The Christ encouraged us many times to glean spiritual truth from nature. He spoke of fig trees, vines, lilies, sparrows, the wind, seeds and crops, urging us to find the parallels of wisdom within our own lives.
He spoke too of the Pearl of Great Price; let us examine the origin of a pearl. Everyone knows that pearls come from oysters, but what is the actual mechanism?
In order to live, the oyster opens its protective shell by a few millimetres to admit the life-giving sea water, which brings oxygen and microscopic food. However, during rough weather, undesirable particles of grit may also be carried in the current, and the sendentary oyster has no way of avoiding them. When a jagged, gritty particle lodges in the soft folds of the oyster's flesh, the oyster, having no means of removing it, sets to work to transform it. The irritation is lessened by adding smooth layers of nacre to the unwanted particle. Little by little over a period of many months, the sharpness is reduced, and the irritating particle becomes a beautiful pearl.
We too need to open ourselves to the experiences of life, but sadly mankind's irritations tend to make him more irritable. Surely as creators in miniature, we too could find it in ourselves to transform these irritations into pearls of heightened consciousness? Love is the powerful agent which completes every experience to the greatest good of all concerned. Can we not employ this power to round out the irritations caused by our enemies? It is not only ourselves who benefit from the exercise. As with the oyster, the product of transformed irritation becomes in itself an awareness that can bring joy and upliftment to others.
We see now that the Christ's injunctions: 'Do good to those who harm you', 'love your enemies', constitute the techniques of transforming bad things into good. His words are indeed pearls of wisdom. The Master knew and proved that LOVE can never be a one-sided affair, just as there is no such thing as a one-sided pearl.
The ultimate pearl, that is the completed love-consciousness, is attained by 'selling all that you have' in order to purchase it. Those who are advancing on the Path are beginning to sense that 'all that you have' materially is but an irritation by comparison with spiritual awareness.
The kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man seeking godly pearls; who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it.
(Matt 13:45, 46)
* * * * *
Lessons from the Pearl
© The School of Truth
Source p. 268, Nov / Dec 2009 - The Path of Truth
Sunday, 28 March 2010
A Tower of Safety - School of Truth Lecture read by Andre
Do you remember the story of Noah? How, when the flood was over and the waters had subsided, he and his sons went out into a new-washed world - and how his blessing was given to two of his sons and not to the third?
You may remember, too, that they decided to build a city, and a tower whose top might reach to heaven, in case they should be scattered abroad. But they were interrupted in their building because a confusion of tongues came upon them and they could not understand one another's speech. And so, after all, they were dispersed over the earth.
Today the world is trying to struggle back to normal after having suffered a worse calamity than the flood. It is a condition from which it will be difficult to recover, as we all know only too well.
If Noah's family intended the city and the high tower to ensure their safety from another disaster such as the flood, then man's present plans seem to be on similar lines. We, too, appear to be trying to build organisations which will make us safe against future calamities. Perhaps we can follow the parallel still further and see the curse of Babel still with us. Our builders are still shouting in divers tongues and are misunderstood by their fellows. Some seem to threaten further wars if their particular plan is not adopted. Others talk in terms of financial domination - or power. And the smaller nations live in fear of being swallowed up by their bigger and stronger neighbours.
Because of all this, when the workmen gather together to build, little is accomplished, for they do not understand one another. How can there be progress until all the workmen learn to speak in one tongue - until all adopt the language of God, which is love? Until they speak the dialects of toleration and justice? Until they voice a real desire for universal benefit instead of struggling for trade concessions here, or bases there, or domination somewhere else? There can be no security in the world until men of all nations desire to live together in brotherhood.
There should be one universal language - the language of love. Perhaps all of us are prone to sit back and judge the workmen by their failures; and when we do so we, too, speak the language of injustice; for these men are instructed by the people of their own lands. They are the men with authority, chosen by their fellows as delegates to express their views. But we can expect no love, tolerance, and justice from our leaders if it is missing in ourselves. The universal language must be learned by individuals if it is to be spoken by their representatives. Men of goodwill everywhere must first desire universal peace and co-operation themselves before they can hope that their delegates will speak in terms of brotherly love.
When this comes about we shall appoint workmen throughout the world who speak one language - that of love and fellowship. And they will build for us a tower of security to which all men will turn for guidance.
But if we have forgotten God we cannot expect to send God-like delegates as builders. And no universal language will be spoken by those who are tied in selfishness to their own point of view. There can be no tower of safety against war until, in individuals and in nations, there is an earnest desire for fellowship, amity, peace and love. Are we doing our share, you and I? Are we, by our constructive thoughts, words, and actions helping to lay the foundations of peace? Are we learning the language of love with all possible speed? Think it over.
THE SCHOOL OF TRUTH
LECTURE
A Tower of Safety
© The School of Truth
Source p. 14, Jan / Feb 2010 - The Path of Truth
The Growing Consciousness - Lecture Nicol Campbel, read by Andre
When you took up the study and practice of Truth, what did you expect to find? Were you not all seeking the assurance that God is interested in you? Am I not seeking the same thing, the consciousness of God in full expression in my life? I want to be able to say to all who come to me in His name, "Your faith has made you whole!" I want to be able to say to disease and to poverty, "Go! Dissolve yourself into the nothingness from which you came!" I want to see fear transmuted into a constructive, living and vital faith. Yes, that is what you are seeking and what I am seeking. Even if you think you are seeking some purely personal demonstration of good in your life now, what you are ultimately seeking is the consciousness of the Presence of God - All Good.
