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Christian Healing
Lesson 12
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[Christian Healing]
[Charles Fillmore's Works] [Unity on the Web Home Page]
Lesson Twelve
Love
1. Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon
us, that we should be called children of God; and such we
are.
2. He that abideth in love abideth in God, and God abideth
in him.
3. He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is
that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my
Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself unto
him.
4. Love, in Divine Mind, is the idea of universal unity. In
expression, love is the power that joins and binds in
divine harmony the universe and everything in it.
5. Among the faculties of the mind, love is pivotal. Its
center of mentation in the body is the cardiac plexus. The
physical representative of love is the heart, the office of
which is to equalize the circulation of the blood in the
body. As the heart equalizes the life flow in the body, so
love harmonizes the thoughts of the mind.
6. We have found that the twelve sons of Jacob represent
the twelve faculties of mind. When Levi (love) was brought
forth by the human soul (Leah), his mother said: "Now this
time will my husband be joined unto me." We connect our
soul forces with whatever we center our love upon. If we
love the things of sense or materiality, we are joined or
attached to them through a fixed law of being. In
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the divine order of being, the soul, or thinking part, of
man is joined to its spiritual ego. If it allows itself to
become joined to the outer or sense consciousness, it makes
personal images that are limitations. The Lord commanded
Moses to "make all things according to the pattern that was
showed thee in the mount." This "mount" is the place of
high understanding, or spiritual consciousness, whose
center of action is in the very apex of the brain.
7. In the regeneration, our love goes through a
transformation, which broadens, strengthens, and deepens
it. We no longer confine love to family, friends, and
personal relations, but expand it to include all things.
The denial of human relationships seems at first glance to
be a repudiation of the family group, but it is merely a
cleansing of the mind from limited ideas of love when this
faculty would satisfy itself solely by means of human
kinship. If God is the Father of all, then men and women
are brothers and sisters in a universal family, and he who
sees spiritually should open his heart and cultivate that
inclusive love which God has given as the unifying element
in the human family. Just to the extent that we separate
ourselves into families, cliques, and religious factions we
put away God's love. Unless there is specific denial along
every line of human-thought bondage, one will still be
under the law of sense. Direct affirmation of spiritual
unity, based upon obedience, should be made by everyone who
desires to realize this true relation. Jesus said: "Who
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is my mother? and who are my brethren? And he stretched
forth his hand towards his disciples, and said, Behold, my
mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of
my Father who is in heaven, he is my brother, and sister,
and mother."
8. Among the apostles of Jesus, John represents love--he
laid his head on the Master's bosom. When this apostle is
"called," love is quickened in consciousness. The calling
of this apostle consists in bringing into one's
consciousness a right understanding of the true character
of love, also in exercising love in all the relations of
life. One should make it a practice to meditate regularly
on the love idea in universal Mind, with the prayer, Divine
love, manifest thyself in me. Then there should be periods
of mental concentration on the love center in the cardiac
plexus, near the heart. It is not necessary to know the
exact location of this aggregation of love cells. Think
about love with the attention drawn within the breast, and
a quickening will follow; all the ideas that go to make up
love will be set into motion. This produces a positive love
current, which, when sent forth with power, will break up
opposing thoughts of hate, and render them null and void.
The thought of hate will be dissolved, not only in the mind
of the thinker but in the minds of those with whom he comes
in contact in mind or in body. The love current is not a
projection of the will; it is a setting free of a natural,
equalizing, harmonizing force that in most persons has been
dammed up by
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human limitations. The ordinary man is not aware that he
possesses this mighty power, which will turn away every
shaft of hate that is aimed at him. We know that "a soft
answer turneth away wrath," but here is a faculty native to
man, existent in every soul, which may be used at all times
to bring about harmony and unity among those who have been
disunited through misunderstandings, contentions, or
selfishness.
