the relationship which proceeds out of our willingness to focus not on what we personally want for the other, but on what God wants for him.
This Larger Love
35.	We will not be anxious about the welfare of another’s soul if we realize that he has within him the Comforter or the Spirit of Truth, which Jesus said would “guide you into all the truth” (John 16:13). Often an anxious person will say that his reluctance to allow those near and dear to him to follow their own way of unfolding spiritually stems from his love for them. However, the denial of
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freedom to grow spiritually is not the expression of love in its truest sense. Thus we need,
“this larger love . . . that does not . . . interpose its nagging bodily presence between the dear ones and their own indwelling Lord” (H. Emilie Cady, How I Used Truth, p. 52).
36.	It does indeed take “this larger love” to erase anxiety and impatience regarding our dear ones. The love that sees beyond outer, limited appearances in a loved one’s life is the love referred to in I John 4:18: “Perfect love casts out fear.” Our anxiety or worry about another’s development is an indication that we have not completely accepted the fundamental truth that
“God ever abides at the center of man, of all mankind, and is always in process of manifesting more and more of Himself . . . through man’s consciousness” (H. Emilie Cady,How I Used Truth, p. 48).
The Needs of Others
37.	A parent, friend, or counselor must try first to understand the soul need of the one he would help. That one’s real need is for spiritual help, which in turn will indicate what outer help is required. The soul needs of people are varied. People need love. They need faith in God, in others, and especially in themselves. A person who is dominating and seeking for the attention of others needs to feel accepted and approved. A person who cannot make decisions has a great need for wisdom and good judgment. Many people need a feeling of security. It is only through making conscious contact with God through prayer that we acquire the
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insight and understanding to do our part in meeting the needs of another. We need to pour out love to him. We need to show faith in his inner spiritual resources. We need to quicken good judgment in ourself to be able to do the right thing at the right time. Often in spite of our efforts to love a person who seems to be “making a mess out of his life,” he still feels unloved and frustrated. He will continue to feel unloved until he can respond to love from within himself. When, in seeking to offer help to another, we can reach the point of placing that one lovingly in the hands of the Father, this attitude will allow us to be at peace within ourself. We will be better able to pray for illumination or spiritual awakening, healing, guidance, harmony, prosperity, or whatever the need may be, for the one we desire to help. When the person praying feels peaceful himself, with no condemnation, he will be open to the guidance of God as to what he is to do to help that one. The person needing help may feel this peace and begin to open his own soul to God.
38.	Prayer gives us the insight to look beyond actions that fall short of God’s laws. Prayer awakens the love that
“is not arrogant or rude. . . . does not insist on its own way ... is not irritable or resentful .. . does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. . . . bears all things, believes all things, endures all things” (I Cor. 13:5-7).
Causes of Condemnation
39.	An attitude of condemnation is primarily caused by our failure to act from our highest nature, the Christ or real Self. The word condemn
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comes from a root word which means “damage”; with condemnation is included the pronouncement of punishment.
40.	A condemnatory attitude is often built because we have judged by appearances, rather than seeing another person as a spiritual being seeking expression as an evolving soul. We probably have not stopped to consider the pressures, the frustrations, the loneliness, the fear of failure, the sense of separation (not only from God but from one’s fellow man) that the other person may be experiencing. Any of these limiting feelings may have taken possession of him and led to actions that we feel justified in condemning. It is true that the primary cause of such actions on the part of another has come from forgetfulness of his true nature. However, our shortsighted approach to his problem is an example of the same forgetfulness; we have not judged from the Absolute, or from our own divine nature. We have not held the vision of his divinity and his right to unfold in his own way.
41.	Condemnation indicates a closed mind rather than a careful, unbiased examination of situations. Condemnation comes from a mind that is interested only in censuring the negative aspects of people or situations and meting out punishment. The one who condemns sets up his own standard, which is usually based on limited appearances.
42.	At this point we should distinguish between condemnation and a constructive response. To make this distinction clear, we may define condemnation as any thought or act that stunts the growth of persons, including the one doing the condemning. There is usually a sense of punishment and an attack on the fundamental worth of
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persons, in condemning. A constructive response is any thought or act which is prompted by divine guidance, motivated by understanding, and enhances the growth of all persons involved.
43.	There is always underlying concern and love involved which helps draw forth from the person insights into what needs to be changed for further growth to take place.
Good Reasons for Not Condemning
44.	There should be no condemnation of any person, because each one is a unique creation of God. In our spiritual nature we are the image-likeness of God; in our soul nature we have conscious intelligence; we think and feel and function in the realm of form as a human being.
“Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being” (Gen. 2:7).
45.	In the manifest realm everything is unfolding the plan of the species; every person or “living soul” is coming into a greater consciousness of his true nature. He is unfolding the divine plan that is inherent in him as spiritual ideas. As every “living soul” or human being is the offspring of God, his Father, he has the same nature as his divine Parent. If he has not progressed to the point of fully manifesting his divine nature, he cannot be held in condemnation. After all, we do not condemn the unfolding bud for not being a full-blown flower. So we see that understanding unfolds in divine order in each of us. There can be no condemnation for the steps that we have taken in our endeavor to
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express the divine plan. The mistakes we may have made are due to lack of understanding of the full Truth. As enlightenment of our mind comes, mistakes and their effects are erased first from our consciousness as limiting beliefs and habits, and in turn from our outer experiences. What applies to us individually applies also to others.
46.	The opening sentence of this section refers to “any person,” and from this we must assume that it means also that we are not to condemn ourself. In I John 3, verses 19 and 20, we find these words:
“By this we shall know that we are of the truth, and reassure our hearts before him whenever our hearts condemn us, for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.”
47.	How often have we let “our heart condemn us” and make life a burdensome thing, instead of the radiant, triumphant adventure of working with God to bring His good into our life’s experiences here and now! “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, On earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10).
“How often does our heart condemn us! How often do we shut ourselves out from the fullness of life with a sense of sin and wrongdoing! ... If we are suffering from a sense of condemnation, it is not God who is condemning us, it is we who are condemning ourselves . . . Surely the forgiveness of God is ours even before our heart reaches out to accept it. Surely the understanding of God is ours even when we fail to understand ourselves” (James Dillet Freeman, If Your Heart Condemn You).
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48.	When we really know that we are the beloved children of God, and always remain such no matter how we may wander into a “far country,” there will be no tendency to condemn ourself or others.
“Have we not all one father? Has not one God created us? Why then are we faithless to one another . . . ? (Malachi 2:10).
49.	If we declare that another person is “all wrong,” we are in a sense working against God who created every man in His image and endowed him with power to unfold his own spiritual nature. We cannot know just where anyone else is in spiritual unfoldment. We may look at his acts and pronounce adverse judgment. On the other hand, we may not know the times he has overcome temptation; the times he has “come up higher” after falling deep into beliefs of sin and experiences of lack. We are working with God as we continue to recognize the indwelling Christ Spirit in others, and in ourself. However, perception alone is not enough. We need to act. When we open ourself to God’s guidance, we will know what we need to do to help ourself or others in the unfolding of the divine plan within.