You have heard the expression, "Whatever is, is best." What is your interpretation of that? Do you feel that you have to bow your head to your poverty, your disease or your unhappiness? Do you feel that it is the will of Almighty Power that you remain in those conditions of lack? Perhaps you have tried this way and that, you have read this book and you have read that book, used affirmations, tried to pray in a simple, child-like way, but nothing happens! You say, "It just does not work!" You have seen and heard of others who have made remarkable demonstrations, but you now feel that it will not work for you.
But is it possible that God, Divine Law, all the Love in the Universe, desires only good for those others and not for you? Is it impossible for All Knowledge to show you how to do whatever is necessary for you to do, when to do it and how to do it? If it is, what is the value of faith? If God discriminates between His children, what is the use of some of us trying to have faith?
If whatever is, is best, if we bow our heads and say it is God's will that we remain in poverty-stricken conditions, that God is testing us and is trying to raise us up to express dominion and power and to rise above negative conditions, then we might well give up all effort to find Him! Have you believed that it was necessary for you to have disagreeable experiences, that God was deliberately placing obstacles in your path to hinder your spiritual growth? Or have you realised that these experiences and conditions are only there so that God could glorify Himself in and through you, and use you as His beloved channel for His good? Have you ever thought that God, by means of those very conditions, is trying to show you what miracles can be wrought through faith and prayer?
When Christ healed a man who had been blind from birth, His disciples asked Him, "Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he should be born blind?" The Master replied that neither the man nor his parents had sinned, but that he was there so that "the works of God might be glorified in him." Here is a man born blind and he asks Christ for sight. Christ did not tell him to take up Truth, or to read books - even if he had been able to read books - nor was he to meditate or affirm or deny the condition. He gave the man what he wanted - sight! Can you imagine the reaction of the people who saw the miracle and of those who heard of it afterwards, how their faith was renewed? When the religious leaders attempted to discount the incident and destroy the people's faith by questioning the man, his reply was, "I do not know who this man was. All I know is that whereas I was blind, now I see!"
Isn't there a lesson for us in this story? We are so often blind - blind to happiness, blind to the Presence of God, until through some experience our eyes are opened and we also say, "Whereas I was blind, now I see!" But what is it that you see? It is not a physical material "thing" that you see. It is an inner realisation, by which you know that your good is here for you now. You "see" the Truth which sets you free from this, that or the other condition that has bound you down. That is what the School of Truth is trying to teach you - how to attain to this realisation and to know the Truth that will set you free and to know that you are a child of God, realise that the condition to which you have given power over you is only an opportunity for you to glorify God through your faith and prayer.
You do not have to ask God for health or pray about your health. Long before you called, God had answered. You are a temple of this loving God and He is trying to express Himself through you as your health.
There was a paralysed woman who came to us for help and she was taught, "I am a temple of a loving God, and because God is perfection, then permeating me from the centre to the circumference, every bone, tissue and muscle, is this perfection. I will not dwell on what I want but just on the Presence of God in me. He knows that I need help so that I can walk and I do not have to tell Him what He already knows, for He is conscious of my needs."
Then one day she sees again, can see and feel the presence of Life and she knows she is going to be healed. She is still paralysed, but she says, with conviction, "I know that God is telling me I am going to be healed!" That was in December and in January she was walking! She saw the Truth and saw that she was not a temple of disease. She saw only one thing, that she was a temple of perfection which desired to be expressed through her, like a battery plugged into the Power Station and receiving the new power flowing into it. Formerly a battery took twenty-four hours to charge but now it can be done in half an hour. As man becomes more conversant with the Laws of electricity he brings the time down from twenty-four hours to half an hour, and as he becomes more conversant with the Laws of Life he brings the time of demonstration of health down from years or months or weeks to NOW.
How are you reacting to your condition? Are you striving with all your might, trying to concentrate literally to drag your good into manifestation? You can do it, provided you are prepared to pay the price! One man told me he had worked for a position as a manager and it did not take long before he got the position. But he did not get paid accordingly! He got exactly what he forced. He saw himself in the managerial chair, saw himself telling certain people to do things. But he forgot that his desire for an executive position was God desiring something better for him, and he made the mistake of picking the channel himself. He insisted on that particular channel and he demonstrated, but not under grace!
God's time is NOW. But although His time is NOW, it takes time for the idea to possess your mind completely so that you can build on it. If you get impatient and try to hurry matters and force them, you introduce complications. In all the years since I first took up Truth, I have never had to look for a job. I used to tell God that whatever He wanted me to do I was prepared to do, because I knew that if I served Him I was His labourer and I was worthy of my hire. If I served this or that man and did not get paid, I knew God would pay me because I was serving Him, and He always did pay me. When I had learned that particular job and the lessons it taught me in developing my faith, the channel closed and another opened. You do not have to tell God what you need; God is telling you, through your own desires, that you need greater happiness, more supply, greater faith. He is saying to you, "I think you are a worthy channel through which I am to be glorified, and because example is the only teacher, I am giving you this opportunity."
But our trouble is that we are always in a hurry and we are afraid God will be too late! Our Father, the very Spirit of Love, knows what we need and He wants us to grow in stature, in strength, in faith. If your faith capacity is only fifty Rand a month you cannot live at the rate of five hundred Rand a month. As far as your Father is concerned you have only reached the consciousness of fifty Rand a month, and it is only by these experiences that He can grow your consciousness to a higher level and let you understand what He is doing for you. You don't learn by your work, by the sweat of your brow, but by going within and finding the consciousness of God within your own soul. Just go within, to your own secret chamber in your own mind and shut the door to all outward things and try to realise what God, Love, Power, Happiness, Faith all mean. They are all attributes of the One Power, One Presence - God, your Father.