9. Henry Drummond says that Paul's 13th chapter of I
Corinthians is the greatest love poem ever written. In his
book based on this chapter, "Love, the Supreme Gift,"
Professor Drummond analyzes love and portrays its various
activities. We quote:
10. THE SPECTRUM OF LOVE. Love is a compound thing, Paul
tells us. It is like light. As you have seen a man of
science take a beam of light and pass it through a crystal
prism, as you have seen it come out on the other side of
the prism broken up into its component colors--red and blue
and yellow and orange, and all the colors of the
rainbow--so Paul passes this thing, love, through the
magnificent prism of his inspired intellect, and it comes
out on the other side broken up into its elements. And in
these few words we have what one might call the Spectrum of
Love, the analysis of love. Will you observe what its
elements are? Will you notice that they have common names;
that they are virtues which we hear about every day; that
they are things that can be practiced by every man in every
place in life; and how, by a multitude of small things and
ordinary virtues, the supreme thing, the Summum bonum, is
made up? The Spectrum of Love has nine ingredients, viz.:
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11. Patience--"Love suffereth long." Kindness--"and is
kind." Generosity--"Love envieth not." Humility--"Love
vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up." Courtesy--"Doth not
behave itself unseemly." Unselfishness--"Seeketh not her
own." Good Temper--"Is not easily provoked."
Guilelessness--"Thinketh no evil." Sincerity--"Rejoiceth
not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth."
12. Professor Drummond, in his address on this chapter to
Mr. Moody's students gathered at Northfield, Massachusetts,
said: "How many of you will join me in reading this chapter
once a week for the next three months? A man did that once
and it changed his whole life. Will you do it? Will you?"
13. Love is more than mere affection, and all our words
protesting our love are not of value unless we have this
inner current, which is real substance. Though we have the
eloquence of men and of angels, and have not this deeper
feeling, it profits us nothing. We should deny the mere
conventional, surface affection, and should set our mind on
the very substance of love.
14. Charity is not love. You may be kindhearted, and give
to the poor and needy until you are impoverished, yet not
acquire love. You may be a martyr to the cause of Truth and
consume your vitality in good works, yet be far from love.
Love is a force that runs in the mind and body like molten
gold in a furnace. It does not mix with the baser
metals--it has no affinity for anything less than itself.
Love is patient; it never gets weary or discouraged. Love is
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always kind and gentle. It does not envy; jealousy has no
place in its world. Love never becomes puffed up with human
pride, and does not brag about itself. It is love that
makes the refinement of the natural gentleman or lady,
although he or she may be ignorant of the world's standards
of culture. Love does not seek its own--its own comes to it
without being sought.
15. Jesus came proclaiming the spiritual inter-relationship
of the human family. His teaching was always of gentleness,
nonresistance, love. "I say unto you, Love your enemies,
and pray for them that persecute you." To do this, one must
be established in the consciousness of divine love, and
there must be discipline of the mental nature to preserve
such a high standard. The divine law is founded in the
eternal unity of all things, and "love therefore is the
fulfillment of the law." Physical science has discovered
that everything can be reduced to a few primal elements,
and that if the universe were destroyed it could be built
up again from a single cell. So this law of harmony, which
has its origin in love, is established in the midst of
every individual. "I will put my law in their inward parts,
and in their heart will I write it." But before this fixed
inward principle can be brought to the surface, man must
open the way by having faith in the power of love to
accomplish all that Jesus claimed for it.
16. "The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil." The
love of money, not money itself, is the
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root of all kinds of evil. Money is a convenience that
saves men many burdens in the exchange of values. Primitive
civilization used the cumbersome method of trading products
without a money measure of value, while modern progress
uses money continually as a medium of exchange. Money is
therefore good to the man of sense perception; but when he
allows himself to become enamored of it and hoards it, he
makes it his god. The erasure of this idea from human
consciousness is part of the metaphysician's work. Trusting
in God, we have faith in Him as our resource, and He
becomes a perpetual spiritual supply and support; but when
we put our faith in the power of material riches, we wean
our trust from God and establish it in this transitory
substance of rust and corruption. This point is not clearly
understood by those who are hypnotized by the money idea.
When the metaphysician affirms God to be his opulent supply
and support and declares that he has money in abundance,
the assumption is that he loves money and depends upon it
in the same way that the devotees of Mammon do. The
difference is that one trusts in the law of God, while the
other trusts in the power of Mammon. The man who blindly
gives himself up to money getting acquires a love for it
and finally becomes its slave. The wise metaphysician deals
with the money idea and masters it.
