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Dynamics for Living
Atonement
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[Dynamics for Living]
[Charles Fillmore's Works] [Unity on the Web Home Page]
WE HAVE been taught that Jesus died for us--as an atonement
for our sins. By human sense this belief has been
materialized into a flesh-and-blood process, in which the
death of the body on the Cross played the important part.
Herein has the sense consciousness led us astray. That
spiritual things must be spiritually discerned seems to
have escaped notice in forming the scheme of atonement. At
the root of the teaching is Truth.
Jesus of Nazareth played an important part in opening the
way for every one of us into the
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Father's kingdom. However, that way was not through His
death on the Cross, but through His overcoming death.
To comprehend the atonement requires a deeper insight into
creative processes than the average man and the average
woman have attained; not because they lack the ability to
understand, but because they have submerged their thinking
power in a grosser thought stratum. So only those who study
Being from the standpoint of pure mind can ever understand
the atonement and the part that Jesus played in opening the
way for humanity into the glory which was theirs before the
world was formed.
Overcoming
Jesus must have been the product of a former cycle of time,
and He had previously made the perfect union in the
invisible with the Father.
In proportion as people understand and have faith in Jesus
their actual Savior from sin, and in proportion as they are
set free from appetite, passion, jealousy, prejudice, and
all selfishness, they experience wholeness of mind and body
as the result.
The ultimate result of this knowledge and of daily practice
in overcoming will be a new race that will demonstrate
eternal life--the lifting up of the whole man, spirit,
soul, and body--into
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the Christ consciousness of oneness with the Father. This
is indeed true glorification. By means of the
reconciliation, glorification, and at-one-ment that Jesus
reestablished between God and man we can regain our
original estate as sons of God here upon earth.
Sanctification
When we have found our being in God, we are no longer
identified with the world; our interest is in spiritual
things. Through our intense realization of the eternal good
and our unity with it we become so saturated with the
thought of good that we are impregnable to evil. Thus we
find that the doctrine of sanctification is based on Truth.
It is possible for us to become so good in purpose that
everything we do will turn to good.
We must certainly sanctify ourself in Christ and
persistently send forth the word of purity and
unselfishness to every faculty in order to demonstrate it.
The realization of divine unity is the highest that we can
attain. This is true glory, the blending and merging of the
whole being into Divine Mind.
When a soul makes complete union with God-Mind there is
always an outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon it. This is
true glorification, the
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acknowledgment by the Father that the Son is indeed lifted
up.
Realization means at-one-ment, completion, perfection,
wholeness, repose, resting in God. A realization of health
brings to the consciousness an inner knowing that the
divine law has been fulfilled in thought and act. Then as
man lays hold of the indwelling Christ he is raised out of
the Adam or dark consciousness into the Christ
consciousness. This at-one-ment with God brings a lasting
joy that cannot be taken away.
Christ Consciousness
Jesus was more than a man of Nazareth, more than any other
man who ever lived on the earth. He was more than man, as
we understand the appellation in its everyday use, because
there came into His manhood a factor to which most men are
strangers. This factor was the Christ consciousness.
The unfoldment of this consciousness by Jesus made Him God
incarnate, because Christ is the Mind of God
individualized. Whoever so loses his personality as to be
swallowed up in God become Christ Jesus or God-man.
We cannot separate Jesus Christ from God, or tell where man
leaves off and God begins in Him. To say that Jesus Christ
was a man as we are men is not correct, because He had
dropped
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that personal consciousness by which we separate ourselves
into men and women. He was consciously one with the
absolute principle of Being. He had no consciousness
separate from that Being, hence He was that Being to all
intents and purposes. He attained no more than is expected
of each of us.
It is all accomplished through the externalization of the
Christ consciousness, which is omnipresent and ever ready
to manifest itself through us as it did through Jesus.
Accomplishment
This principle has been perceived by the spiritually wise
of every age. They have not known how to externalize it and
to make it an abiding state of consciousness. Jesus
accomplished this and His method is worthy of our adoption
because, as far as we know, it is the only method that has
been successful. It is set forth in the New Testament.
Whoever adopts the life of purity and love and power
exemplified in the experiences of Jesus of Nazareth will in
due course attain the place that He attained.
The way to do this is the way Jesus did it. He acknowledged
Himself to be the Son of God. The attainment of the Christ
consciousness calls for nothing less on our part than a
definite recognition of ourselves as sons of God
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right here and now, regardless of appearances to the
contrary. We know that we are sons of God--then why not
acknowledge it and proceed to take possession of our God
right? That is what Jesus did in the face of most adverse
conditions. Conditions today are not so stolidly material
as they were in Jesus' time. People now know more about
themselves and their relation to God. They are familiar
with thought processes and how an idea held in mind will
make itself manifest in the body and in affairs; hence they
take up this problem of spiritual realization under most
favorable conditions.
It must work out just as surely as a mathematical problem,
because it is under immutable law. The factors are all in
our possession and the rule that was demonstrated in one
striking instance is before us. By following that rule and
doing, day by day, the work that comes to us, we shall
surely put on Christ as fully and completely as did Jesus
of Nazareth.
Impersonal
Be thankful that God is no respecter of persons, that Truth
cannot be revealed by one mortal to another. God is a
special, personal Father to every one of His children, and
from no other source can they get Truth.
Jesus Christ clearly revealed the Father in
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His consciousness. He points the way. Believe and keep His
sayings, and follow Him. By adopting His methods you will
find the same place in the Father that He found.
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[Dynamics for Living]
[Charles Fillmore's Works] [Unity on the Web Home Page]
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