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Myrtle Fillmore's Healing Letters
To Married People
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[Myrtle Fillmore's Healing Letters]
[Charles Fillmore's Works] [Unity on the Web Home Page]
It is truly wonderful to have children and to be truly
awake in caring for them, that they may grow up in health
and poise and the assurance that they are God's and that
all things needful come through them and to them.
The first five to six years of an individual's life are
very important, and to keep him healthy and happy and busy
with suitable entertainment and work during that period
means everything. He is truly laying his foundation and
preparing his many faculties for other activities that are
to follow.
Grownups and their children can do without homes of their
own, without good furniture, without cars, without many of
the luxuries that have grown to be everyday habits with
many. But all of them, large or small, need time for quiet
and for well-planned meals and for attention to the little
things (little in themselves, but necessary to health).
Daily study with Unity helps to gain the understanding and
faith that make these things possible.
Some way you have come to believe that a constant
repetition of words representing Truth is necessary in
order to live as you should and to establish order in
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your affairs. In reality, the repetition of words, however
true they are, cannot make things right if they are not
right at the foundation. For example, you used to keep
blessing and praising your husband and declaring guidance
and prosperity for him. But he wasn't cooperating, and so
there was only a condition of cross-currents and a delusion
of the personality resulting from personal assurances,
without the inner confirmation of Spirit and without the
purposeful cooperation of all the faculties and powers in
living the Christ life. And since, you have been thinking
so constantly of your children, and doing more than they
are doing to try to bring them into the Truth way of
living. Now, the most helpful thing is just to give them
freedom. Stop thinking of their problems; leave them to
their own resources, and let them feel the need for
spiritual quickening and Truth for themselves.
If it helps you to study and pray constantly, do it. But
try to grasp the full value of each and every word, speak
it deliberately and with assurance, and then let it rest in
the soil of your mind and in the elements of being from
which it is to form blessings, until it brings results.
Don't keep repeating the word, assuming that it hasn't yet
taken root.
Certainly, you don't need to bother with the child's
speech! Or with the tendency you call "stubbornness!" Why,
dear, he has a right to be "stubborn" if others keep at him
too persistently! He must release his own
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powers and be permitted to try them out unprompted much of
the time. Too much attention and help and fretting, even
silently, on the part of parents is responsible for the "I
can't" habit. Suppose he doesn't do a thing as well as you
could do it. That is no reason for your correcting him or
showing him how to do it--let him do it his way and
discover later, by himself, that he can do better and
better, until he perfects his expression. He will have much
more interest in trying things if you permit him more
freedom in doing them alone. To take away that
"stubbornness" would spoil a wonderful God quality in the
early stages of development, and he would have to work hard
for years, later on in life, to regain the proper use of
it. So don't try too hard to make your child just what you
feel he should be. Let God in the midst of him interpret
for him and bring forth His conception of this particular
child of His. God knows best.
You feel that you and your wife have not done your full
parental duty. Well, who of us can say that he has? For
that matter, we are all children, floundering in our
immaturity, making mistakes, learning to love and forgive,
looking to the Father-Mother of us all for light and
strength and training!
Let's not condemn ourselves or resent it if at times a dear
one feels a spurt of ambition or anxiety, or fails to see
things just as we do. Let's endeavor to look
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through the veil of personality and see the Christ within,
and trust this God self to come through, gloriously!
I want to add something to what you said of the past and
the future. The "past is what it is," but we do not often
understand it and see it as it really is. The past recedes
from us if we do not hug it to us, and the light that the
changing perspective throws upon it makes it a pleasing
background for present activities! As we rise higher in
consciousness, the whole is revealed as a wondrous picture
of the soul's progress.
The future is what we make it. But we are learning that we
are developing God-given faculties and powers, coming into
consciousness of sonship. After all, the future is in God's
hands, and it will reveal in our lives the state that Jesus
called the kingdom of God or the kingdom of the
heavens--the order of the universe established in our daily
lives!
Let's remember that those children are God's children. You
know this in theory, but in actual fact do you think of
them hour by hour as the Father's children, unfolding out
of His life and love and wisdom and provided for out of His
inexhaustible store? Are you teaching them that they are
God's children, that He is the Father, and that they must
look to Him by turning their thoughts to their own capacity
to interpret the divine plan and to do that which opens the
way of supply to them? Or are they growing up looking to
you for what they want and need, depending on
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you to think out the problems and to bring forth the good
things?
Not all their education is coming through the schools, you
know! It is your privilege and duty to give them the Truth
of their being, and to see to it that they enter into the
consciousness of Truth and make practical use of it in all
their ways. Otherwise you push them forward intellectually,
without the proper spiritual development and daily use of
their faculties in meeting what life brings their way.
You are no doubt too anxious about the children and their
schooling. You must remember that their education is from
within out. Outer opportunities come as their inner
development requires them, and it is all a matter of
God-Mind unfolding and bringing about that which is best
for all concerned. When you become personal and anxious,
you push and cause tension. The children may cram what is
offered them, but will they be eagerly assimilating and
making use of what comes? Let them hunger for opportunities
and they will open the way for their own progress.
Sometimes the very efforts of a wife and mother to go
beyond the home to bring in supply and to establish the
social life on a higher level through such efforts, will
tend to depress and discourage and to lessen the initiative
and executive ability of the husband and father. Wives
usually help best by standing back of the husband and
inspiring him with the feeling
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that his ideas are good, his undertakings worthwhile, the
results satisfying, even though they feel confident they
could do better. Occasionally we find that a splendid wife
will use her ideas, without realizing it, in the effort to
inspire and push the husband into doing that which she
feels he should and could do. Not having come from his own
inspiration and ability, the plan falls flat or fails to
bring the splendid results dreamed of.