50.	Unless we are very careful, when the first awakening of Truth comes, we may find ourself thinking of others as “behind ... in spiritual growth.” Our own joy at finding the way to a new realization of God should make us more than ever aware that God is working in His own way to draw all His children consciously into the light of Truth. There can be no thought of impatience toward another’s progress if we seek to be co-workers with God in helping our fellow man to know God con-
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sciously. Our own enlightenment should make us even more understanding of the stage of development another has reached. It is only the infinite love and wisdom of God that knows what each soul has need of. If we pronounce an adverse judgment on another, we are actually declaring that God does not know how to do His work.
51.	A person may not be an alcoholic, yet in condemning another who has fallen into the habit of alcoholism he is working against God; he is himself failing to fulfill God’s law of love. One may not be a thief, yet condemnation of one who is guilty of stealing is evidence of lack of understanding. The condemner has not considered that the thief does not yet know that because his good is already established for him in God, he does not need to take the possessions of others. But the one who condemns has fallen short of God’s law of understanding.
52.	Another point worthy of consideration in the matter of condemnation is this: It is impossible for us to condemn a person or a situation before we have held condemnation in our own consciousness. We cannot project to others, or to any situation, what has not first found lodgment in ourself. When we have the assurance of sonship that the Spirit of God gave to Jesus at His baptism by John—“This is my beloved Son” (Matt. 3:17)—we are so lifted in consciousness that only understanding and love can be projected from us to our world of people and things.
53.	Jesus was pointing out the law of sowing and reaping when He said, “Condemn not, and you will not be condemned” (Luke 6:37).
54.	We must not assume from this that we are
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to be indifferent to the needs of others, to be so unconcerned that we never even give them a thought. However, there is a difference between being compassionately concerned, and interfering in something that is not our business. One of our poets has wisely said about this latter attitude:
“For fools rush in where angels fear to tread” (Alexander Pope).
55.	In following inner guidance we will know just when we should perform some outer act to help in a situation that merits change. We will also know if we are to do only the inner work of prayer until such time as our outer help is asked.
56.	It is easy for us to judge by the appearance from the reports of world leaders, of nations. However, our truest judgment will reveal that if we obey the command “follow thou me,” we will know how to pray for enlightenment, wisdom, peace. If circumstances call for our definite participation in bringing about harmonious relations in the lives of individuals or in nations, we will be guided as to whether we are to take active outer participation, or simply to do our part in the inner realms of prayer.
Through our eyes the other fellow Oft appears as someone strange,
Someone that we cannot fathom Someone we should like to change.
Know then when we judge adversely,
When our thoughts condemning roam,
That reform had best be started In ourself and right at home!
—Frank B. Whitney: Beginning Again.
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Jesus' Practical Methods
57.	In our desire to handle an attitude of condemnation, we start with the realization of Jesus’ teaching of the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. To reach this understanding much prayer work (including denial and affirmation) is necessary to awaken the love and compassion that can erase a condemnatory habit of mind.
58.	Where there is love for another, our compassion sees beyond the outer act, recognizing only the soul need. We have the example of Jesus, as well as His teaching, for on the cross He said, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34).
59.	Recognition of error is not necessarily condemnation. The gospel records of the ministry of Jesus indicate that He recognized illnesses, injustices, and wrongdoing, but He did not condemn nor participate in condemnation of these conditions. Rather He understood the spiritual possibilities for healing and right conduct that were inherent in the ill and the unfortunate, and called these possibilities into expression. His works were accomplished not through criticism and condemnation but through understanding and faith. There is a vast difference between recognizing a mistake, and pointing a finger at the accused without offering a solution. In His teachings and in His own life, Jesus offered the solution for mistakes. He pointed men to God through prayer, so that they might get the guidance necessary to assure right conduct.
60.	There is an incident in the life of Jesus (John 8:3-11) in which a woman was brought before Him to be stoned according to the law.
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Jesus challenged His questioners, and when they had left the scene He said to the woman, “Has no one condemned you?” (John 8:10). When she answered in the negative, Jesus said to her, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and do not sin again.” Jesus could not and would not condemn the woman for acts done in ignorance, so His word, which was free from condemnation, gave her just the lift she needed to change her life. In this case, Jesus “spoke the word” aloud for she had need of the definite communication of the idea of her freedom. In Jesus’ compassionate attitude the woman was freed from condemnation of herself and was ready to “go and sin no more.”
61.	When Jesus said to Peter, “What is that to you? Follow me!” (John 21:22), He was emphasizing a paramount Truth principle: we should not become emotionally involved in another person’s situation. Each person has within himself the divine pattern, the Christ, which is his “hope of glory” (Col. 1:27). If we are called upon to give definite help or perhaps to counsel another person, we give this help. However, our first and truest help is always that of prayer.
62.	When Jesus said “follow me,” we believe that He was asking us not only to follow His example of noncondemnation, of love and understanding, but to seek and follow the guidance of the Christ within us. It is as though these very words are spoken to us by our own Christ Self which seeks to show us the way, even as Jesus, the Way-Shower, pointed the way for all mankind.
63.	This attitude of Jesus applies not only in adult relationships but in our relationships with children. It is important for parents and guardians
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to recognize how to help children unfold according to their own Christ standard. When this is done in a spirit of love and understanding rather than condemnation, it becomes part of each child’s “growing up” process. Condemnation of a child’s wrong acts can, on the other hand, actually cause those acts to become temporarily a part of his self image so that fears, frustrations, and resentments become ingrained in his consciousness. It was said of Jesus at the age of twelve: “And the child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him” (Luke 2:40).
64.	Not only children but all of us walking life’s pathway need to be “filled with wisdom” so that the “favor of God” is upon us also. When we release ourself or others release us from condemnation, we are able to stand forth as the free, radiant sons of God that we truly are!
The Listening Attitude
65.	As we discuss these principles of human relations, it is important to keep in mind that every action we take is both an expression of our inner life and a message to others. Human relations can be promoted through authentic action, that is, actions which truly express the fundamental truth of our being.
66.	The act of listening communicates an important message which enhances human relationships. Sometimes we are so unconsciously interested in what we have to say on a given subject that we forget the needs of others to express themselves. Often behavior which appears on the surface to be negative and hostile is an expression of a
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deeper need which we have the capacity to “hear” if we are willing to listen.
“Listen with your heart. Practice empathy when you listen; put yourself in the other person’s place and try to hear his problems in your heart”—(Wilferd A. Peterson).
67.	To “hear” another person’s deeper need is to look beyond the appearance and hear what is being said by the heart of the other. Often it will be a cry for help which we hear through a blustery exterior, or the need for love, hidden in hostile expressions. This is certainly true with children.
“What does it mean to listen to a child—or to any person for that matter? When we listen, we are extending to the speaker the courtesy of considering him important. Just by really listening we say to him, without words: ‘You and your ideas and your concerns are worth my listening to. As a developing child of God you are more important to me than anything else.’
