God Consciousness by Nicol Campbell, School of Truth

"He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High, who abides in the shadow of the Almighty, will say to the Lord 'My refuge and my fortress; my God, in Whom I trust”.

In the very hot countryside of the Bible a person might feel he would die if he did not find shade, say next to a rock or under a tree. Some of us have had the experience - dehydrated, head throbbing, we desperately need to escape from the unrelenting sun. Surcease from this, when we find a shadow cannot be described - it must be felt.

But what is the shadow of the Almighty? It is the state of consciousness we find as we meditate upon God. The great Greek thinker Plato says "the soul takes flight to the realm of the invisible, where it knows peace and bliss." Here too we find comfort and security, at first inwardly, and then outwardly in every aspect of our lives.

It has to be experienced firsthand, it cannot be transferred from one person to another. Only alone can we "be still and know that I am God." Seekers after Truth, having found this Place, return to It again and again. "Be still and know that I am God" means an end to worry, anxious concerns about everything, running around in circles, panic. God is All-in-all. He is All-power, All-presence, All-knowledge. It means "I am God, and I am with you, I am unlimited power, I am all wisdom, I am Love, and I will see you through.

When you are weak I am strong." Be still from anxious thoughts. Do not lie awake at night worrying about mistakes of yesterday and in the future. Do not raise a mountain of difficulty in your heart and mind. Do not feel that you have to carry this huge load alone. Do not feel that you are about to be swamped by circumstances that are beyond your control. Instead become still, and come to know deeply within that "I am God."

God must be real to us.

Repeating an affirmation that holds no deep meaning and feeling for us will not change our lives. The invitation is "Be still and know" and it is only in our hearts that we can truly know anything. Our creative thoughts must be energised by feelings.

The prophet Jeremiah confirms this when he reveals "You will seek Me and find Me, when you seek Me with all your heart." The same injunction appears in the great Hindu writing Bhagavad-Gita: "Give me your whole heart. Love and adore Me, worship Me always and you will find Me. This is my promise - Who loves you dearly." This is the part that we must do for ourselves.

No-one else can seek on our behalf. We need consciously to find environments that help us - inspiring writings, uplifting friends, associates and organisations - and we need to practice seeking through positive affirmations, meditations, by guarding our thoughts, words and actions. Our words reflect our inner state. We have to make Truth our own by infusing It into our personality.

As we go on and on and on seeking, we find God appearing through us and our experience. We have entered God-consciousness. The purpose of The School of Truth is to help you realise the spirit of God which already resides in you. Pain and disharmony are the thorns that direct you back to the path of Divine law.

We come into this life to increase God's expression, which we experience as fulfillment, joy, health, harmony, success, peace. We come because God needs us here to do His work. We leave the world a little better for our having been in it, and our development as His children confirms it. Truth is self evident. God does not force Himself upon us. He gives us free will and intelligence that we may choose to apply His laws. We live within His laws every minute of the day, whether we are conscious of it or not.

We live in the Spirit of God which permeates all creation, seen and unseen. We live and move and have our being in that Spirit. Our thoughts create vibrations in the medium of Spirit which other people register and which ultimately return to us.

Also, as we impress our thought on the Spirit-medium around us it immediately begins to solidify as the object or condition of that thought. We sow and we reap. Law does not discriminate - it begins to produce according to thought, either positive or If we give thanks for what is good, if we give thanks for what it is natural for us to have, immediately the Spirit begins to form it.

But we must be constant, must not vacillate between positive and negative. We must follow up our morning meditation with positive thinking, feeling, speaking and acting right through our day. If we condemn, criticise, complain and resent we cannot attribute our failures to God: "Why has God done this to me? Why have our prayers not been answered?"

The School's handbook contains this self-teaching: "I try to live every moment of the day with an uplifted consciousness, realizing that my own positive prayers, my thoughts and feelings, have all power in my life. Further, my progress in Truth is reflected in my thoughts, feelings, words and actions."

How do we measure up?

Perhaps each evening we should examine ourselves in terms of the positives and negatives that we have expressed during our day. Were we able to help someone, perhaps to brighten their day? Were we agreeable or disagreeable? If we were tempted to criticise did we control our tongues knowing that criticism blocks the path to love? Do we feel that today we made some spiritual progress? Were we able to control the input to our minds, to detach from the clamour around us or did the day's circumstances batter us about like flotsam and jetsam? Did we humble the ego, accepting that there may be other ways of doing things which could be better than our own? Were we anchored in Truth, following the Master's injunction "What is that to thee, follow thou me."

These are the works that we must do while it is day, while we walk this plane of consciousness. And these are the treasures we take with us when we leave, treasures which neither moth nor rust corrupt. We find them in the protection and peace of the shadow of the Almighty.

© The School of Truth Lecture given in December 2003, Johannesburg, South Africa Source , The Path of Truth (EW)