Perhaps some of you find it difficult to visualise or make mind pictures, difficult to pray? Then you should pray just like a child, and keep at it until you are so sure of God that you can realise that He is in you and through you, that He is already the fulfilment of all you need. During the last four or five weeks there were things that I have been working on that have suddenly been revealed to me. One problem occupied me for thirteen years and another for eleven years, during which I waited for spiritual guidance, and nothing seemed to happen. I just felt that I had to do my best, although my mind was telling me one thing and my heart was telling me another. Then, at the most unexpected time and in the most unexpected way, I found the answer in my own consciousness.
I told God that after all these years I was going to do this thing because I felt convinced that it was what He wanted me to do and that He would show me if I was right, and within three hours I had the necessary proof! How did I prove it? By the wonderful demonstration that came within three hours! Today I have no hesitancy on these matters, but it has taken eleven years of striving and seeking to know and finally to discover that I had allowed myself to be led entirely by the heart, and had not wanted to see what God wanted me to do.
I felt it was so because my heart said it was so, and I did not wait for God to show me, so I blocked His entry into my consciousness by not being impersonal and detached from the problem. I did not completely hand the problem over to God by saying, "Father, this is a matter for You. You show me what to do, what You want me to do and how You want me to do it, and no matter what other people or my friends or my family think, I will do what You want me to do." Then the revelation came to me as I was on my way home from a cinema, when I was not even thinking of the problem. Today, instead of having the nagging worry of these two problems, I know exactly what to do and my mind is completely free - all because I finally allowed God to do what He wanted.
God is waiting to express Himself through you, whatever your need may be, but it is only when you retire into your inner chamber and become still and peaceful and make contact with God there. Then you know that you are a temple of Love and Power and the Presence of God Himself, and your guidance will come at the right time and in the right way, much sooner than you expect. There will be no delay as soon as you are right in your own mind, and at that moment the answer will manifest, either in tangible expression as the thing you desire or as the particular idea necessary for its fulfilment. Try to forget your problems, forget the solution, forget your affirmations, and instead, first thing in the morning, just sit down for ten or fifteen minutes and realise that God knows what you need and that He wants to express it through you. Then go about your daily duties, knowing that you have left your problem with Him and that He is perfectly capable of doing in and through you what He wants to do.
Before you go to bed, think of Love, Power, Faith, Peace - whatever comes into your mind and heart - but do not think of your needs and wants and demonstrations.
If I had not had the two spiritual leadings which I have mentioned, I could not have gone on with this work . If you feel now that you have reached the end of your tether, the limit of your patience, that your faith is being too severely tested, just consider whether you have not been making the same mistake that I made. All those years I was actually pushing God out of my consciousness because my heart was telling me to do certain things, and I thought that I must be right. I had failed to realise that God knows what is best for us, because He can see the end from the beginning, but I was allowing my emotions of sympathy for other people to cloud my vision. You may be making the same mistake. You may be so intent upon a certain material blessing and so determined to get it that you are not allowing God to give you something very much better, something He knows will be of infinitely greater value to you in your growth and progress.
So many people fail to realise that God is always trying to express His good through them, that they are His temples, temples of Love and Power and Happiness, and by their very insistence on the wrong thing, they are actually refusing to allow God to give them the blessings that will be so much greater than those they think they want. If you will only allow Him to decide you will soon be able to say, like the blind man said and as I said myself, "Whereas I was blind, now I can see. Through the Presence of God, the presence of all my good, now I see." Before you ever called God had answered, and while you were yet speaking He had heard you
Just try to put your problems and their solutions right out of your mind and fix your mind and heart upon the Presence of God, Love, in you, and know that He is arranging everything for you in the best possible way and will show you, in good time, what you are to do and how you are to do it. Then you will allow His blessings to flow steadily through your lives and affairs and be at peace
* * * * *
The Growing Consciousness
Nicol C. Campbell
© The School of Truth
Source p. 4, Jan / Feb 2010 - The Path of Truth
You have heard the expression, "Whatever is, is best." What is your interpretation of that? Do you feel that you have to bow your head to your poverty, your disease or your unhappiness? Do you feel that it is the will of Almighty Power that you remain in those conditions of lack? Perhaps you have tried this way and that, you have read this book and you have read that book, used affirmations, tried to pray in a simple, child-like way, but nothing happens! You say, "It just does not work!" You have seen and heard of others who have made remarkable demonstrations, but you now feel that it will not work for you.
But is it possible that God, Divine Law, all the Love in the Universe, desires only good for those others and not for you? Is it impossible for All Knowledge to show you how to do whatever is necessary for you to do, when to do it and how to do it? If it is, what is the value of faith? If God discriminates between His children, what is the use of some of us trying to have faith?
If whatever is, is best, if we bow our heads and say it is God's will that we remain in poverty-stricken conditions, that God is testing us and is trying to raise us up to express dominion and power and to rise above negative conditions, then we might well give up all effort to find Him! Have you believed that it was necessary for you to have disagreeable experiences, that God was deliberately placing obstacles in your path to hinder your spiritual growth? Or have you realised that these experiences and conditions are only there so that God could glorify Himself in and through you, and use you as His beloved channel for His good? Have you ever thought that God, by means of those very conditions, is trying to show you what miracles can be wrought through faith and prayer?
