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Myrtle Fillmore's Healing Letters
Developing Our Faculties
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[Myrtle Fillmore's Healing Letters]
[Charles Fillmore's Works] [Unity on the Web Home Page]
The only way to abide in cosmic consciousness is to develop
Christ consciousness, the abiding realization of oneness
with God-Mind and of its ideas as directing all the
faculties in fulfilling the divine purpose in being.
All true followers of Jesus Christ are required to
discipline the human self in the journey from the personal
to the Christ consciousness. The human part of us wants to
cling to things visible and to other people, but as the
impersonal, spiritual Christ finds expression we gradually
cease to lean upon these material limitations. Our
spiritual faculties become so strong, vital, and
substantial that we are able to contact the great invisible
through them. When these faculties are well developed, the
invisible reality becomes to us even more real and
substantial and enduring than material things are to the
senses.
We study God as mind, and people as mind; and we find that
in the expression of divine ideas people have definite
centers of consciousness, which the soul has built through
its effort to use divine ideas or qualities of being. We
have found that there are twelve central or basic centers
of consciousness, which are the result of the soul's use of
the God qualities of life, love, wisdom, power, and
substance. These centers of consciousness are centers of
God-Mind; but they have
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built the physical organism through which they express. We
have twelve locations in the body, where the soul expresses
definite qualities, which go to make up the Christ
consciousness--at least we term it Christ consciousness
when the individual is expressing himself under divine law.
Developing these latent powers and capacities of the inner
person is the key that will open to us the kingdom and give
us Christ mastery. When we do this we shall succeed in
whatever we undertake.
None of us are yet able at all times to keep our faculties
expressing perfectly. But we are finding out that we can
discipline ourselves and call upon the Spirit of God to act
through us, which is the light that is given to every one
of us as we come into being and that gives us whatever we
need in the way of love, wisdom, faith, understanding, and
zeal, and the life and strength, the power and the will and
the imagination to carry out the divine pattern and in an
orderly way to eliminate or renounce all that has not been
implanted in us by the Father.
In the development of faculties and powers--talents--in
self-expression through them, and in the service to others
that one must consider, in order to be truly successful and
satisfied one must go to God-Mind to learn what is truly
best for the soul at the time. Sometimes a soul will get
into a rut through the desire to excel in some particular
line, disregarding development along other lines.
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We need all our faculties awake and alert to discern the
reality of Being, and to see through the be-coming things
to the underlying cause and to eventual order and
perfection. We find that a daily development of all our
faculties keeps us better balanced.
Faith and love are qualities of Divine Mind that bring us
into close communion with the Father and source of all
light and blessings. Having quickened faith and love, we
may go a long way on life's path and solve many problems.
Eventually the very quickening of these two faculties of
the soul will call for a full-rounded development.
Faith and love will prompt a person to identify himself
with the best he knows in religious life. This brings him
to a realization of the need to develop the Christ powers;
also the need to give up old race beliefs and human fears
and personal ambitions. All that does not measure up is
left behind as he follows Jesus Christ in calling and
educating his disciples or faculties.
Love without the cooperation of wisdom and good judgment
and will would not give us the well-rounded expression that
we desire, yet purified love will make it much easier to
direct these other faculties into accord with the Christ
pattern.
You speak so often of love, and of the importance of love,
and the necessity of love in healing; and that you make
many affirmations of love and power. Well, now, wouldn't it
be well to remember that there are
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a number of other qualities equally important, and that the
development of these is just as necessary as is the
exercise of love? God is love, but God is also life, power,
strength, and substance.
Love is little more than affection and animal devotion,
until other faculties are developed to the point of
enabling the individual to see and understand in others
that which is loved. Faith must be active; discrimination
or judgment must help one to see the real and to understand
that which appears perhaps unlovely; imagination must
picture the God qualities in one's fellows and in one's
environment that are lovable; understanding must keep the
love from becoming negative or selfish; will must hold one
to a true course and to that which the good judgment
indicates as best; renunciation plays its part in that it
helps us to give up that which would hinder development.
Strength must be recognized as from within and be so
established that it supports every other faculty.
Sometimes in our zeal for the Lord's work as we feel called
to do it we emphasize the negative side of life and
substance and love until we draw about us the
correspondences to those negations. For example, a great
desire for purity and for helping others to know and live
pure lives may cause us to throw so much of our thought
energy and substance into the fight against so-called
impurity and waste and weakness that we fail to have enough
energy and substance to build up our
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own lives and to create the loveliness that is God's plan
for us.
When everyone seeks to live in perfect harmony with the
divine law, they will begin to see order in their lives,
and discord, if there is any, will be the unusual thing. In
fact there will be nothing but order, harmony, and perfect
conditions when we learn to express our Christ selves.
First and last one must understand and appreciate life and
lay hold of the life faculty in such a way as to keep a
vital interest in living and in bringing the body to its
highest point of development--not necessarily to a given
number of pounds nor to a given strength, nor to the point
where it heeds merely the demands of the personal will and
ambition--but to the goal of the radiant health and freedom
that come of living from within, in harmony with the inner
intelligence and the Christ pattern.
The light of Spirit, quickening the understanding, sets us
free from all mortal sense and the boundaries placed by
intellect. In the light of understanding we behold God's
presence, and His kingdom, and His children, and we see all
these as one, and each in right relation to the others. The
faculty of discrimination enables us to know if we have
really awakened and developed the capacity for righteous
judgment and harmonious expression and Christlike attitude.
It is merely a matter of giving up the lesser to receive
the greater. So long as our mental hands and
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our soul forces are holding us to limitations to the
personal, there is no room in them for the mighty blessings
of Spirit that the development of the faculties through
selflessness will bring.
The human part of us goes through a "crucifixion," and our
spiritual, Christ self is resurrected. Whatever is good and
true within us is not crucified--it does not need to be.
Whatever is good endures and becomes one with the Christ in
us.
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[Myrtle Fillmore's Healing Letters]
[Charles Fillmore's Works] [Unity on the Web Home Page]
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