Chapter 5
Today we are at home in the center of being, and feel and know ONENESS. We have union now just as those who _know_ truth have always had, but the method differs, and Silence has taken the place of the spoken prayer, meditation and silence is the new pathway to the Cosmic heart, and through this the developing children of men walk into perfect union, receiving the messages of the Divine Host. They come into a grand comradeship with God, not in the old time spirit of supplication and service, not asking, not seeking really, not even penitentially suppliant, but in the new found glory of a faith that looks up in perfect confidence of its ONENESS, and which speaks from the very depth of its own glorified selfhood, and knows that "I and my Father are _one_ and all my Father hath is mine."
The new race will keep all that is vital in the old one of prayer and communion, and it will add to it all the great power of its own awakened consciousness. We are awake now--wide awake to the despotism of the outside world and its laws--and we are equally awake to the law of the inner side of life and the dominion of the world of pure Being.
Today the silence of our new understanding has become for developed humans the pathway of God, and it is indeed the pool of Siloam in which all may bathe and be healed.
The Silence becomes for those who seek it a well of living water that springs up into everlasting life.
It is promised that "the pure in heart shall see God," and anyone who comes away from the outside of life and comes stripped to the soul into the inner side of his own being will find God there, for like the vision of the monk, He is always there, waiting to be manifest.
The outside of life is beautiful and sweet and has in it many forms of self-realization; it is part of the plan of human development, but it is only a part and the lesser side of living, and after we have mastered its secrets and understood our own relationship to it, it is natural to turn inward, and read the other side of our life's picture, and when we do this it will be strange indeed if we do not feel the Eternal presence so close upon our soul that we will long to say with bated breath, "Thou God seest me."
The silence of the inner side of life and the power it produces cannot be put into words; it is the pathway to the Absolute and the _language_ of _that_ land is not spoken in the outer world of sense and sight.
_Know_ the inner side of life, then _live_ it--this is the pathway of peace and power and along this way there is found that strange vital, vibrant glow of spiritual illumination sanctifying our senses, and filling our soul and leading our mind into the fulness of Him who fills all.
Life then becomes for us a something divinely sent, no longer distraught; no longer to suffer; nothing but reality and a reality that has been known by millions throughout the ages and will be known by millions yet unborn.
Do not think that this turning into the inner side of living is weakness and cowardice and fear of the external world and its happenings; it is not, it is simply all energies united; it is not fear nor halting power, but it is rather the strength of the superhuman; it is not illusion, not self-hypnotism; it is a divine reality; it is God's witness to those who seek after his illuminated heights.
This living in the inner side of life each day is essential for the preservation of equalization of our daily life. The outside of life cannot help but become wearisome, and when we come away into the silence of our inner self, we find the thrill of life and we find the human made radiant with the glory of the Divine.
The inner side of life answers all the questionings of our mind, and as we learn this truth we depend less and less upon the things created, but live constantly in the energy that creates, and through this operate our whole life.
Silence was first in the scheme of creation. Remember this: "The darkness and the silence knew. So is a man's fate born."
There is no creation that will last that is born on the plane of external action for the law of that plane is change. In the hush of the valley of silence we accumulate the inward power which pushes our external expression into bloom. In the inner side of living the soul enlarges its dimensions and when it comes back into the earthly things it gilds them with a glory not their own.
The inner side of life and its power is not a mysterious thing, it is only the finding of God, and when we meet Him face to face, we speak in a new tongue; we live in a temple not made by hands, eternal in the heavens, and we live in the truth of the olden mystics and say with the power of our new consciousness: "Our Father, hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom has come, Thy will is done on earth, as it is in Heaven."
The Measure of Ourself
"_And he that talked with me had a golden reed to measure the city, and the gates thereof and the wall thereof. And the length and the breadth and the height are equal_."
The building of a glorious perfected selfhood, this is the work of every life.
We all come into existence equal in privilege, we are all born equal in latent power, which, if developed, will keep us shoulder to shoulder in this game of living out; but not until this latent power is developed and brought out into external manifestation can any life really declare its mastery.
Life has one grand prize for all, and this prize is life's master position. The chance to compete for this prize is given to all at birth, but the power to push forward in the pursuit of it is only developed by those who know that it is really within them, and knowing this begin systematically to unfold it. Not everyone is equal in the externalization of this latent energy, and no matter how much or how little any life may possess it, still it has its own point of contact for power, and it can come forth in its own way in wisdom of conquest.