When Christ healed a man who had been blind from birth, His disciples asked Him, "Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he should be born blind?" The Master replied that neither the man nor his parents had sinned, but that he was there so that "the works of God might be glorified in him." Here is a man born blind and he asks Christ for sight. Christ did not tell him to take up Truth, or to read books - even if he had been able to read books - nor was he to meditate or affirm or deny the condition. He gave the man what he wanted - sight! Can you imagine the reaction of the people who saw the miracle and of those who heard of it afterwards, how their faith was renewed? When the religious leaders attempted to discount the incident and destroy the people's faith by questioning the man, his reply was, "I do not know who this man was. All I know is that whereas I was blind, now I see!"
Isn't there a lesson for us in this story? We are so often blind - blind to happiness, blind to the Presence of God, until through some experience our eyes are opened and we also say, "Whereas I was blind, now I see!" But what is it that you see? It is not a physical material "thing" that you see. It is an inner realisation, by which you know that your good is here for you now. You "see" the Truth which sets you free from this, that or the other condition that has bound you down. That is what the School of Truth is trying to teach you - how to attain to this realisation and to know the Truth that will set you free and to know that you are a child of God, realise that the condition to which you have given power over you is only an opportunity for you to glorify God through your faith and prayer.
You do not have to ask God for health or pray about your health. Long before you called, God had answered. You are a temple of this loving God and He is trying to express Himself through you as your health.
There was a paralysed woman who came to us for help and she was taught, "I am a temple of a loving God, and because God is perfection, then permeating me from the centre to the circumference, every bone, tissue and muscle, is this perfection. I will not dwell on what I want but just on the Presence of God in me. He knows that I need help so that I can walk and I do not have to tell Him what He already knows, for He is conscious of my needs."
Then one day she sees again, can see and feel the presence of Life and she knows she is going to be healed. She is still paralysed, but she says, with conviction, "I know that God is telling me I am going to be healed!" That was in December and in January she was walking! She saw the Truth and saw that she was not a temple of disease. She saw only one thing, that she was a temple of perfection which desired to be expressed through her, like a battery plugged into the Power Station and receiving the new power flowing into it. Formerly a battery took twenty-four hours to charge but now it can be done in half an hour. As man becomes more conversant with the Laws of electricity he brings the time down from twenty-four hours to half an hour, and as he becomes more conversant with the Laws of Life he brings the time of demonstration of health down from years or months or weeks to NOW.
How are you reacting to your condition? Are you striving with all your might, trying to concentrate literally to drag your good into manifestation? You can do it, provided you are prepared to pay the price! One man told me he had worked for a position as a manager and it did not take long before he got the position. But he did not get paid accordingly! He got exactly what he forced. He saw himself in the managerial chair, saw himself telling certain people to do things. But he forgot that his desire for an executive position was God desiring something better for him, and he made the mistake of picking the channel himself. He insisted on that particular channel and he demonstrated, but not under grace!
God's time is NOW. But although His time is NOW, it takes time for the idea to possess your mind completely so that you can build on it. If you get impatient and try to hurry matters and force them, you introduce complications. In all the years since I first took up Truth, I have never had to look for a job. I used to tell God that whatever He wanted me to do I was prepared to do, because I knew that if I served Him I was His labourer and I was worthy of my hire. If I served this or that man and did not get paid, I knew God would pay me because I was serving Him, and He always did pay me. When I had learned that particular job and the lessons it taught me in developing my faith, the channel closed and another opened. You do not have to tell God what you need; God is telling you, through your own desires, that you need greater happiness, more supply, greater faith. He is saying to you, "I think you are a worthy channel through which I am to be glorified, and because example is the only teacher, I am giving you this opportunity."
But our trouble is that we are always in a hurry and we are afraid God will be too late! Our Father, the very Spirit of Love, knows what we need and He wants us to grow in stature, in strength, in faith. If your faith capacity is only fifty Rand a month you cannot live at the rate of five hundred Rand a month. As far as your Father is concerned you have only reached the consciousness of fifty Rand a month, and it is only by these experiences that He can grow your consciousness to a higher level and let you understand what He is doing for you. You don't learn by your work, by the sweat of your brow, but by going within and finding the consciousness of God within your own soul. Just go within, to your own secret chamber in your own mind and shut the door to all outward things and try to realise what God, Love, Power, Happiness, Faith all mean. They are all attributes of the One Power, One Presence - God, your Father.
Perhaps some of you find it difficult to visualise or make mind pictures, difficult to pray? Then you should pray just like a child, and keep at it until you are so sure of God that you can realise that He is in you and through you, that He is already the fulfilment of all you need. During the last four or five weeks there were things that I have been working on that have suddenly been revealed to me. One problem occupied me for thirteen years and another for eleven years, during which I waited for spiritual guidance, and nothing seemed to happen. I just felt that I had to do my best, although my mind was telling me one thing and my heart was telling me another. Then, at the most unexpected time and in the most unexpected way, I found the answer in my own consciousness.
I told God that after all these years I was going to do this thing because I felt convinced that it was what He wanted me to do and that He would show me if I was right, and within three hours I had the necessary proof! How did I prove it? By the wonderful demonstration that came within three hours! Today I have no hesitancy on these matters, but it has taken eleven years of striving and seeking to know and finally to discover that I had allowed myself to be led entirely by the heart, and had not wanted to see what God wanted me to do.