“When we listen, we must be both attentive and receptive as the child speaks. Listening is more than being quiet and hearing what another says. It includes respecting the other person as a child of God and receiving in trust and gratitude the gift of himself that he is offering through'his thoughts. We must be aware that God speaks through our children as much as He speaks through us, and be open to His ideas whatever their outer source” (Anne Lee Kreml, Guidelines for Parents, pp. 35, 36).
68.	If we are open to it, listening can be a real ministry by which our relationships with others
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call forth in them their divine nature.
“Though he seldom realizes it, the one who pours out his troubles to you is seeking God through the Christ in you. When we are recipients of such confidences, we have a priceless opportunity to be co-workers with God by becoming good listeners.
“In a very real sense, there is a ministry of listening, and it is open to anyone willing to invest time and genuine interest in others. The person who becomes a good listener will have plenty of opportunities to listen, for this ministry fulfills a deep human need” (Genetha Merrell, “The Ministry of Listening”).
69.	To truly listen to others is to communicate a sense of acceptance and love. It tells the other person that he is a child of God, valued for what he is and for what he can become.
Persons in Marriage True marriage is a union of souls—.Ernest C. Wilson.
70.	We have tried to make clear in these lessons that man’s happiness and fulfillment depend upon his capacity to expand his consciousness to the point where he can love himself and others in a transcendent sense. This means finding the focus of our love in the divine nature of ourself and others. Only in this way can our relationships with others truly promote the growth and unfoldment of ourself and others. God’s will for every person is the expression of his divine potential. Therefore, our most authentic relationship with others is one in which we do not frustrate that Will, but help it to
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be done.
71.	Nowhere is this principle more applicable than in the great responsible relationship of marriage. It is in marriage that all of the other principles of human relations come to full expression.
Marriage Is a Progress —Cleda Reyner.
72.	Most persons are romantic, sentimental, and idealistic. This part of human nature did not disappear with the romantic age of literature, and we still like best the stories and motion pictures that culminate in marriage. We like to believe that marriage is a magic door and that those who enter it live happily ever after. Ralph Waldo Emerson said that “life is a progress, not a station,” and sooner or later we come to this conclusion about marriage. We see that total happiness in marriage depends on the total development of the individuals who enter it. That this is true is not so regrettable a fact as we think it is at times.
73.	To be in an Eden without a capacity to evaluate and enjoy it would be useless.
74.	Perhaps if all the disappointments of marriage could be summed up in one phrase it would be “unfulfilled expectations.” We hope for so much and plan on so much. Against the background of these desires even little expectations not fulfilled take on exaggerated proportions.
75.	A woman once said: “With all my heart I want a marriage that is companionship and tenderness and fulfillment. With my whole heart I want to enjoy with my husband the togetherness of marriage; I want to be able to sit down and plan with him and share my thoughts and ideas with him and
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to think and dream with him—and never once in our sixteen months of marriage has it ever been so.”
76.	This situation is not strange really, for we have been so variously reared that it would be rare indeed to find two persons equally expressive of their dreams and inner feelings. But one does not need to wait in loneliness and frustration for the companionship or other fulfillment that one longs for. Life does not need to be suspended until this goal is reached. In attempts to attain the things that they have wanted, human beings have developed some of their very best traits, talents, and characteristics.
77.	The free exchange of words and ideas and feelings that the woman quoted earlier would like to experience can indeed provide a profitable method of making her marriage a happy one. Out of such communion would emerge much mingling of ideas, trading of viewpoints, tolerance of each other’s ideas, understanding, and patience. But in most cases a path for these must first be cleared through the reservations and restraints that we have accumulated through our growing-up years. Even to our most beloved only a very few of us can reveal our inmost thoughts and feelings. We should like to, but it is an attainment that usually begins with discussion of things that arise in a day of routine happenings at work or at home, of persons with whom we have associated, of food that has been shared. But as these ordinary subjects are welcomed and made use of the channels of conversation are kept open. Then, as the more reluctant thoughts gain courage to come forth, a path is ready for them. A tongue-tied heart would find it
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hard indeed to send forth a self-conscious little speech of praise, love, or yearning if it had to break the path over which to send it. One woman believed for years that her husband considered potatoes an essential part of every meal. Then to a grown daughter he inadvertently said that Mamma thought potatoes were a necessity but that he had never cared for them himself.
78.	If we learn to discuss freely and harmoniously our feelings and ideas about such commonplace things as potatoes, even they will gradually widen the path between two souls so that a deeper, broader exchange of thoughts can flow.
79.	However, as this achievement is being made, another should be in progress also—that of keeping in contact with the God of our being and with His many channels of wisdom in this world of ours. No one learns all that he needs for happiness in his marriage by giving his whole attention to the marriage. We come to know much about ourselves from others and from learning of others. Once our planet was considered to be the only one in the universe; once we held the erroneous conception that it was flat. When by the help of a telescope we were able to look away from it and to observe other worlds, spherical in nature and revolving around a central sun, we formulated a new idea. The person who has a variety of interests, duties, and activities to give him a broader perspective of life and God and humanity than his own little world can afford him has a better understanding of his own life. Therefore, he has a better knowledge of how to live.
80.	It is good if he embraces a religion that inspires in him a deep and abiding faith in the
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innate goodness of mankind, which teaches him that God is love, that God has given him a spirit which is entirely capable of meeting life’s every challenge. With such a faith he has much to give and radiate to his marriage. It is good if he has friendships that contribute to self-confidence, a sense of humor, the ability to cooperate. He has more to take to his marriage from them. It is good if he reads and studies those things that express man’s highest and best understanding of himself, and there are many of them these days. He receives from these sources many more things that are helpful to him and his marriage.
81.	“In my Father’s house are many mansions,” and as room by room we enter them we gain much to take with us into our personal lives. There is beauty for the eye, exquisite sounds for the ear, mysteries and facts and truths to gratify the mind and intellect; there is love to warm the heart and to expand the soul.
82.	Emerson said something to the effect that an institution is the lengthened shadow of a man. Marriage differs from other institutions only in that it is the lengthened shadow of a man and a woman. If their hearts are kept open and expansive, their minds kept growing, and their spirits kept alive in their search after truths that make for happy persons and happy living, there is no chance of their marriage being anything but a happy one.
What of Divorce?— Ernest C. Wilson.
83.	The Mosaic law concerning divorce was very simple, at least for the husband (Deut. 24:1; AY):
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“When a man hath taken a wife, and married her, and it comes to pass that she find no favour in his eyes, because he hath found some uncleanness in her: then let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house. And when she is departed out of his house, she may go and be another man’s wife."
84.	Jesus went to the other extreme. Quoting the law of Moses, He continued (Matt. 5:32): “But I say to you that every one who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, makes her an adulteress; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.” It is difficult to believe that in reaching past humanly ordained law that was extreme in severity, Jesus intended to institute another law quite as severe. Rather His intent seemed to be to encourage His hearers to use judgment and reason, for His statement regarding divorce is one of a series in which the Oriental method of emphasis by exaggeration is employed. In the passages immediately preceding this one He says that if your eye offends you to pluck it out, and if your right hand offends you to cut it off; “it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell” (Matt. 5:29, 30). Surely He did not mean this literally; and if not, did He intend His words regarding marriage to be taken according to the letter?
