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The Art of Spiritual Healing
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| To feel a sense of union with any other person means first of all that you must make your contact with the spirit within and find your own completeness. |
You must make your contact with the Father within, whereupon you automatically become one with every individual within range of your consciousness.
This is your opportunity to apply the principles of The Infinite Way. Look over or through every person in the room to God:
God is the animating principle of every individual; God is the mind of every person here, the intelligence, expressing as person. God is the only love and God being infinite, God is all love; therefore, God is the love of individual being, and being filled with the love which is God, no individual can be used as an instrument for hate, envy, jealousy or malice.
Realisation such as that will lift you above personalities into the realm of pure being.
You may be confronted with evidences of misunderstanding, but what difference does it make what the appearance is? Right where that appearance is foisting itself upon your mind, God is. You are dealing only with God, not with beliefs, persons or conditions.
Over and over again it has been proved that when confronting people who have fallen prey to anger, or when meeting vicious animals poised and ready to attack, by merely holding to the realisation of God as the real entity or identity – the real being – God as the only law, the only substance, the only cause, the only effect, what we call healing takes place. This method of treatment never leaves the realm of God, never comes down to the level of man or person or condition or circumstance, nor does it take unemployment, sin or disease into consideration.
It's so easy to say that this is good and that is evil, this is of God and that is of the devil; but it is when a person or circumstance claims to have power to crucify you or set you free, to cause you trouble, to do this or that to you, that you must take your stand and realise:
My being is in Christ, and as long as I maintain my being in Christ, only the Christ can operate in my consciousness – which is the one consciousness, the consciousness of every person in the world.
In other words, when you look out at this world and see persons or circumstances claiming to have power over you for good or evil you again must acknowledge that your being is in Christ and only the Christ-inspired can have any influence in your affairs.
Several years ago in a period of distress, it came to me that I must love those who hate me, I must give love for ingratitude; and my answer was:
Father, I just can't do it. I don't know how to do it. Yes, I can be a hypocrite and say I love these people who are hating, judging, condemning and fighting me; but I can tell you truthfully that I don't – I don't know how to love them. It is true that I have no antagonism towards them because I know what motivates them and I do not blame them. If I did not have a little understanding of your infinite love I might do the same thing in their place; so I have no sense of judgement, criticism or condemnation of them. I can even say, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do" – but to love them! No, I cannot honestly say that I love them. I just cannot do that. If there is to be any loving, I am perfectly willing to be the avenue through which You, God, can love them through me. If that can be arranged, let's have it that way; but don't ask me to love them because that is beyond my capacity.
It was less than a minute after that that I settled down into a beautiful peace, went to sleep, and awakened completely healed. It is impossible to love ingratitude, injustice, misrepresentation and lies, but we can be willing to let God take over:
God, You who could love the thief on the cross and the woman taken in adultery. You love these people too.
What was required for the demonstration that I had to make. Was it not the ability to "nothingise" myself, even to the extent of not trying to be self-righteous about loving my enemy. When you say that you are loving your enemy, that is self-righteousness. We have to learn to let God do the loving and be willing to be an instrument through which God's love flows to our friends and our enemies.
In the world there are good people and bad people, just and unjust people, but when you climb up into that circle of God, you find that God is the principle of all people; God is the only principle of people, the animating life and love and truth of all people – those in your business, in your social relationships, and in your home.
Your home is a composite of your consciousness of home. You are the doorkeeper of your household, and you should stand guard at the door and see that nothing gets past that door which does not have a right to be there.
This door, however, is not a material door. The only door there is, is the door of consciousness, and the only door for which you are responsible is that door. What do you allow to get past that door, your consciousness. Do you accept contagion and infection as power in your home. Are you a party to discord and bickering.
You should make it a matter of daily realisation that nothing should enter the doorway of consciousness except the truth of being, and that no suggestion of human power, whether physical, material or mental, is law. Any belief that enters your home must first enter through your consciousness, and the truth of being in your consciousness will act as a law of annihilation to any false belief that would intrude.
Everything that comes within range of your consciousness will take on the nature and character of that consciousness. Your own life is not only affected by what gets past the door of your consciousness, but the life of everyone who has brought himself to your consciousness is affected, and that includes the members of your family and sometimes the members of your community and your church. All these look to you for bread; they look to you for the truth of being, but oftentimes your mind is so occupied with concern over your own discords and inharmonies that they are turned away without the divine substance which they sought from you.
Deep within every person is a hunger for the bread of life. Friends, relatives, and even acquaintances who find their way to your home ostensibly seeking companionship, supply or any form of material good, even though from their point of view that may be their purpose, are in reality longing and craving for the true substance of life, the meat which perisheth not.
If you give them money and give them that alone, if you give them your physical human companionship and give them that alone, you are giving them a stone. You are not giving them the bread of life; you are not lifting their state of consciousness.