I felt it was so because my heart said it was so, and I did not wait for God to show me, so I blocked His entry into my consciousness by not being impersonal and detached from the problem. I did not completely hand the problem over to God by saying, "Father, this is a matter for You. You show me what to do, what You want me to do and how You want me to do it, and no matter what other people or my friends or my family think, I will do what You want me to do." Then the revelation came to me as I was on my way home from a cinema, when I was not even thinking of the problem. Today, instead of having the nagging worry of these two problems, I know exactly what to do and my mind is completely free - all because I finally allowed God to do what He wanted.
God is waiting to express Himself through you, whatever your need may be, but it is only when you retire into your inner chamber and become still and peaceful and make contact with God there. Then you know that you are a temple of Love and Power and the Presence of God Himself, and your guidance will come at the right time and in the right way, much sooner than you expect. There will be no delay as soon as you are right in your own mind, and at that moment the answer will manifest, either in tangible expression as the thing you desire or as the particular idea necessary for its fulfilment. Try to forget your problems, forget the solution, forget your affirmations, and instead, first thing in the morning, just sit down for ten or fifteen minutes and realise that God knows what you need and that He wants to express it through you. Then go about your daily duties, knowing that you have left your problem with Him and that He is perfectly capable of doing in and through you what He wants to do.
Before you go to bed, think of Love, Power, Faith, Peace - whatever comes into your mind and heart - but do not think of your needs and wants and demonstrations.
If I had not had the two spiritual leadings which I have mentioned, I could not have gone on with this work . If you feel now that you have reached the end of your tether, the limit of your patience, that your faith is being too severely tested, just consider whether you have not been making the same mistake that I made. All those years I was actually pushing God out of my consciousness because my heart was telling me to do certain things, and I thought that I must be right. I had failed to realise that God knows what is best for us, because He can see the end from the beginning, but I was allowing my emotions of sympathy for other people to cloud my vision. You may be making the same mistake. You may be so intent upon a certain material blessing and so determined to get it that you are not allowing God to give you something very much better, something He knows will be of infinitely greater value to you in your growth and progress.
So many people fail to realise that God is always trying to express His good through them, that they are His temples, temples of Love and Power and Happiness, and by their very insistence on the wrong thing, they are actually refusing to allow God to give them the blessings that will be so much greater than those they think they want. If you will only allow Him to decide you will soon be able to say, like the blind man said and as I said myself, "Whereas I was blind, now I can see. Through the Presence of God, the presence of all my good, now I see." Before you ever called God had answered, and while you were yet speaking He had heard you
Just try to put your problems and their solutions right out of your mind and fix your mind and heart upon the Presence of God, Love, in you, and know that He is arranging everything for you in the best possible way and will show you, in good time, what you are to do and how you are to do it. Then you will allow His blessings to flow steadily through your lives and affairs and be at peace
* * * * *
The Growing Consciousness
Nicol C. Campbell
© The School of Truth
Source p. 4, Jan / Feb 2010 - The Path of Truth
You are Unique!
The almost impossible task of infusing our own consciousness into another is what we teachers of Truth are trying to accomplish. Every single day wherever I go and to whomever of you I may be speaking, I point out how imperative it is for you to realise your God-awareness in order to achieve the fulfillment that He is, and can be, HERE in this physical plane.
The other night I was discussing metaphysics with two doctors, one of whom was particularly interested in the subject. The point he brought up is a fundamental one; he held that we are a part of the universe, while I teach that we are the universe, and that until we understand that there is no such thing as a "part" we shall continue to experience limitation in our minds, bodies and affairs.
When I look at a string of electric lights I do not tell myself that these are part of electricity, any more than, when looking at the rays of the sun, do I call them scraps of it. I recognise the truth that light itself, not a fraction thereof, is present. Electricity is expressing as light; and the ray of the sun, 150 million kilometres away, is still the sun, not a small piece of it. My fingers are my body; if I amputate one of them my whole body suffers pain; if it were separate from me I could cut it off and placing it on the table say, "There is a part of my body lying on the table," but at this moment my finger is my body, not a portion of it.
My body is the expression of my life, not a part of it. It is vitally important for us to realise that we are not "parts of" anything. Someone said to me the other day, "I suppose spiritually we are the Presence of God in manifestation, but not physically." Yet how can God Who fills all space and is manifest therein, be unmanifest in my body which is also in space? In the same way, the man who claims that God can be his prosperity, or give him prosperity, but is not Prosperity-constituting-him, is equally illogical. It is because of this division in our awareness that we find God externalised not according to His Nature as GOOD, but as sickness, poverty and unhappiness, the very antithesis of all that He is.
I do not infuse a consciousness into you any more than you impart it to me when I discover my health, happiness or affluence. I have at this moment, come into the realisation that I am this, that, or the other Good which makes up the Being of God, instead of being separate from it. How can I put it more clearly and cause you to realise that, if you are the temples of God, His Kingdom, with all that He is and has - peace, happiness, health and prosperity - is in you, manifest as you?
In a lecture that I gave some time ago, I told my audience to go out and spend, not my consciousness, or someone else's, but their own; by which I meant that they were to go forth and use the knowledge they, not another, had uncovered respecting the Presence of Love as their health, happiness and affluence.