85.	Jesus seems to have been telling us that the laws of His time concerning marriage and divorce were determined by the flesh rather than the Spirit and that their opposite might be, at least sometimes, true. Marriages that are made in heaven, marriages that are ordained of God, cannot be broken. What God truly has joined together, no
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man can put asunder even if he tries to do so. But when a marriage is not a true spiritual union, or in fact a union at all, but a conflict—then, although divorce is not the ideal good, it may be the lesser of two evils.
86.	The best time to avoid divorce is before marriage. Then is the time to consider what we are prepared to give to, and what we expect to receive from, a partner with whom our life is to be joined by spiritual as well as physical bonds; bonds that should not be lightly assumed and cannot—despite human ideas of divorce—be easily broken. Then is the time to weigh, in so far as may be possible in advance of actual experience of them, the factors that will make for harmonious adjustment and those which to human sense at least may be very nearly irreconcilable.
87.	Despite the assurances of playwrights, novelists, and scenario writers, marriage is not an ultimate goal in human relationships, but rather the beginning of a whole new cycle of life experiences in which the members of the union must work assiduously to preserve and strengthen and fulfill the associations that are viewed with so much romantic feeling and usually so little serious thoughtfulness in premarital relationships.
88.	Insofar as man-made laws can help people with problems of human relationship, possibly making it more difficult for persons to marry would accomplish more than stringent divorce laws would do. Obviously however it is the persons already married and faced with problems that seem beyond solution who must meet the scarcely less challenging problems of divorce. There are such problems.
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89.	There is a moral problem involved in divorce. Whether or not we are inclined to censure others for resorting to divorce, if we should resort to it ourselves we could scarcely avoid an inner feeling of failure, even of self-condemnation. We should not know for a while at least whether the divorce we seek is really a solution at all; it may be only a substitute. Vows have been taken, promises have been made. The practical answer may be of course that sometimes a bad promise is better broken than kept. As one modern teacher has paraphrased the Master’s words: “Whom God would put asunder, let no man try to keep together.”
90.	There is often the problem of children, their future and their welfare, of preserving the home. Yet can calling two persons man and wife, calling their abode a home, make them so? Can a home and a marriage be preserved for the children’s sake when there are actually no such things to preserve?
91.	Perhaps defects of character are revealed in marriage that were previously unsuspected. Can they be justified as a reason for divorce? Do persons marry on the assumption that no such things are likely or can exist in the marriage partner? How far does a person’s duty to his life partner reach? Is he trying to “correct” his partner’s defects? Will his loyalty to the marriage bond help either him or the one who has defects to overcome? Can what he learns or the help he can give compensate for the sorrow and unhappiness he faces?
92.	Perhaps a third person enters the picture; could he have done so if there had not already been a rift in the marriage bond? Perhaps in-laws seem to be to blame for disunity; is no human adjustment possible? In the vows of some churches
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the phrase “forsaking all others” is included. Does this mean forsaking in-laws in favor of the marriage partner if need be? Or is the only solution to forsake both the in-laws and the marriage partner? Perhaps there is incompatibility of temperament. Is the bond of love deep and strong enough to meet this challenge and to rise above it?
93.	Many problems that confront persons in marriage (as problems confront us in any human association) would seem less formidable, would be less often impatiently rejected as intolerable, if we were to consider that no human situation carries with it the guarantee of unvarying bliss and happiness. Our inner questions should not be simply, Shall I be happier in this experience or out of it? but also, Can I learn something I need to know? Can I help another to learn and to grow?
94.	Life is a process, not a spectacle; a progress, not a station, as I believe Emerson has said. Jesus spoke of the Sabbath as being “made for man, and not man for the sabbath.” The principle of judgment that He implied is applicable to many human laws and institutions and even to marriage. When however something that we feel impelled to do involves the happiness, the peace and welfare and growth of others, we are treading on sacred ground. And if, as most of us believe, in marriage we are invoking something that reaches beyond man-made institutions and humanly evolved laws and traditions, we should act with the greatest circumspection and should earnestly pray for guidance and wisdom.
95.	To say that divorce is right or wrong can have application only to a specific instance, to “this divorce” or to “that divorce.” Even then it
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can be said with authority only by one who knows all that enters into the decision and who has wisdom sufficient to judge. To say even of one who mistakenly marries or mistakenly divorces his marriage partner, that he is beyond the pale, that he is under divine condemnation, certainly limits the divine compassion and understanding.
96.	Mistaken action brings its own unhappy results. We are punished not so much for our shortcomings as by them. God’s action is not retributive but corrective; and His great corrective for all human problems is love: not only His love for us but His love expressed in and through us and our human relationships. “Love ... is the fulfillment of the law” and is in itself the supreme law.
Parents and Children
97.	“Unity in the home is a most rewarding ideal toward which to strive. When a family is united in oneness with God, oneness each with the other, and oneness in the expression of the Christ within each individual, then the home will be the abiding place of love and the habitation of God. Our practice of the principles of Truth as presented to us by Jesus is the foundation on which we can build this unity in the home.
98.	“But building unity is not easy. Every parent faces problems with his children. And no two problems are ever alike, because each child is an individual who is trying to express his Christ self in his own particular way. Yet in working out these problems we can learn from one another. By understanding another’s approach to a similar
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problem, we can see how we can apply the underlying Truth principle in our own family situation.
99.	“Because we parents do want the highest and best for our children, we often fall into the trap of being critical or pointing out our children’s faults to them. Actually, with a little conscious awareness on our part, we can just as easily form the habit of looking for and praising the good they express.
100.	“What a difference there is in the child who is reprimanded for not finishing his lessons and stands in our sight and his as a failure, and the one who is praised for completing part of his assignment and is encouraged to try to complete a little more the next time with God’s help. Though the outer circumstances may have been the same, the first child withers in the sense of failure and the second takes a step forward in the inner strength of knowing that he and God together will win out.
101.	“Parents of today, too, recognize the importance of providing their children with a faith to live by, one that will stand steadfast before all that lies ahead of them in a future so unlike anything man has experienced before that we find it difficult to envision. Yet, however great may be our desire, we cannot set our children down and say to them, ‘This is faith; take it and use it.’
102.	“We see, then, that our whole attitude toward life speaks to our children and says: ‘This is my faith. This is what I believe is true about life and God and our relationship to Him.’ What does your life and faith say to your children?
103.	“Our faith shows in our actions. When we are faced with a problem or difficulty, do we
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simply give in to it or give up, resigning ourself to something less than God intends for us? Or do we look for the good in every situation and, like Jacob, say, ‘I will not let you go, unless you bless me’? Our faith is communicated to our children when they are aware of our praying for guidance in a particular problem, and our following through on the guidance that God gives us.
104.	“Probably the most important way in which we show our faith is in our basic attitude toward life. Life is meant to be a happy adventure, exhilarating and exciting, every day. Our life should sparkle with the happiness of Spirit in the knowledge that health, joy, enthusiasm, love, peace, and plenty are ours.