Life as we find it here on earth is like a great garden; each soul comes into this world garden and its place and keynote is struck upon the harp of life and the registration is made in the universal harmony; then it must work out its own part until it comes into perfect tune with the other parts of the great universal chord.
Not a life is born into expression here, but in the unseen realm an angel or higher master ministers at its birth, and its name is written in the Lamb's book of life (or the Universal Cosmic Mind). Each life drops into its own selected and appointed place; it has its own special mission to perform, its own lessons to learn, its own part to work out, and its own grand privilege of development.
In essence all life is _one_, and all humanity is the same; the _One Life_ is in all and through all, without regard to class, creed or color, but in manifested expression we must forever be different; some lives are younger in their unfoldment--they are unfinished; some have finer bodies through which to manifest consciousness; some are born into positions where there is more required of them than of others, for the price of usefulness is the ability to be useful; some are never useful and live idle aimless lives because they have not yet incorporated within themselves the power to be of use to others.
The nation, the race, the individual and the environment are simply signals which we hang upon ourself of just what we created and unfolded within our own consciousness.
We come the reaper of the things we sowed, and just where we find ourselves here is the picture of how well or how ill we have used the years behind us, but the privilege of new use and new development is still within us; we stand each day on the threshold of a new lifetime, ready to begin over and over again our new unfoldment.
Around each life is the _All Consciousness_, and it can fashion for itself a new world, made of the cosmic substance with which it is connected.
The great unfolding mass of humanity pass along, taking themselves as a confused bundle of states of being, acted upon by the external force of people and environment, and in turn acting back with no conscious idea of creation, never knowing that with what measure we mete it shall be meted unto us.
This process of being acted upon and acting back unconsciously, produces a type of energy that cannot fail but bring forth masses of individuals who are in bondage, body, mind and spirit, for spirit has not sensed its eternal birthright of liberty.
Looking at this world garden full of natural wild flowers, called the "human race," New Thought sees clearly that whatever response an individual gives to his environment is the evidence of his own special power, and that this personal power may, by conscious control and direction, give him complete mastery, and through this he passes uninterrupted into possession of life's master position and the prize of peace and power and wisdom.
The individual is always the actor; the environment is always acted upon, and this acting and acting upon again gives forth an expression, and the exchange and inter-exchange between the two produces what the world calls the character of a life, and looking upon the product of this play of forces, we say "he is a genius," "he is a thief," "he is a God-man," or, "he is a degenerate," measuring with the example that is hung before our eyes.
Up to this point all men are really equal; they are simply alive in consciousness, but just as the gardener takes the flower and transplants it to specialized soil, and causes it to bud and bloom with all the energy within it, just so man's own consciousness can take his soul and teach him how he can lift himself into states of specialized human power and show forth all the glory of a divinely developed man.
Everyone can take his place at any level of living that he chooses just as soon as he knows that there is no one to say "no" to him but himself.
Strong positive thoughts put truth into the hearts of men, and this builds them upward and inward towards harmony.
This great universal law of harmonious consciousness is the reed with which everyone may measure himself and with which each one is taught to take his own dimensions and never lay it down until his city of character stands equal in height, breadth, and depth, and length.
When we measure ourselves by the golden reed of consciousness, we find by the signs of ourself and our environment if our city of self is right, and if it is not we can rebuild it in finer architectural fashioning.
There are many lives that have neither breadth, nor height, nor depth, they have only length; they pass along through life tied to one idea or at least a few ideas; they are narrow, bigoted, selfish and careless about the other dimensions of themselves; they see through their glass darkly, the things of their own immediate knowledge are enough for them; they are exclusive and powerful in one direction, and humanity might break itself to pieces just outside their narrow life for they neither hear nor care; they are all right, secure in their length of narrow, personal endeavor. They are afraid of anything that is outside of their own field of vision, and their life is altogether too small and straight and strained, for any but a few of their own kind to hold on to; their days are full of anxiety and worry, for their hold on truth is too weak to bring them to power, and wisdom.
Again, after we see how we measure in length, we can turn the golden reed upon ourselves for specialization in breadth, and often again we find a shortcoming. The breadth must also be equal; we cannot fail in our breadth and come into true wisdom, true breadth means inclusion--this may vary in degree, but there must never be exclusion of anything in the well-rounded character, there is conscious selection, but never exclusion; there is nothing _in_ or _under_ or _above_ the earth but that is companion with us on our journey toward divine unfoldment.