If you have accepted limitation and separation, you have nothing to give. If I were unhappy, frustrated, sick and poverty stricken, what would I have to give? Could I speak with conviction, or would doubt lurk, not in my mind which is God, pure and steadfast, impervious to outer conditions, but in my intellect? We discover His Presence by reading, listening to lectures, and by expressing the modicum of understanding that we have made our own. Our steps may be hesitant, but as long as we take them the whole Power that is God will rush to our aid, filling our consciousnesses so that we are enabled to accomplish whatever we have set as a goal before us.
When you press the self-starter in your car, work out a mathematical equation, or use the law of gravity in order to fly a plane, you are using knowledge born of experience, not belief. In the Old Testament we learn that before we call, God has answered, and while we are yet speaking He has heard us. Today we say, "Supply, which can never be depleted, precedes the demand," but a demand has to be made. How do we do this? Where is the Substance and how do we contact it? Who is there that will show us the Presence of God?
Look around you! In this man you will see health that has overcome disease, in that one plenty which has ousted poverty, in a third, discord that has been exchanged for you and understanding. These phenomena are the Voice of God speaking to you, and should carry conviction so that you do not look for some supernatural occurrence to persuade you, or an angelic form to present itself to you telling you to do this or that.
Omnipresence contains within Itself everything on every plane of awareness, including you and me. If, therefore, It is Health, there is no place in Divine Health for sickness. If It is Happiness and Harmony there is no room for discord; and if It is Abundance there is no lack except in our erroneous belief which will continue judging by appearances until such time as the impact of God, manifest in the lives of countless people, compels the individual to recognise Him as All-good.
That is why I tell you to spend your own consciousnesses, not someone else's. If you have a twenty-cents awareness, spend that, not my R10 one, or his R1,000 one, or her R2,900 one. It is you who have to know what you are doing. I cannot radiate your health or happiness until I have established these qualities in my own understanding. Because man has been taught from time immemorial that God is up in the sky, he has hesitated to claim bodily his at-one-ment with his Maker. Yet there is no question of failure when you can grasp this, even if only intellectually.
I have to rationalise for myself. I don't hope blindly that a thing may be thus and so, I am as sure of God as I am of a seed I plant in the ground. If I water it and cultivate it and, when it has sprouted, fertilise it, it will produce after its kind; and if we do the same by our God-consciousness it too will bear fruit. The trouble with most of us is that we fail to sow the seeds of joy, health, happiness and the Goodness of God, indwelling all humanity irrespective of class, colour or creed.
The difference between "Be still and know that I am God" and "Be still and know that I think I am part of God" is one of manifestation and separation. This is the Truth as I see It, and I would rather talk to an empty hall and teach what I feel is right than preach with my tongue in my cheek, only to please my listeners.
It is written that man is God in expression. I believe this because I have proved it and seen it manifest in thousands of people. We are not separate from the Father but are Life, Love and Intelligence expressed as His physical temples; not made up of body AND Spirit, but constituted of spiritual-mind, spiritual-soul and spiritual-body. When you understand this you will no longer be anxious or concerned about your bodies or affairs, about whether you will succeed or be failures, have plenty or have to endure want. I must accept this or go back to the old way of praying through a personality who will intercede with some anthropormorphic being in the sky on my behalf. I shall have to retrogress into the age of the ox-wagon and candlelight and ignore the progress which brought forth electric light, motor cars, aeroplanes and television.
You sit and listen to speech coming from 10,000 kilometres away and declare that it is a miracle, but what is miraculous about God's being everywhere evenly present, and of our having created, by means of His Intelligence, the vehicle through which we can hear His voice?
Where our body temples are concerned the Spirit infuses Itself into the awareness of Its own instruments; when we turn on a tap in our homes and allow the contents of the reservoir to run out in an unending stream, it will continue so to flow until we turn it off, and so it is with the way that God manifests. Let us see what the Master had to say on the subject. He stated that the God of Whom Moses taught was ONE God, All-power, and even more, All-love.
Are you chary of saying, "I am LOVE"? Are you not expressing It all day long toward your near and dear ones; do you not give of It gladly to your friends and relatives; are you not consciously spending your awareness of love, joy, peace and happiness from morning till night? Of course you can claim that you are Love and that It is All-presence! You do not have to give It to me; I can be unhappy and distressed, down in the very depths of hell, then some kindness touches me and immediately my spirits are lifted up and a happiness that does not come from without warms my heart. It radiates like a light from the centre of my being to the circumference; and from where it sprang, my health and prosperity take rise also. There is only Love, God. In It we live and move and have our being and It exists through Its body temples and flows from the inner to the outer. We have no need to fear for our bodies or affairs; the Allness of God permeates His whole universe, you, me, the Christ, the lowliest of individuals and the highest form of pure Intelligence throughout all time.
The difference between the man who shares his knowledge with his fellows and the one who, out of selfishness or indifference, keeps it to himself, is that the former grows in spiritual understanding, while the latter remains static.
None can stop you from loving even though they try to hurt you, undermine you and belittle you, they are your fingers, a treasured part of you, and in loving them, you are merely doing likewise for yourselves.
The basic things we teach, according to our understanding today, are firstly that man cannot create because he is NOT a creator. He can attune himself to that which exists and release it in the same way as he liberates the power of electricity as light and heat, but GOD ALONE is creation.
To you whose hearts are void, whose bodies are depleted, whose purses are empty comes the wondrous message of Truth declaring that in all those lies, the Verity that is GOD abides, for in the darkness there is light, in sickness health, in poverty abundance, and in fear faith.