We need to remember that work and business are, after all,
just means of developing certain soul qualities and avenues
through which we serve others in return for the services
rendered us. That which the soul really desires to do is
its present way of progress and success. To clear away the
feeling that one must do what others expect of one, or do
what seems to promise larger returns because of obligation,
is the greatest help another can give.
The real life of the home, the intercourse of members of
the family, the development of each soul, means so much
more than does the kind of house you live in, the things
worn, the neighbors you associate with, the things
purchased or used which the bills represent. I am sure you
know this, but the constant suggestions on every hand of
the desirability of things tends to pull one off
center--until one forms the daily habit of keeping in close
touch with Spirit.
Now, dear, just turn your entire attention to God
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and earnestly seek to see as He sees. See your children as
eagerly growing souls. See them as individuals unfolding
their own faculties and powers, individually doing that
which seems to them best at the moment. Let your mind rise
to the heights where you can view life on a larger scale.
See these souls not bound by conventional millstones and
others' opinions and their own immediate personal problems,
but as sons of God learning by experience and by yearning
and by inspiration the way of Truth in life. Forget the
present in the eternal; rejoice that all God's children are
coming to know His plan of life. Be not only willing but
happy to think of your children and all others as they are
in God's kingdom--free, free to live life as they see
it--free to change, where they feel they have made
mistakes, or where the present mode of living seems to
depress or to hinder progress--free to stand for their
highest ideals, assured of blessings from others.
I feel that I know how you must think and feel in this
matter of your children; for you are looking on with the
eyes of a devoted mother and feeling with the heart that
knows sacrifice and loyalty and righteous ambition. But
really in handling such a "problem" (this word does not
describe just what is meant) one must have more of the
positive ability of the masculine soul and less of the
negative or feeling side of the feminine soul. You, as
other women are wont to do, are feeling much more than you
are thinking. The feeling is human
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and based on personal views and past experience. So it will
not serve as a power in solving the problem; it will throw
in a disturbing element and tend to confuse. But if you
will turn your attention to really thinking about this
matter in the splendid way a man will think out the best
method of procedure, you will open your mind and heart to
the Christ ideas. Then you will begin to be a real help,
for you will release these children from preconceived
opinions as to the suitable thing to do.
In His sight your child is perfect. The standards of
weight, height, and so forth that people have set up as a
guide are not by any means in accord with God's idea of
what is good and perfect. So don't worry or be in the least
anxious about the weight of your little one. What is really
important is the "stature" of her "inward man," her soul
and consciousness. To measure up to the Jesus Christ
standard she must keep her thoughts good, pure, lovely,
joyous, beautiful, and based on the Truth.
When she does this, her body temple is bound to show forth
the perfection of the Christ within.
We are lifting you up in the great love and light that will
make you feel the peace of Jesus Christ and rest in the
assurance that all is well. Your child, over whom you
watched so tenderly and for whom you have expressed your
highest concept of mother love, and who has grown to
manhood and taken advantage of his
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God-given freedom and the powers that it has been his
privilege to unfold and to express as he felt best, is also
God's beloved child. He is ever in the presence of the
Father, and the Father is helping him to awaken from the
dream of sense and to judge wisely and to discriminate
between the worthwhile things of Spirit and the false and
undesirable things of immaturity.
Trust this dear boy to the Father, dear, and know without
doubt that he is being lifted up and set free, and brought
into an entirely new consciousness of life and love and
power and freedom and success. Even though he should not at
present know how to get into and redeem his body and set it
in order, he is getting needed lessons and will not have to
suffer for the same mistakes again.
We'll help you to know how to speak the Truth to this dear
little daughter, to set her free from the limitations that
have hindered her progress, and to encourage her in
expressing herself through all her senses and powers. She
is God's child, and He has created her like Himself,
perfect in every part and free to express herself.
Think of your child as God's child, and as God's child ever
abiding in His love and surrounded with peace and plenty.
This is the truth: Your child is God's child. And she does
inherit from the divine Father-Mother the perfect Christ
Mind.
Something has interfered with the full, free, harmonious
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development of her faculties. But this is only a temporary
condition. And as we who love her think of her in the true
light and hold that the Christ Mind is now awakening and
quickening and developing all her faculties, she will
respond. Her soul does not really want to give way to
negation and resentment. But error thoughts have been
building up, and she says and does things that her lack of
good judgment makes her feel will help her. The Truth
spoken with faith and power and love to her soul will break
up the old states of mind, and she will begin to take hold
for herself.
Assure her daily, as many times as is necessary, that she
is perfectly safe and that no one is going to disturb her
or take her away. She is at home with those who love her
and who know her to be God's child. Talk to her just as
though she were expressing herself in a perfectly normal
way. That which you think of her and the way in which you
appeal to her will determine her reactions.
The love that is the fulfilling of the law is not the
personal affection and the clinging to personality that is
the usual expression of a happily mated man and woman. Love
that fulfills the law is the great sense of unity that
prompts the soul to seek the understanding and practice of
that which is for the welfare not only of the beloved but
of all humanity. When woman recognizes the divine in men
and inspires them to
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express it, she has no difficulty living happily with a man
to whom she has been drawn. When men understand women and
adore the divine qualities in them they will be endowed
with power from on high to live so that perfect harmony
results.
[Myrtle Fillmore's Healing Letters]
Charles Fillmore's Works [Unity on the Web Home Page]
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