To make the breadth of our life measure up in fulness, we must look with wide open eyes at everything and everyone in life, and take it at its own point of unfoldment. Not in every life is found true wisdom of thought and expression, but if we know the truth we will see past all the undeveloped things within, to the beautiful God-self it is becoming and with wisdom and power and love include it in our own consciousness, waiting patiently for its development.
To have breadth we must open our ears and our life to the call of the world voice and live to answer it. We must hear it socially, ethically, individually, financially, politically, religiously, spiritually, mentally and physically not only in our own way, but in every way can that one find God within himself before he can find it through humanity; but when measured by the golden reed for the building of the new self, we must find God or Good in and through every living creature.
All people love themselves and most people love their own families; and this is right and good that it is so, but the breadth and height and depth must be equal and that means inclusion of the universal as well as the personal self. Jesus again told this when he said to the man who asked him "What shall I do that I may have eternal life?" And He said unto him: "Keep the commandments" and, "Thou shalt not bear false witness:" "And the young man saith unto Him, 'All these things have I kept from my youth up; what lack I yet?'" "Jesus saith unto him: 'If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell all that thou hast and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in Heaven and come and follow me.' But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions." So when Jesus measured him by the reed of breadth and deeper inclusion, he followed him no more, for the height, the breadth and the depth were not equal.
To give to ourselves and to our own, or to those who seem to have a claim on us for anything, is good, but, to give to those who have not claim or kinship nor power over us is _greatness_. To include them in our own world, not by might or force, but through recognition of union with the one life--this is consciousness of breadth that remains immortal.
Again, the depth of a life must be equal, and how do we lack in this? There are thousands today who flit along on the crest of the wave of life's current, butterfly-like; they never really have a conscious thought. If "it only does not affect me" is their watchword, and freedom from anything serious is their only really serious problem. They know in an indifferent way that hearts break, that tears fall, that there are prayers that stagger upward through life's storm, but the froth and foam of life is in their eyes; they look out on the rim of a life where they see only self-indulgence, and when now and then they are hushed long enough to listen to the world cry, they turn away quickly for fear they will actually touch lives with the common people.
So long as they keep afloat they are content, their lack of depth does not disturb them, but often after they have wasted their all in riotous living, and the realities of life fall upon them, they cry out from the depth of their own self-made despair; their life was like a palace built on sand which the first fierce flood tide could destroy; it had no root, no place in consciousness when measured by the golden reed--the height, the breadth and the depth were unequal.
Unless the soul has root in soil divine, it cannot face earth's overwhelming expressions of the working out of the human laws which it sets in motion in the round of human living.
The life that would build sublime and lasting things to stand the test of time, must drop its consciousness into the Absolute, and sink the string of thought into the fathomless!
Lights and shadows are strangely blended all along the human pathway; so from the very center of the deeps of life the incense of our illumined selves must still send up a faint sweet breath outward and onward,--then the breadth as touched by the golden reed is equal.
Again, the height of the perfect self is also measured. No house so low but it must have a window opening to the sky.
Again, there are many lives that touch the golden reed as it measures outward, downward, but are insensible of upward power.
Above the surge and din of life, amid its sorrows and its strife, the soul that comes under the glory of the golden reed, must lift itself to the hills of specialized wisdom greater then the common consciousness.
We can find many noble, moral, natural lives equal in length and breadth and depth, but the height is lacking. Within many minds is lack of great sublime ideals, ideals that should be born in the illumined centers of the self. There are many who have no communion with their source; they are kind, sociable, natural, humanitarian, but lacking in that great wonderful psychological essence which makes the human half divine; the height of their life is unfinished, the golden reed is broken; they walk on superior in their knowledge until in some supreme hour of human grief, their soul is forced through some Gethsemane and opens its eyes to the need of a strength beyond their own. Death, the grave and love teach them to look up, and hope higher than the earthly kingdom.
And once more the measure of our soul goes on, and we find that often all is equal, but the height is _over-reached_; there are many forgetting breadth and length and depth who measure into the very hill-tops of illumination, making their whole expression a dream of no value to themselves or others. They are pure children of spirit; they live in a world peopled with the dream-children of their mind and everything they produce is vapid and useless in the world in which they live and have being; everything seems to pass away from them and their productions are as nothing under the crush and strain of life around.