The other day a man said to me, "I know my only difficulty is one of fear and that is the opposite of faith, is it not?" To which I replied, "No, it is not the opposite of faith. It is inverted faith, faith used in the wrong direction." Job made this clear when he said, "That which I greatly feared (the thing in which I had faith) is come upon me." His sense of separation from God brought disease, lack, and suffering into his life.
The new gospel states that according to your faith it is done unto you. It is the same thing! Faith positive releases God, the Good, to us and faith negative separates God, the Good, from us. We therefore have to use this Power intelligently, to direct It, that we may become the outlets of Love, Joy, Peace, Happiness and Health. Let us stop talking of being parts of Love, like parts of a bicycle! We are not worms of the dust, brought forth in sin, we are HIS SPIRIT IN BEING, the temples of the living God, Who has but one purpose, that of expressing ever more and more of HIMSELF through us.
Consciousness is knowledge, and according to my consciousness, not to my goodness or badness, my social connections, my financial standing or any other pretensions, it is done unto me. Virtue is its own reward! You shall know the Truth about the lie in your minds, bodies and affairs; it is not written that the Truth shall remove the condition but that It "shall set you free." Light will take the place of darkness, and Health which is ever present, will spring forth where disease and discord seem to be. The Truth will become, for each of you, the spiritual idea you need for your prosperity, the one concept that will bring with it the realisation of Substance to share and to spare.
Every one of you is unique. As my thumbprint is different from all the millions of thumbprints in the world, so are you prototypal. You are able, when the lie of separation has been lifted from your consciousness and you really know of your oneness, to do in your own particular manner what no one else can do in precisely the same way.
__________
(You are unique!
Nicol C. Campbell
© The School of Truth
Source p. 256, Nov / Dec 2009 - The Path of Truth
The other night I was discussing metaphysics with two doctors, one of whom was particularly interested in the subject. The point he brought up is a fundamental one; he held that we are a part of the universe, while I teach that we are the universe, and that until we understand that there is no such thing as a "part" we shall continue to experience limitation in our minds, bodies and affairs.
When I look at a string of electric lights I do not tell myself that these are part of electricity, any more than, when looking at the rays of the sun, do I call them scraps of it. I recognise the truth that light itself, not a fraction thereof, is present. Electricity is expressing as light; and the ray of the sun, 150 million kilometres away, is still the sun, not a small piece of it. My fingers are my body; if I amputate one of them my whole body suffers pain; if it were separate from me I could cut it off and placing it on the table say, "There is a part of my body lying on the table," but at this moment my finger is my body, not a portion of it.
My body is the expression of my life, not a part of it. It is vitally important for us to realise that we are not "parts of" anything. Someone said to me the other day, "I suppose spiritually we are the Presence of God in manifestation, but not physically." Yet how can God Who fills all space and is manifest therein, be unmanifest in my body which is also in space? In the same way, the man who claims that God can be his prosperity, or give him prosperity, but is not Prosperity-constituting-him, is equally illogical. It is because of this division in our awareness that we find God externalised not according to His Nature as GOOD, but as sickness, poverty and unhappiness, the very antithesis of all that He is.
I do not infuse a consciousness into you any more than you impart it to me when I discover my health, happiness or affluence. I have at this moment, come into the realisation that I am this, that, or the other Good which makes up the Being of God, instead of being separate from it. How can I put it more clearly and cause you to realise that, if you are the temples of God, His Kingdom, with all that He is and has - peace, happiness, health and prosperity - is in you, manifest as you?
In a lecture that I gave some time ago, I told my audience to go out and spend, not my consciousness, or someone else's, but their own; by which I meant that they were to go forth and use the knowledge they, not another, had uncovered respecting the Presence of Love as their health, happiness and affluence.
If you have accepted limitation and separation, you have nothing to give. If I were unhappy, frustrated, sick and poverty stricken, what would I have to give? Could I speak with conviction, or would doubt lurk, not in my mind which is God, pure and steadfast, impervious to outer conditions, but in my intellect? We discover His Presence by reading, listening to lectures, and by expressing the modicum of understanding that we have made our own. Our steps may be hesitant, but as long as we take them the whole Power that is God will rush to our aid, filling our consciousnesses so that we are enabled to accomplish whatever we have set as a goal before us.
When you press the self-starter in your car, work out a mathematical equation, or use the law of gravity in order to fly a plane, you are using knowledge born of experience, not belief. In the Old Testament we learn that before we call, God has answered, and while we are yet speaking He has heard us. Today we say, "Supply, which can never be depleted, precedes the demand," but a demand has to be made. How do we do this? Where is the Substance and how do we contact it? Who is there that will show us the Presence of God?
Look around you! In this man you will see health that has overcome disease, in that one plenty which has ousted poverty, in a third, discord that has been exchanged for you and understanding. These phenomena are the Voice of God speaking to you, and should carry conviction so that you do not look for some supernatural occurrence to persuade you, or an angelic form to present itself to you telling you to do this or that.
Omnipresence contains within Itself everything on every plane of awareness, including you and me. If, therefore, It is Health, there is no place in Divine Health for sickness. If It is Happiness and Harmony there is no room for discord; and if It is Abundance there is no lack except in our erroneous belief which will continue judging by appearances until such time as the impact of God, manifest in the lives of countless people, compels the individual to recognise Him as All-good.
That is why I tell you to spend your own consciousnesses, not someone else's. If you have a twenty-cents awareness, spend that, not my R10 one, or his R1,000 one, or her R2,900 one. It is you who have to know what you are doing. I cannot radiate your health or happiness until I have established these qualities in my own understanding. Because man has been taught from time immemorial that God is up in the sky, he has hesitated to claim bodily his at-one-ment with his Maker. Yet there is no question of failure when you can grasp this, even if only intellectually.