105.	“Is our expectation for good or for ill? That which we expect is evidence of our faith, and our attitude is being effectively communicated to our children by the life we live. Do we meet periods of change with anticipation or with dread? For example, the parental attitude makes all the difference in how children respond to such changes as moving to a new home, or entering school.
106.	“During trying times we can choose to communicate fear or faith to our children. The parent who truly feels confident of the care of God for his family and himself and feels secure in the power of God to change conditions is teaching much about living faith. Sometimes the parent needs to renew his faith during times of trial. The process of faith renewal communicates a valuable lesson to our children”—Anne Lee Kreml, Guidelines for Parents.
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The Best Gift to Your Children
107.	“We do more teaching unconsciously than we do consciously. Our attitudes provide the atmosphere in which are formed our children’s mental, emotional, and spiritual traits of character. They are no more aware of the traits that are being formed than they are of the freckles or the coat of tan that the sun bestows upon their upturned faces. Unconsciously they take on our attitude toward life, toward people, toward religion. Our children do not have to be told whether life is a joyful experience to us or a burden. Before they are very old they have a feeling, gained from us, that life yields its blessings either grudgingly or abundantly. They know whether our daily work is a labor or a joy to us. They know whether our general attitude toward people is one of trust or suspicion.
108.	“What we parents think about life, about the sexes, about marriage, about the various races and religions, about death, health, and prosperity— this is our children’s heritage from us. Every parent has wished that he had more in the way of material blessings to bestow on his child, but if he could only realize it, his best gift to his child is himself— his love, his understanding, his patience, his tolerance, his kindness. The child is rich indeed who is inspired by his parents to think and live constructively, usefully, and happily.
109.	“The greatest thing we can do for our children is to develop our own capacity both for enjoying life’s blessings and for meeting its challenges. This is our greatest gift to them. Our greatest desire for them is that they may become equal
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to life, equipped for gracious, confident, and abundant living. Every experience we have, every situation we are called upon to meet, is an opportunity to become more of what we want to be and to give our children more of what we want them to have. For Truth is ‘caught’ much more frequently than it is taught, and we provide the atmosphere in which our children form their mental, emotional, and spiritual character.”—Cleda Reyner.
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Lesson V
Unity of the Spirit
1.	We might be discouraged at times if we did not know it as a living reality that behind all the multitude and variety of human endeavors to bring about the millennium there stands forever the master Mind, which sees the end from the beginning. This Mind is the master Artist who Himself is (through human vessels as His hands) putting on the picture here a touch of one color and there a touch of another, according to the vessel used.
2.	Were it not at times so utterly ridiculous, it would always be pitiful to see the human mind of man trying to limit God to personal comprehension. However much any one of us may know of God, there will always be unexplored fields in the realms of expression, and it is an evidence of our narrow vision to say: “This is all there is of God.”
3.	Suppose that a dozen persons are standing on the dark side of a wall in which are various sized openings. Viewing the scene outside through the opening assigned to him, one sees all there is within
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a certain radius. He says, “I see the whole world; in it are trees and fields.” Another, through a larger opening, has a more extended view; he says: “I see trees and fields and houses; I see the whole world.” The next one, looking through a still larger opening, exclaims: “Oh! you are all wrong! I alone see the whole world; I see trees and fields and houses and rivers and animals.”
4.	The fact is, each one looking at the same world sees according to the size of the aperture through which he is looking, and he limits the world to just his own circumscribed view of it. You would say at once that such limitation was only a mark of each man’s ignorance and narrowness. Everyone would pity the man who thus displayed— aye, fairly vaunted—his ignorance.
5.	From time immemorial there have been schisms and divisions among religious sects and denominations. And now with the newer light that we have, even the light of the knowledge of one God immanent in all men, many still cling to external differences, so postponing, instead of hastening, the day of the millennium; at least they postpone it for themselves.
6.	I want, if possible, to help break down the seeming “middle wall of partition” (Eph. 2:14), even as Christ, the living Christ, does in reality break down or destroy all misunderstanding. I want to help you to see that there is no real wall of difference between all the various sects of the new theology, except such as appear to you because of your circumscribed view. I want you to see, if you do not already, that every time you try to limit God’s manifestation of Himself in any person or through any person, in order to make that manifes-
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tation conform to what you see as Truth, you are only crying loudly: “Ho! everyone, come and view my narrowness and my ignorance!”
7.	I want to stimulate you to lose sight of all differences, all side issues and lesser things, and seek but for one thing—that is the consciousness of the presence of an indwelling God in you and your life. And believe me, just as there is less separation between the spokes of a wheel the nearer they get to the hub, so you will find that the nearer you both come to the perfect Center, which is the Father, the less difference will there be between you and your brother.
8.	The faith healer, he who professes to believe only in what he terms “divine healing” (as though there could be any other healing than divine), differs from the so-called spiritual scientist only in believing that he must ask, seek, knock, importune, before he can receive; while he of the Truth teaching knows that he has already received God’s free gift of life and health and all things, and that by speaking the word of Truth the gifts are made manifest. Both get like results (God made visible) through faith in the invisible. The mind of the one is lifted to a place of faith by asking or praying; the mind of the other is lifted to a place of faith by speaking words of Truth.
9.	Is there any real difference?
10.	The mental scientist usually scorns to be classed with either of the other two sects. He loudly declares that “all is mind” and that all the God he knows or cares anything about is the invincible, unconquerable / within him, which nothing can daunt or overcome.
11.	He talks about conscious mind and subcon-
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scious mind, and he fancies that he has something entirely different from and infinitely higher than either of the other sects. He boldly proclaims, “I have Truth; the others are in error, too orthodox,” and thus he calls the world’s attention to the small size of the aperture through which he is looking at the stupendous whole.
12.	Beloved, as surely as you and I live, it is all one and the same Truth. There may be a distinction, but it is without difference.
13.	The happy Methodist who will from his heart exclaim, ‘‘Praise the Lord!” no matter what occurs to him, and who thereby finds that “to them that love God all things work together for good” (Rom. 8:28), is in reality saying the “all is good” of the metaphysician. Each one does simply “in all thy ways acknowledge him [or God, good] ” (Prov. 3:6), which is indeed a magical wand, bringing sure deliverance out of any trouble to all who faithfully use it.
14.	The teachings of Spirit are intrinsically the same, because Spirit is one. I heard an uneducated woman speak in a most orthodox prayer meeting some time ago. She knew no more of religious science than a babe knows of Latin. Her face, however, was radiant with the light of the Christ manifest through her. She told how, five or six years before, she had been earnestly seeking to know more of God (seeking in prayer, as she knew nothing about seeking spiritual light from people), and one day, in all earnestness, she asked that some special word of His will might be given directly to her as a sort of private message. These words flashed into her mind: “If therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. ... No
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man can serve two masters” (Matt. 6:22-24).
15.	She had read these words many times, but that day they were illumined by Spirit; and she saw that to have an eye “single” meant seeing but one power in her life; while she saw two powers (God and Devil, good and evil) she was serving two masters. From that day to this, though she had passed through all sorts of troublous circumstances—trials of poverty, illness in family, intemperate husband—she found always the most marvelous, full, and complete deliverance out of them all by resolutely adhering to the “single” eye—seeing God only. She would not look even for a moment at the seeming evil to combat it or rid herself of it, because, as she said, “Looking at God with one eye and this evil with the other is being double-eyed, and God told me to keep my eye single.”