_Use_ is the world's great test of anything; unless it can be utilized by some one it is valueless to aid humanity; everything that comes forth into form from any state of consciousness must prove its own power to persist, or it vanishes and is forgotten.
Nothing too high, nothing too low, nothing too wide, nothing too narrow, too shallow, but all perfectly adjusted--this is the measure of self, and when we know this the illumined life works out its own unfoldment, passing at will to any degree of consciousness.
This is the finished product of the life that knows how to specialize in consciousness and it is made possible through deeper illumination. It gives to everyone the glorious physical, a depth of perception, radiant with a refined energy and alive with all the latent power of instinct and harmony, and with this the brilliant mind with its breadth of unanswerable logic, its fine facts, science of order and laws of physical adjustment. And added to both these we find the dream vision of the psychic, with the poet's soul of inspiration, sublime ideality and the gentle tender heart, alive with all the common human emotions; and at last, blended and transmuted and made vibrant by that great spiritual insight born on the heights of human revelation we find ourselves whole, grand, developed, humanly divine creatures, walking in glad comradeship with God.
This is the "Holy Grail" of selfhood and in the light of our higher understanding we look downward and outward and upward, and the length and the breadth and the height are equal. We pass from the old race thought of limitation and live in a divine atmosphere, and can say with a wisdom born from this fuller comprehension:
"_We know that if our house of this earthly tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God--an house not made with hands, Eternal in the heavens_."
Perfect Liberty
"_No man liveth to himself and no man dieth to himself_."
The more we look at humanity and study its expressions, the more we become convinced of the truth of these words. It is not hard to see that our human ties are closely knit with everything and everyone, but it is not always easy to understand how they have come to their sometimes almost hopeless tangle.
We are a part of everything in the universe, seen and unseen, and as we have within us a response to every emotion, hope dream, impulse of any kind known or recognized by the human race. As we study and understand our relationship to people, things and expressions, we cannot help but grow deeper and deeper into the clearness of the great truth, namely, the universal and abiding one-ness of man and God.
Some of our relationships in this one-ness are very indistinct and obscure, while some are very distinct and painfully objectified.
The first Truth for us to take up is this--we _have_ and _express_ in our being and our environment just these things with which we have related ourselves, either through inherited or acquired lines of thinking; no one gives to us but ourselves, no one takes away from us but ourselves, no one is to blame but ourselves whatever we have or have not; we, and we alone, are the architects of our own fortune or misfortune.
We get everything in life by the law of conscious or unconscious relationship with it through the simple act of thinking; our thoughts are lines of transference over which may pass to us not only the things which we desire, but also those which our fear brings down upon us and which we do not desire.
Unconscious relationship differs from conscious relationship and brings us the things with which we have connected through the law of omission; conscious relationship is union, and brings everything into expression under the law of commission.
Both of these lines are constant and their results undeniable, but one brings us the whole, the constructive, while the other opens our life for the control of the destructive, the limited.
When thinking passes into a fixed power in our life, it may be used to perfect or destroy the whole mechanism of our present and our future. Long lines of conscious and unconscious thinking bring about certain expressions, and these expressions in time become a part of our very existence, and our environment, good or bad, bears witness to this relationship.
One day upon the streets of Boston I saw an old woman selling newspapers; her hair was gray, her skin brown and wrinkled, her clothing shabby and only half sufficient for the chill of the hour; she was simply poverty-stricken, and her old, thin, piping voice trembled as she called her papers in an effort to compete with the crowds of newsboys around her. Many bought her papers, drawn to her through pity, and her evident need. I felt sorry that with her gray hair so near the grave life should have only this to offer her, and I sought a reason for it. I asked her to tell her story.
She was the daughter of a minister; her mother had been the proverbially meek little woman of history, perfectly fitted to be her father's wife. Her grandfathers on both sides of the parental tree had been ministers; she gave me a graphic sketch of the long line of concentration which she had been born into and in which she continued.
There was a long line for concentration and relationship with lowliness of spirit, for grace, for the utter sinking of self; lack of demand for place or power; lack of self-righteousness, absolute submission sown through generations, sown for her in her own life. It had to bring forth its fruit and it did bring it forth in the form of that gray-haired, beautiful, ragged old woman, who, in the days of her declining years, gathered her harvest on the cold streets of a rich city, underfed, poor and alone.