This you can only do in the degree that you are specifically entertaining the consciousness of truth within your being as they come to you:
God is the substance and the activity of my home; God is the consciousness of every individual who enters my home, whether it is family or friends, Nothing enters my home to contaminate or violate its sanctity, because God is my only home. As long as my home appears on earth as a material structure it will express the harmony of God.
Those in that home will either reflect that harmony or they will be removed because nothing unlike God can remain in my home, my temple, my being, my body. Anything of a discordant nature that would enter, or might temporarily be permitted to enter, will be removed in its time and in such a way that it will injure no-one, but be a blessing to everyone involved.
Since God is my consciousness, nothing can enter that consciousness that defileth or maketh a lie and even if I in my ignorance or human softness permit something to enter which has no place there, it will not long remain. The consciousness of Truth and Light which I am will heal it or remove it.
I am willing that everybody and everything that enters my consciousness shall be either healed or removed. |
I dare not cling to anyone and say, "With all your faults I still need you and want you". I take my stand with God and, if necessary, leave father, mother, brother, sister, husband, wife in order to dwell in the secret place of the most High.
Clinging to that which you know is not right just because of human emotion very often does much to impede your spiritual demonstration. Each one must rely upon inner guidance to determine when to let go of human ties and when not to let go.
Nearly every marriage ceremony contains some version of the statement, What God hath joined together let no man put asunder. The truth is that what God has joined together, what God has brought together in oneness and unity, no man can put asunder.
It would be an utter impossibility for man to have power over God and God's work. No man has the power to undo the work of God.
In the world of appearances there can be temporary strife, discord and inharmony, and there will be, but not for you if you climb into that circle of God and there live in the constant realisation that what God has made is forever, and what God has brought together no man can put asunder.
In dealing with a marital problem you would realise that since God is one, the only relationship that exists is a relationship of oneness, and there can be no division or separation in that oneness – no inharmony or discord in one. The moment there are two, there can be any kind of discord and inharmony, but that is impossible in oneness.
Many people believe that a realisation such as this would ensure a couple's remaining together, and that therefore no divorce or separation could possibly follow. Nothing could be further from the truth. A couple may be married and be legally one, and yet may not actually be one in their being – they may not be spiritually one.
Therefore this realisation of oneness might bring about a separation or divorce much more quickly than would otherwise be the case, freeing both husband and wife from the yoke of inharmony and discord and enabling both to find their oneness elsewhere. No two people can realise oneness or true happiness when life resolves itself into a continuous battle of misunderstandings and disagreements. The marriage relationship without love is a sin.
A practitioner of spiritual healing should never intrude into the family life of any person or of any couple, nor judge humanly as to whether two people should get married, remain married or be separated or divorced. That is not the business of a spiritual healer, and furthermore there is no easy way of knowing from outward appearances what the truth of the situation is.
In all cases of marital discord and inharmony, hold to the fact that God is the only one, and there is only one marriage, the mystical marriage. Such a marriage is God-ordained and no man can rend it asunder.
Sometimes the very best way that God can maintain the oneness is by severing the human or legal tie. Never believe for a minute that just knowing oneness will keep a all marriages together because it will not. Knowing oneness will keep a person one with his good; and if that good means celibacy, marriage, separation, divorce, that is what will happen.
| Knowing oneness will keep a person one with his good; |
No-one has the right to outline how a demonstration is to take place because everything must unfold in accordance with spiritual good, not in accordance with some human's idea of what constitutes good. No-one should set himself up as being competent to decide what is humanly good.
It is unwise to attempt to protect loved ones from discords and inharmonies, which knowingly or unknowingly they have brought and are bringing upon themselves. It is better to give up anxious concern, loose them, and let them live with some of their discords, because the over-protection which would keep them from some of the consequences of their own conduct is often the stumbling block which prevents them from awakening to the truth of being. Their very suffering may be the needling necessary to awaken them.
Each one of us has to learn the lesson of Loose him and let him go. Loose your loved ones unto Christ; loose them unto God; and let the law of God govern.
Regardless of the amount of spiritual realisation attained by some people, and the measure of its practice in daily life, there are always those who for one reason or another will not respond. The greatest known witness to the spiritual life was the Master, Christ Jesus, and yet even he had his Judas, his doubting Thomas, his denying Peter, and the disciples who fell asleep in the Garden.
Undoubtedly both Peter and Thomas awakened and atoned for their temporary lapse. Of Judas there is no proof of any awakening to the spiritual light. Furthermore there was a time when the spiritual impetus found no answer in Saul of Tarsus, yet at a certain given moment, he not only responded to it but became a great living witness to it.
