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Myrtle Fillmore's Healing Letters
Spiritual Control of the Body
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[Myrtle Fillmore's Healing Letters]
[Charles Fillmore's Works] [Unity on the Web Home Page]
Unity emphasizes control of the physical by the spiritual.
Many of the things that we do and expect to control are not
spiritual in the sense that they are in accord with God's
laws and plans! Real control is in living according to the
perfect pattern and law. It is not spiritual thought that
prompts one to abuse the body in any way. It is not
spiritual thought or desire that allows one to eat when
there is no need of food, or to partake of foods that the
body does not require. It is not spiritual thought that
causes one to worry, or to become tense, or to drive the
body in the effort to gain intellectually.
A thing is not less spiritual because it has taken form and
weight and color. The thing that might be termed "material"
is the misconception or unwise combination of thoughts and
elements that produces an undesirable result. Spirit
becomes manifest in our expression of what God gives.
Our religious life, heretofore, has led us to feel that our
thoughts and emotions were all that was necessary to our
spiritual experience; that the body was to be disregarded
as of little consequence and as not responsive to the finer
things of Spirit--at least not as anything of importance
except as "controlled" by them.
Evidently, the individual soul has felt the need of
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such an earth home as the body temple. We are to realize
that the body, free from the inharmonies and weaknesses
imposed upon it through error, is a part of God's plan of
life. We understand people to be three-fold beings. We are
convinced that the regular appropriation of certain
manifest life elements is required to maintain the body at
a given rate of vibration--which we know as health and
endurance and ability to transmute thought into action. We
do not know how long such a plan will be in effect; we are
not greatly concerned. But it is reasonable to suppose that
we shall not learn a great deal about laws and
manifestations in advance of those which are now receiving
our attention until we have learned to live by them. When
we can sustain the body in health and activity and radiance
indefinitely, we shall have gained a better understanding
of the true purpose of life and will be ready to enter upon
a mode of living that may free us from the observance of
laws that we may term "physical." The science of building
and operating an airplane would not permit the builder and
the mechanics to take just any materials at hand out of
which to fashion the parts of the plane or to furnish it
with fuel. Yet we know that the power to build and drive
the machine is in the builder's mind and in the universal
atmosphere. Nevertheless, knowing this and acting upon it,
we do not seek to set aside the laws revealed by
intelligence as expressed in the working of machinery and
the settled mode of travel.
A person learns to build an airplane in which to
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fly before he is entrusted with the higher law of taking
his body through the air without a manifest vehicle.
Building the planes and using them and observing the laws
governing their flight is not denying God's spiritual laws.
It is taking the steps that are leading the person forward
to the discovery of greater things.
So it is with maintaining ourselves in health, and in
studying and applying spiritual rules of action. We must
learn to make the right use of what we have--and then we
shall find ourselves in possession of more.
Sometimes the soul gets so anxious about what it wishes to
do that it tends to neglect the body. This is not fair to
the body nor to those who must take care of the body when
it is neglected. Our first duty, then, is to bless our body
and to get our thoughts right down into it, to praise its
wonderful work, to learn what its needs are, and to supply
them. Sometimes things happen in the realm of the senses or
in connection with the physical body that cause one to
depreciate it, or even to almost wish one did not have it.
In this event the soul may reach out so much that the body
is neglected, until it suffers.
Then we sometimes become too ambitious, somewhere in the
recesses of the soul, and literally pull ourselves up by
the roots, and starve the precious body temple. Then come
hard experiences--blessings in disguise.
But God is there in that body, you know, and God
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won't let the soul continue to neglect the body. Suffering
is one of the means of drawing the attention of the soul
back to its beautiful temple. And the Christ Mind can and
will direct the soul in taking up its wonderful work in the
body that it may continue to have this very necessary
vehicle of expression.
We need more often to think of our body as being the temple
of divine love, the very substance of health and harmony in
order that this truth may be implanted in the subconscious
mind, which controls the body functioning. We need more
often to pray for a true concept of substance, for with it
we shall receive a glorious revelation that will go a long
way toward transforming the mind, soul, and body. This
concept of substance will be but the beginning of a
transformation that will continue until we shall be able to
demonstrate as Christ Jesus did. All who follow Him will
eventually overcome as He did, spiritualizing the soul to
the extent that its outer garment, the body, will be lifted
into a like expression of Spirit; for God is no respecter
of persons.
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[Myrtle Fillmore's Healing Letters]
[Charles Fillmore's Works] [Unity on the Web Home Page]
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