16.	This woman, who had never heard of any science, or metaphysical teaching, or laws of mind, was combating and actually overcoming the tribulations of this world by positively refusing to have anything but a single eye. She had been taught in a single day by infinite Spirit the whole secret of how to banish evil and have only good and joy in her. Isn’t it all very simple?
17.	At the center, all is one and the same God forevermore. I believe that the veriest heathen that ever lived, he who worships the golden calf as his highest conception of god, worships God. His mind has not yet expanded to a state where he can grasp any idea of God apart from a visible form, something that he can see with human eyes and handle with fleshly hands. But at heart he is seeking something higher than his present conscious self to be his deliverance out of evil.
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18.	Are you and I, with all our boasted knowledge, doing anything more or different?
19.	The spirit at the center of even the heathen, who is God’s child, is thus seeking, though blindly, its Father-God. Shall anyone dare to say that it will not find that which it seeks—its Father? Shall we not rather say it will find, because of that immutable law that “he that seeketh findeth” (Matt. 7:8)?
20.	You have now come to know that, at the center of your being, God (omnipotent power) ever lives. From the nature of your relationship to Him, and by His own immutable laws, you may become conscious of His presence and eternally abide in Him and He in you.
21.	The moment that any man really comes to recognize that which is absolute Truth—namely, that one Spirit, even the Father, being made manifest in the Son, ever lives at the center of all human beings—he will know that he can cease forever from any undue anxiety about bringing others into the same external fold that he is in. If your friend, or your son, or your husband, or your brother does not see Truth as you see it, do not try by repeated external arguments to convert him.
22.	“And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto myself” (John 12:32). That which is needed is not that you (the human, which is so fond of talk and argument) try to lift up your brother. The Holy Spirit, or Christ within him, declares: “And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men” (John 13:32). You can silently lift up this I within the man’s own being, and it will draw the man up unto—what? Your teaching? No, unto Christ, the divine in him.
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23.	If your loved one seems to you to be going all wrong, keep your own light lifted up by living the victorious life of Spirit. And then, remembering that your dear one, as well as yourself, is an incarnation of the Father, keep him silently committed to the care of his own divine Spirit. You do not know what God wants to do in him; you never can know.
24.	If you fully recognize that the God that dwells in you dwells in all men, you know that each one’s own Lord, the Christ within each one, will make no mistake. The greatest help that you can give to any man is to tell him silently, whenever you think of him: “The Holy Spirit lives within you; He cares for you, is working in you that which He would have you do, and is manifesting Himself through you. ” Then let him alone. Be at perfect rest about him, and the result will be infinitely better than you could have asked.
25.	Keep ever in mind that each living person in all God’s universe is a radiating center of the same perfect One, some radiating more and some less, according to the awakened consciousness of the individual. If you have become conscious of this radiation in yourself, keep your thought centered right there, and the Spirit of the living God will radiate from you in all directions with mighty power, doing a great work in lifting others up. If you want to help others who are not yet awakened to this knowledge, center your thought on this same idea of them—that they are radiating centers of the All-Perfect. Keep your eye “single” for them and Spirit will teach them more in a day than you could in years.
26.	Throughout the ages man has leaned to the
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idea of separateness instead of oneness. He has believed himself separate from God and separate from other men. And even in these latter days when we talk so much about oneness, most teachers of metaphysics manage again to separate God’s children from Him by saying that while the child may suffer the Father knows no suffering nor does He take cognizance of the child’s suffering; that we, His children, forever a part of Him, are torn and lacerated, while He, knowing nothing of this, goes on as serenely and indifferently as the full moon sails through the heavens on a winter night.
27.	It is little wonder that many, to whom the first practical lessons in the gospel of the Christ came as liberation and power, should in time of failure and heartache have turned back to the old “limited” belief of the Fatherhood of God.
28.	There is no real reason why we, having come to recognize God as infinite substance, should be by this recognition deprived of the familiar fatherly companionship that in all ages has been so dear to the human heart. There is no necessity for us to separate God as substance and God as tender Father; no reason why we should not, and every reason why we should, have both in one; they are one—God principle outside of us as unchangeable law, God within us as tender, loving Father-Mother, who has compassion for our every sorrow.
29.	There is no reason why, because in our earlier years some of us were forced into the narrow puritanical limits that stood for a religious belief, we should now so exaggerate our freedom as to fancy that we are entirely self-sufficient and shall never again need the sweet, uplifting com-
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munion between Father and child. The created, who ever lives, moves, and has his being in his Creator, needs the conscious presence of that Creator, and cannot be entirely happy in knowing God only as cold, unsympathetic Principle. Why cannot both conceptions find lodgment in the minds and hearts? Both are true, and both are necessary parts of a whole. The two were made to go together, and in the highest cannot be separated.
30.	God as the underlying substance of all things, God as principle, is unchanging, and does remain forever uncognizant of and unmoved by the changing things of time and sense. It is true that God as principle does not feel pain, is not moved by the cries of the children of men for help. It is a grand, stupendous thought that this power is unchanging law, just as unchanging in its control of our affairs as it is in the government of the starry heavens. One is fairly conscious of his entire being’s expanding into grandeur as he dwells on the thought.
31.	But this is not all, any more than the emotional side is all. True, there is law; but there is gospel also. Nor does gospel make law of no effect; it fulfills law. God is principle, but God is individual also. Principle becomes individualized the moment it comes to dwell in external manifestation in a human body.
32.	Principle does not change because of pity or sympathy, even “as a father pitieth his children” (Psalms 103:13). The Father in us always moves into helpfulness when called on and trusted. It is as though infinite wisdom and power, which outside are Creator, Upholder, and Principle, become transformed into infinite love, which is Father-Mother,
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with all the warmth and tender helpfulness that this word implies, when they become focalized, so to speak, within a human body.
33.	I do not at all understand it, but in some way this indwelling One does move to lift the consciousness of His children up and to place it parallel with God, Principle, Law, so that no longer two are crossed, but the two—aye, the three—the human consciousness, the indwelling individual Father, and the Holy Spirit—are made one. In every life, with our present limited understanding, there come times when the bravest heart goes down, for the moment, under the apparent burdens of life; times when the strongest intellect bends like a “reed shaken with the wind” (Matt. 11:7), when the most self-sufficient mind feels a helplessness that wrings from it a cry for help from “the rock that is higher than I” (Psalms 61:2).
34.	Every metaphysician either has reached, or must in the future reach, this place; the place where God as cold principle alone will not suffice any more than in the past God as personality alone could wholly satisfy. There will come moments when the human heart is so suddenly struck as to paralyze it, and for the moment it is impossible, even with strained effort, to think right thoughts.
35.	At such times there will come but little comfort from the thought: “This suffering comes as the result of my wrong thinking; but God, my Father, takes no cognizance of it: I must work it out unaided and alone.” Just here we must have, and we do have, the motherhood of God, which is not cold Principle any more than your love for your child is cold. I would not make God as Principle less, but God as individual more.