Therefore no-one need despair if those in his family, his church group, in his nation, or in the world at large are not responding at this moment to the spiritual impulse. In their own time they will. With some of them it may take days, weeks, months, years, and with some it may take lifetimes to come. But sooner or later every knee will bend – every knee. At some time or other, all men will be taught of God.
People believe that they are held back because of the lack of demonstration of someone around them, or that for one reason or another the lack of demonstration on the part of someone else may have had an adverse effect upon them. That could never be true unless they themselves permitted it. Each one is responsible for his own spiritual demonstration, and it is useless to blame the other fellow for a lack of spiritual courage.
No less an authority than the Master has taught that in order to attain the stature of Christhood, it is necessary to leave mother, father, brother, sister, "for my sake". Why not face the fact that most people are not yet ready to leave those who they believe are acting in such a way as to hold back their demonstration?
So no-one should blame anyone – not even himself – but quickly realise that only the acceptance of a universal belief of a selfhood apart from God could hypnotise him into believing that any influence outside his own being could act upon him. How could anyone influence, help or hinder another person's demonstration? How is it possible for anyone to come between him and his realisation of Christhood? That can only be if there is a dependence on a human being.
If men and women accept the universal belief that their supply and support come from husband, wife, investments, or business, they have brought themselves under the law. Before people have any knowledge of spiritual wisdom, such a reliance is natural; but after they have learned the truth of their identity as being one with the Father, if they then persist in placing their "faith in princes" – their reliance on friends and family – instead of freeing themselves and living under Grace, they will continue to live under the human law of limitation.
In spiritual living there is no dependence on any person or thing: There is a sharing, but there is never dependence. Whatever is shared with another is shared from the infinite bounty of God:
I and my Father are one. That is my relationship to God and God's relationship to me. It has nothing to do with any person. It has nothing to do with relatives, friends or associates. My good is in no way dependent on them, nor is there good dependent on me. My good is God's all-ness made manifest as individual being.
When this oneness is glimpsed, every relationship becomes one of friendship, joy and co-operation. If our dependence is not on others, then no lack or loss would be suffered if our relationships with others would be wiped away, because good is inherent in our relationship with God, and it does not lie within anyone's power to lose the relationship of joint-heir with Christ in God. The human picture does not testify to that because, in order to benefit by the relationship of Father and son, an activity of truth must take place in individual consciousness.
When you learn to call no man on earth your father automatically every man, woman, and child on this earth become your brother and sister.. According to human testimony you may be an only child and you may have no relatives on earth, but once you have agreed to call no man on earth your father that is no longer true because you have made a brother and sister of everybody in the universe.
People who have looked upon you as a stranger suddenly feel, I know this person; I feel as if I had always known him. Even though you are not blood brothers or sisters, no barrier exists between you, because now a higher relationship than that of blood-brother or -sister has been established: Now you are brothers and sisters by divine ordinance.
There is a bond, a spiritual tie, which binds together all the children of God. This is not a tie to human beings or mortals, and that is why those who persist in remaining on the human or mortal level ultimately drift out of the experience of the more spiritually illumined.
Each one draws unto himself those with whom he is spiritually united, his spiritual brothers and sisters, but those who live and insist on living on the mortal or material plane sooner or later drift away from him, and sometimes the greatest heartaches come from trying to hold on to them.
Along the way you may meet with falsehood, deception and vilification; sometimes your friends and relatives are asleep, not upholding you, sometimes even resisting or obstructing you. You must reach the point in your unfoldment where that is of no consequence to you. It makes no difference in your life who fails you: it makes a difference only to them because they have failed in their demonstration of their Christhood, but it will make no difference to you if you have learned your relationship to God.
Since God is the life, wisdom, activity and supply of your being you have no demonstration to make which is dependent on anyone here on earth. You are spiritually fed, clothed and housed. Your utter and complete reliance is on this truth that all that the Father has is yours. If the whole earth were wiped away, this one truth would remain. I and my Father are one. And all that the Father has would still be yours.
When the Master taught his disciples to leave mother, father, brother, sister for his sake, he did not mean that they should leave those of their spiritual household.
Who is my mother or my brethren? And he looked round about on them which sat about him and said, "Behold, my mother and my brethren. For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother and my sister and my mother."
All who can meet together on a spiritual level of love are bound together from now until eternity, sharing forever with each other.
Break the Fetters that Bind You
Contemplation Develops the Beholder
Introduction (Practising the Presence)
The following passage is an epigraph for all of Joel's published books.
Illumination dissolves all material ties and binds men together with the golden chains of spiritual understanding; it acknowledges only the leadership of the Christ; it has no ritual or rule but the divine, impersonal, universal Love; no other worship than the inner Flame that is ever lit at the shrine of the Spirit. This union is the free state of spiritual brotherhood. the only restraint is the discipline of the Soul, therefore we know liberty without licence; we are a united universe without physical limits; a divine service to God without ceremony or creed. The illumined walk without fear. |