I have to rationalise for myself. I don't hope blindly that a thing may be thus and so, I am as sure of God as I am of a seed I plant in the ground. If I water it and cultivate it and, when it has sprouted, fertilise it, it will produce after its kind; and if we do the same by our God-consciousness it too will bear fruit. The trouble with most of us is that we fail to sow the seeds of joy, health, happiness and the Goodness of God, indwelling all humanity irrespective of class, colour or creed.
The difference between "Be still and know that I am God" and "Be still and know that I think I am part of God" is one of manifestation and separation. This is the Truth as I see It, and I would rather talk to an empty hall and teach what I feel is right than preach with my tongue in my cheek, only to please my listeners.
It is written that man is God in expression. I believe this because I have proved it and seen it manifest in thousands of people. We are not separate from the Father but are Life, Love and Intelligence expressed as His physical temples; not made up of body AND Spirit, but constituted of spiritual-mind, spiritual-soul and spiritual-body. When you understand this you will no longer be anxious or concerned about your bodies or affairs, about whether you will succeed or be failures, have plenty or have to endure want. I must accept this or go back to the old way of praying through a personality who will intercede with some anthropormorphic being in the sky on my behalf. I shall have to retrogress into the age of the ox-wagon and candlelight and ignore the progress which brought forth electric light, motor cars, aeroplanes and television.
You sit and listen to speech coming from 10,000 kilometres away and declare that it is a miracle, but what is miraculous about God's being everywhere evenly present, and of our having created, by means of His Intelligence, the vehicle through which we can hear His voice?
Where our body temples are concerned the Spirit infuses Itself into the awareness of Its own instruments; when we turn on a tap in our homes and allow the contents of the reservoir to run out in an unending stream, it will continue so to flow until we turn it off, and so it is with the way that God manifests. Let us see what the Master had to say on the subject. He stated that the God of Whom Moses taught was ONE God, All-power, and even more, All-love.
Are you chary of saying, "I am LOVE"? Are you not expressing It all day long toward your near and dear ones; do you not give of It gladly to your friends and relatives; are you not consciously spending your awareness of love, joy, peace and happiness from morning till night? Of course you can claim that you are Love and that It is All-presence! You do not have to give It to me; I can be unhappy and distressed, down in the very depths of hell, then some kindness touches me and immediately my spirits are lifted up and a happiness that does not come from without warms my heart. It radiates like a light from the centre of my being to the circumference; and from where it sprang, my health and prosperity take rise also. There is only Love, God. In It we live and move and have our being and It exists through Its body temples and flows from the inner to the outer. We have no need to fear for our bodies or affairs; the Allness of God permeates His whole universe, you, me, the Christ, the lowliest of individuals and the highest form of pure Intelligence throughout all time.
The difference between the man who shares his knowledge with his fellows and the one who, out of selfishness or indifference, keeps it to himself, is that the former grows in spiritual understanding, while the latter remains static.
None can stop you from loving even though they try to hurt you, undermine you and belittle you, they are your fingers, a treasured part of you, and in loving them, you are merely doing likewise for yourselves.
The basic things we teach, according to our understanding today, are firstly that man cannot create because he is NOT a creator. He can attune himself to that which exists and release it in the same way as he liberates the power of electricity as light and heat, but GOD ALONE is creation.
To you whose hearts are void, whose bodies are depleted, whose purses are empty comes the wondrous message of Truth declaring that in all those lies, the Verity that is GOD abides, for in the darkness there is light, in sickness health, in poverty abundance, and in fear faith.
The other day a man said to me, "I know my only difficulty is one of fear and that is the opposite of faith, is it not?" To which I replied, "No, it is not the opposite of faith. It is inverted faith, faith used in the wrong direction." Job made this clear when he said, "That which I greatly feared (the thing in which I had faith) is come upon me." His sense of separation from God brought disease, lack, and suffering into his life.
The new gospel states that according to your faith it is done unto you. It is the same thing! Faith positive releases God, the Good, to us and faith negative separates God, the Good, from us. We therefore have to use this Power intelligently, to direct It, that we may become the outlets of Love, Joy, Peace, Happiness and Health. Let us stop talking of being parts of Love, like parts of a bicycle! We are not worms of the dust, brought forth in sin, we are HIS SPIRIT IN BEING, the temples of the living God, Who has but one purpose, that of expressing ever more and more of HIMSELF through us.
Consciousness is knowledge, and according to my consciousness, not to my goodness or badness, my social connections, my financial standing or any other pretensions, it is done unto me. Virtue is its own reward! You shall know the Truth about the lie in your minds, bodies and affairs; it is not written that the Truth shall remove the condition but that It "shall set you free." Light will take the place of darkness, and Health which is ever present, will spring forth where disease and discord seem to be. The Truth will become, for each of you, the spiritual idea you need for your prosperity, the one concept that will bring with it the realisation of Substance to share and to spare.
Every one of you is unique. As my thumbprint is different from all the millions of thumbprints in the world, so are you prototypal. You are able, when the lie of separation has been lifted from your consciousness and you really know of your oneness, to do in your own particular manner what no one else can do in precisely the same way.
__________
(You are unique!
Nicol C. Campbell
© The School of Truth
Source p. 256, Nov / Dec 2009 - The Path of Truth
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)