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36.	The whole business of your Lord (the Father in you) is to care for you, to love you with an everlasting love, to note your slightest cry, and to rescue you.
37.	Then you ask, “Why doesn’t He do it?” Because you do not recognize His indwelling and His power, and by resolutely affirming that He does now manifest Himself as your all-sufficiency, call Him forth into visibility.
38.	God (Father-Mother) is a present help in time of need; but there must be a recognition of His presence, a turning away from human efforts, and an acknowledgment of God only (a single eye) before He becomes manifest.
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COMMENTARY ON “UNITY OF THE SPIRIT”
Unity of the Spirit means the essential oneness that exists in all created things. Unity understands that a great part of the fulfillment of man’s growth comes when he apprehends this oneness. With this apprehension comes a change in man’s style of living and a transformation of social relationships. “I therefore . . . beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called . . . eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph. 4:1, 3).
The “unity of the Spirit” in each one of us assures us of unity in Spirit; assures us of our oneness with Absolute Good. There is no separate self; there are only individual expressions of the one Spirit. We do not all do the same things or like the same things, but we are all expressing, through our personality, the one Spirit that is in each of us, according to our level of soul unfoldment. To have true freedom we must come to know our fellow men and our fellow creatures as one with us in
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Spirit, since all of us are manifestations of God as Spirit.
“There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all and in all” (Eph. 4:4, 5, 6).
This “unity of the Spirit,” which is the only reality, has to be made an actuality in our experiences as we raise our consciousness to that which Jesus attained when He knew Himself to be the Son of God. Jesus made this claim: “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30).
We too must make the same claim by consciously identifying ourself with God through the indwelling Christ, or the I AM; then we are to proceed to show this relationship in our thinking, feeling, speaking, acting, and reacting.
The idea of oneness with God, with All-Good, with all life is the most vital thing we can learn in our journey along the path in search of God as Truth. Realization of oneness is only possible as we know that we are never separated from life or any of the other qualities of God that make up our divine inheritance. This being true, we are always one with health, with prosperity, with peace of mind, with joy, with success, with harmony, with protection.
“The realization of divine unity is the highest that we can attain. This is true glory, the blending and merging of the whole being into Divine Mind. ‘I in them, and thou in me, that they may be perfected into one.’ This merging of God and man does not mean the total obliteration of man’s consciousness but its
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glorification or expansion into that of the divine” (Mysteries of John, p. 151).
All that we say of “unity of the Spirit” as well as “unity in the Spirit” can be summed up in what is known as Unity’s fundamental statement. This can be used as a prayer for our individual life, and for our world:
There is but one Presence and one Power in the universe (in my life)—God, the good omnipotent.
Unity within Diversity
Every religious group is made up of people. It is Unity’s conviction that deep within each person is the longing to know God. However, each one will interpret this desire and work for its fulfillment in the way that has meaning for him. When a number of persons are at the same level of soul unfold-ment, they tend to band together in their search for ultimate reality. It is very shortsighted for groups to set up mental and emotional barriers when all are in reality seeking the same thing. The name for that thing may vary. Unity chooses to call it a consciousness of the indwelling God. Some religious groups have felt that they alone have the full Truth, and have become very exclusive, losing sight of the truth:
“Have we not all one father? Has not one God created us?” (Mai. 2:10). “God shows no partiality” (Acts 10:34).
The relation between God and man is like that of a wheel and its spokes; the hub represents God, and the spokes represent mankind. The nearer we come in consciousness to the hub—God—the closer
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we come to understanding our brothers of every color, race, and creed. When we feel that we are standing in the very presence of God “in the secret place,” then we lose all sense of separation, and know only oneness. With this broader view of our fellow man we can truly follow the edict to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt. 22:39) and see each one as the beloved of God, walking the path to the Father’s house in the way that is right for him.
Only understanding of the “unity of the Spirit” can remove all the seeming walls and barriers that prevent men from living in freedom and peace, and especially with regard to their ways of worshiping. Love must be linked with understanding in order that we may follow Jesus’ commandment to “love your neighbor as yourself” (i.e., recognize our neighbor’s divinity). We no longer expect others to live or worship in the same way that we do. We will see the reason for diversity of expression of the one life, one substance, one intelligence that we call God. We will see, too, the reason for diversity of methods in worshiping, but we will also feel a loving fellowship with every man in worshiping the one God, the Father of all.
Freedom from Exclusivism
When we think that we alone have found a higher way than any other person has of finding God, or Truth, it is an indication that we still lack spiritual understanding.
The ways of seeking for and finding God are as many as the persons on this spiritual quest. Because there is but one God, who is Father of all,
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any way of seeking is right for various individuals at different stages of their spiritual unfoldment. When there is need to change a method-, it will be revealed by the Spirit within.
“Let no man who has been born into a knowledge of God ever dare again to speak or even think disparagingly of or to any who seemingly are behind him in spiritual growth, lest by so doing he be found working against God, who is infinite wisdom as well as love” (How I Used Truth, pp. 37-38).
It is the infinite love of God that draws each individual to the way that is right for bringing about his own soul development. Others may be used as channels to inspire us but in the final analysis, the path we travel in our search for Truth can only be the way that will bring our true fulfillment and success. The way another travels may or may not be our way; only the Spirit within us knows. Because our particular way of spiritual quest satisfies us is no indication that it is the only way, or the right way for others. To insist that we alone see Truth shows our limited concept of God who is unlimited wisdom, for His Spirit is guiding every person, whether or not the individual responds to such divine guidance.
Because of the unity of the spirit, all people regardless of denominational affiliation have access to the power that we call God. At no time is any person separated from God, for there can be no existence for anyone apart from Him—“one God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all and in all” (Eph. 4:6).
If we have sufficient faith to take the steps necessary to make conscious contact with God,
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then it makes no difference what our religious persuasion may be. Our help from God will be great or small to the extent of our response to, and use of, the inspirations revealed to us in what Scripture calls the “secret place of the Most High.” Jesus said, “Have faith in God” (Mark 11:22), and He did not dictate the outer forms of establishing this faith. Each of us must find his own way of expressing his faith in God and of calling on Him for help.
Unity’s Understanding of Ecumenism
The ecumenical movement, which is the effort to unify Christian denominations, is developing in two parallel directions: (1) the movement toward unifying beliefs, and (2) the movement toward denominations working together on common issues regardless of beliefs. At the present time the second method is the most productive.
Unity does not regard a diversity of belief as unhealthy. What is unhealthy is the building of walls of hostility about those differences. Differences in people in terms of culture, nationality, color of skin, and style of life should not be regarded negatively, but as expressions of the rich variety of God’s creation. In the same way, religious differences are diversities which do not have to be regarded negatively but can be understood as an expression of the growth and development of man. We do not have to be upset about these differences.
When we have a deep consciousness of God and His love for all men, we will be freed from the negative concern we may have had because differ-
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ences exist. Our relationship with others of differing faiths does not have to be on the basis of intellectual belief. Our relationship with others is more authentic and meaningful when we relate on the basis of a common underlying spirit. This means relating to others person-to-person, keeping in mind that the deepest value is the divinity within each person as he is created by God . . . not whether or not one accepts certain doctrines, or worships with or without certain symbols.