17. When Jesus said, "I have overcome the world," He meant
that by the use of certain words He had dissolved all
adverse states of consciousness
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in materiality, appetite, and selfishness. Christ is the
Word, the Logos. Because the word is the mind seed from
which springs every condition, great stress is laid on the
power of the word, both in the Scriptures and in
metaphysical interpretations of the Scriptures. The word is
the most enduring thing in existence. "Heaven and earth
shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away." All
metaphysicians recognize that certain words, used
persistently, mold and transform conditions in mind, body,
and affairs. The word love overcomes hate, resistance,
opposition, obstinacy, anger, jealousy, and all states of
consciousness where there is mental or physical friction.
Words make cells, and these cells are adjusted one to the
other through associated ideas. When divine love enters
into man's thought process, every cell is poised and
balanced in space, in right mathematical order as to weight
and relative distance. Law and order rule in the molecules
of the body with the exactness that characterizes their
action in the worlds of a planetary system.
18. Divine love and human love should not be confounded,
because one is as broad as the universe and is always
governed by undeviating laws, while the other is fickle,
selfish, and lawless. It was to this personal aspect of the
love center in man that Jesus referred when He said: "Out
of the heart of men, evil thoughts proceed." But in the
regeneration all this is changed; the heart is cleansed and
becomes the standard of right relation among all men. "By
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this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye
have love one to another." We cannot enter fully into the
Christ consciousness so long as we have a grudge against
anyone. The mind is so constituted that a single thought of
a discordant character tinges the whole consciousness; so
we must cast out all evil and resisting thoughts before we
can know the love of God in its fullness. "If therefore
thou art offering thy gift at the altar, and there
rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave
there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way, first be
reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy
gift."
19. Divine love in the heart establishes one in
fearlessness and indomitable courage. "God gave us not a
spirit of fearfulness; but of power and love and
discipline." A woman who understands this law was waylaid
by a tramp. She looked him steadily in the eye and said,
"God loves you." He released his hold upon her and slunk
away. Another woman saw a man beating a horse that could
not pull a load up a hill. She silently said to the man:
"The love of God fills your heart and you are tender and
kind." He unhitched the horse; the grateful animal walked
directly over to the house where the woman was, and put his
nose against the window behind which she stood. A young
girl sang "Jesus, Lover of My Soul," to a calloused
criminal; the man's heart was softened, and he was reformed.
20. The new heaven and the new earth that are now being
established among men and nations the
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world over are based on love. When men understand each
other, love increases. This is true not only among men, but
between man and the animal world, and even between man and
the vegetable world. In Yellowstone Park, where animals are
protected by our government, grizzly bears come to the
house doors and eat scraps from the table, and wild animals
of all kinds are tame and friendly. "The wolf shall dwell
with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid;
and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together;
and a little child shall lead them. . . . They shall not
hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth
shall be full of the knowledge of Jehovah, as the waters
cover the sea."
21. Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God;
and every one that loveth is begotten of God; and knoweth
God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.
Herein was the love of God manifested in us, that God hath
sent his only begotten Son into the world that we might
live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God,
but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the
propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we
also ought to love one another. No man hath beheld God at
any time: if we love one another, God abideth in us, and
his love is perfected in us: hereby we know that we abide
in him and he in us, because he hath given us of his
Spirit. And we have beheld and bear witness that the Father
hath sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. Whosoever
shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God abideth in
him, and he in God. And we know and have believed the love
which God hath in us. God is love; and he that abideth in
love abideth in God, and God abideth in him. Herein
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is love made perfect with us, that we may have boldness in
the day of judgment; because as he is, even so are we in
this world. There is no fear in love: but perfect love
casteth out fear, because fear hath punishment; and he that
feareth is not made perfect in love. We love, because he
first loved us. If a man say, I love God, and hateth his
brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother
whom he hath seen, cannot love God whom he hath not seen.
And this commandment have we from him, that he who loveth
God love his brother also.
Love Demonstrated
(To be used in connection with Lesson Twelve)
1. "God is love; and he that abideth in love abideth in
God."
2. I dwell consciously in the very presence of infinite
love.
3. God is love, and everyone that loves is born of God.
4. I am born of love.
5. "Love . . . is the fulfillment of the law."
6. I love everybody and everything.
7. Faith works by love.
8. I have faith in the supreme power of love.
9. God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power,
and of love, and of a sound mind.
10. I am fearless, powerful, and wise in God's love.
11. "Behold what manner of love the Father hath
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bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God."
12. I love the Lord my God with all my heart, and with all
my mind, and with all my soul, and with all my strength.
13. "But now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; and
the greatest of these is love."
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