In a practical way, this attitude leads us to emphasize the second concept of ecumenism (above) as the most rewarding during this time of man’s development. This is not to say that we should not work to understand the beliefs of other denominations; there is certainly a unity that lies underneath the diversity of thought as we find it, and we should be diligent in articulating that fundamental unity whenever possible. But whether or not we find a common intellectual understanding of belief, we do have a responsibility, wherever possible, to work together on common issues that involve the development of man, the expansion of his consciousness, and the freeing of his consciousness to accomplish greater things.
When we encounter those of other beliefs, instead of getting caught up in intellectual debate, we should work to explore the deeper dimensions of our relationship with others in terms of goals to be achieved and life to be lived. A little thinking about this way of approaching other denominations will open up a wealth of new ways to relate to those who differ with us in thought. In this way we will be placing the emphasis upon living our belief, rather than just talking about it. The way
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we live communicates much more than what we say.
The Individual and the Community
Every Truth principle has great implication for the way we live our life in the world. The unity of the spirit is no exception. One of the great issues upon which this principle bears is the relationship of the individual to the society and the larger community of man. Spiritual growth is experienced individually. But such great issues as world peace require that groups of individuals and nations develop mutually affirmative relationships. How is the individual to regard himself in these issues?
The individual often feels that he is powerless in the face of such large issues. Wars seem to be fought by other people. Great national decisions do not involve him. The group seems to act apart from him. It is easy for him to feel alienated from the activities of the larger society. He may feel that he is swallowed up by society, that he is merely one of a number of expendable units. Or he may feel used by the society, just a cog in the great wheel of humanity.
It is out of such anxiety that religious expressions arise which emphasize the spiritual meaning of the individual. By coming to know who he is in the sight of God—a child of God, heir to all that God is—the individual whose experiences of the larger community are basically negative finds meaning restored to his life. But here it must not end. Man can return to the community through a consciousness of the unity of the spirit.
In a consciousness of the unity of the spirit, the
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individual apprehends not only that he is a spiritual being, created in the image and likeness of God, not only that all have the same spirit, but also that he is never quite fulfilled by himself alone. Even when he reaches the zenith of spiritual awareness in himself he cannot simply enjoy it for himself, but must share the fruits with others. It is not that he just happens to be a part of the whole of mankind; there is an imperative within man which draws him to come together with others in a community. His spiritual nature finds fulfillment in a cooperative relationship with others.
The Kingdom of God
When Jesus says, “the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21) (RSV, “in the midst of you”), the meaning includes the idea that the “kingdom” is experienced in its fullness between persons as well as within the individual. The kingdom is not only individual but ultimately collective. To understand this is to understand the unity of the spirit.
Jesus would seem to be affirming this understanding also when in speaking of the two great commandments he says, “You shall love the Lord thy God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind ... You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt. 22:37-39). The love which characterizes those who live in the consciousness of the kingdom includes all others. The kingdom in expression through man involves the individual and the community.
The Body of God
All men together make up the “body of God.”
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Paul speaks of this in saying:
“For the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot should say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the organs in the body, each one of them as he chose. If all were a single organ, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you’ ” (I Cor. 12:14-21).
While admittedly Paul meant this passage in a very exclusive sense, referring to the developing Christian community, the “unity of the spirit” reveals that the whole of humanity is the “body of God.” This means that we can learn to see all of the world community as a whole which is unfolding toward greater unity, cooperation, and concern for every man.
The responsibility of the individual, therefore, is twofold.
(a)	The individual is first responsible for his own consciousness. No one else can live his life for him. Every man comes to an individual awareness of his purpose and takes responsibility for his own life.
(b)	The individual is, second, responsible to the “body” as a whole. In the unity of the spirit we have a responsibility to be a force for
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peace within the community. We cannot say, “Well, I’m just an individual, I do not matter.” Every person has power for good within the community by virtue of the fact that he is an indispensable “member” of the “body.”
We should remember that our unity with the whole includes, but goes beyond, the physical forms of communication. There is a communication which lies beneath the surface and to which we have access in prayer and meditation. This is why Unity emphasizes the power of prayer for world peace.
Yet although we are spiritual, we express physically. Our responsibility includes the promoting of the unity of the community in spirit, soul, and body. This means that we are called not to ignore those opportunities which come to all of us to “act” for unity within the “body” of mankind. All of us have some part to play in facilitating healthy relationships between all parts of the community. Whether it is simply speaking and acting in love and peace in our everyday human relationships, or taking an active role in community affairs, we are called to involve ourself in a constructive way in the mainstream of the life of the community. This attitude develops in us as we get the feel of the unity of the spirit.
From Dependence to Independence to In terdependence
An insight into the unity of the spirit as it ex-
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presses in us can be gained from a study of the development of healthy personality. Man begins his physical expression on this earth as a child in a state of dependency. He is dependent on those around him for his food, clothing, and sustenance. The next stage is a growth toward independence. He grows in consciousness and ability to the point where he can provide for himself the necessities of life. The third stage of development is interdependence. It is in this stage that man recognizes that he is not just “going it alone.” Without diminishing his sense of independence he becomes aware of his mutual relationship with all others, and the spiritual fulfillment which occurs when he is able to give and receive within the community of mankind.
An awareness of our interdependent relationship with others helps us to grasp the meaning of the “unity of the spirit” as it expresses in life situations. Man is able to live the full life that God has given him as he expands beyond the states of dependence or independence. Remaining in either of these states of mind tends to cause the individual to act in ways which frustrate the unity of the whole. Dependence keeps him from giving fully to the community out of the wealth of his own divine capacities, often seeking to manipulate the world to fulfill his own needs. Independence sometimes expresses in antisocial behavior of the kind that separates the individual from others because all he needs is himself. Interdependence, on the other hand, brings to full maturity the consciousness in which we are one with God and others, acting responsibly to establish a community of cooperation, communication, and love.
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I AM SUCH A LEAF
Suppose a leaf should decide,
“I will withdraw from this tree into my own true being.
I will isolate myself in silent meditation. Shielded by my tranquil thoughts from the perturbations of this tree,
I will go and find myself.”
And suppose the leaf did this and flew off on the wind till it came to rest on the forest floor?
Will it not find that it cannot find fulfillment as a thing complete in itself?
As a thing complete in itself, separate from the tree, it is nothing but crumbling dust in a dusty world.
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Only as it gives itself to the tree, reaches out to sunlight and rain, lets the life of the tree pass through it as it grows and unfolds, only then does it have meaning and find fulfillment.
What happens to any other part of the tree affects it,
and what happens to it affects all the tree.
On the tree of life,
I am such a leaf,
and I fulfill myself
by giving myself to life
and letting it flow through me
to make me and life
more alive.
—James Dillet Freeman
From “Love, Loved, Loving!” by James Dillet Freeman. Copyright© 1974 by James Dillet Freeman. Used by permission of Doubleday & Company, Inc.
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