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Myrtle Fillmore's Healing Letters
Going Into the Silence
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[Myrtle Fillmore's Healing Letters]
[Charles Fillmore's Works] [Unity on the Web Home Page]
Students should not try so hard to "go into the silence."
When your growth brings you to the place where your
consciousness may be so completely merged with Christ ideas
in God-Mind that you lose all sense of things about you, it
is time to seek to go into the silence. But one should not
try to hurry this experience. Anything that is an effort
and that disturbs the natural functioning of the body is
not going to bring your mind into conscious at-one-ment
with the source of your light and every good.
It is because a person tries to force the process of going
into the silence before he is ready for it that he has that
unpleasant experience, about which some ask, of the heart's
beating so rapidly and hard. This comes from trying to get
the body to become inactive in the effort to go into the
silence. Instead of stirring up greater activity, laying
hold of more life and using it, you cause the body to
become tense. Therefore, the heart must pump harder to do
its work. When wisdom and love and life and power prompt
your thoughts, you are living and moving and having your
being in the very presence of God, and you know that all is
well. Then you will be able to concentrate upon anything
that requires your attention, and you will be quiet and
poised and comfortable. With a relaxed body
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you will lay hold of more life activity and come forth
refreshed.
When you start to go into the silence, you should breathe
evenly, in the happy feeling that you are taking in great
drafts of God's pure life-sustaining air, which is being
used by every cell and blood corpuscle.
Take your attention down out of your head into the
organism. The flow of blood will follow your attention down
into the trunk of the body and into your feet and hands,
and thus the forces of being as well as the flow of the
bloodstream will be equalized. You should be just as fair
to the members of your body as you would be to a neighbor.
You wouldn't expect to hold the neighbor's attention on one
thing all day long. Nor would you expect to demand of your
neighbor that she do without something that she should
have, nor would you burden her with more work than she
should do. Now you are to treat your own members (which are
close neighbors in your body temple) with as much
consideration and wisdom and love, giving them the benefit
of this quiet time with the divine Creator.
A period of quiet and rest each day is your opportunity to
establish yourself at the center of your being, the one
place where the supply of life and substance is
inexhaustible. God is this eternal life that we make into
living. Each day you should have a period of stillness when
the soul may gather sustaining power
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and restoring life. God gives freely; it is for us to keep
the receiving channels open, to keep attuned to the
realities so that our intellect does not take us out among
the limited ideas of the world. The manifest man must have
the sustenance that can come only from within. We should
not draw the strings of this instrument of Spirit so tight
that the music of the soul cannot find expression, but this
is what living in the world without withdrawal to the
secret place does to us.
One can stay in the silence too much. It is merely the
doorway to that which is beyond the silence; i. e.,
activity based upon the light and strength gained in
claiming it, accomplished by contacting it as the mind
slips away from the clamor of dissipating thoughts. One can
get too much of this good thing, just as one can get too
much good nourishing food, and then sit still, failing to
convert it into living energy and the results of that
energy. So, dear, watch that you do not remain too much
alone, too much in the silence, too much in contemplation
and adoration, and not enough in the practical use of what
the walks and talks alone with God would give. The Indian
goes solitary into the forest to gain a sense of his
superior strength and poise. He comes back to familiar
scenes and regular activities, and runs, and leaps, and
rides, and sings, and plants, and harvests, and tells the
stories that inspire his race, and ministers to those in
need in the spirit of love. He takes plenty of time to
play, and he works at nothing while he's playing!
Instead of spending too much time in the silence,
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make practical use of what you have already gotten from
study and from the silence. It is possible to waste
strength and energy and substance in dwelling in that
passive mental state sometimes called the silence, or in
the personal effort to make certain thoughts go out and
accomplish results that are not based on the divine order
and plan of life. So when you turn to the secret place for
silence, be sure that you get away from yourself, your old
ideas and desires, and bring your mind into perfect harmony
with Christ ideas. Work to bring those ideas to bear upon
your thought centers, and then come forth to practice what
you have seen with spiritual vision and declared for
yourself.
The more you think about the Christ within, the stronger
will grow your consciousness of the divine presence and
your oneness with Him, until you can "be still, and know
that I am God"; until you can still all the outer thoughts
and meditate upon "Christ in you, the hope of glory." Many
have been helped mightily, gloriously in finding the
silence, by repeating "Jesus Christ" time after time, with
short intervals between.
When you go into the silence, it would be well for you to
direct your attention into your organism, away from your
head. The flow of blood will follow the attention, and thus
the forces of your being and the flow of the bloodstream
will be equalized.
You owe God attention. You owe God the full
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measure of your faith, of your thought, of your service.
God abides in your mind as the wisdom that will reveal the
way to you if you will quiet your thoughts from their
ceaseless outer searching for ways and means. God not only
gives you wisdom, God is the wisdom that can direct you
into paths of peace and plenty. You cannot listen to God
while your ear is given to your affairs. You can gain
nothing by incessantly milling around in negative thought.
You can gain all by quietly letting go of these outer
appearances and laying hold of God.
You love Jesus Christ and He is now with you, guiding you
and teaching you, bringing you consciously into oneness
with the Father. His prayer was: "That they may be one,
even as we are one" (Jn. 17:11). His mission is to bring us
into unity with the Father, and His promise is: "Lo, I am
with you always" (Mt. 28:20). He taught us to pray in this
way: "When you pray, go into your room and shut the door
and pray to your Father who is in secret" (Mt. 6:6). The
inner chamber is that quiet place within the heart. We are
taught to center our thoughts within, and then to shut the
door; that is, to close our minds to all other thinking and
think about God and His goodness and love; to pray to God
in secret, in the secret place of the Most High, and all
things needful will be added.
"Speak to Him, thou, for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit
can meet--
Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and
feet."--Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
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That is what the poet says to help us remember how close
and loving God is. Speak to God in the quiet of your heart,
just as you would speak to me; tell the Father how much you
desire to know Him and feel His loving presence and how
glad you are to receive His blessings and to do His will.
Then be very still and feel God's love enfold you.
Be still. Be still. Be still. God in the midst of you is
substance. God in the midst of you is love. God in the
midst of you is wisdom. Let not your thoughts be given to
lack, but let wisdom fill them with the substance and faith
of God. Let not your heart be a center of resentment and
fear and doubt. Be still and know that at this moment it is
the altar of God, of love; love so sure and unfailing, love
so irresistible and magnetic that it draws your supply to
you from the great storehouse of the universe. Trust God,
use God's wisdom, prove and express God's love.
As you come out of the silence, count your blessings and
give thanks for them. Realize that only good exists in you
and in your world, that the power you contacted in the
silence may have opportunity to multiply and increase your
blessings. Give thanks that you have already received the
good for which you looked to God in the silence, feeling
the assurance, "Before they call I will answer, while they
are yet speaking I will hear" (Is. 65:24).
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On the "mountaintop" we receive new illumination,
inspiration, and insight into the providing law. Then we
have a work to do away from the mountaintop, lifting our
thoughts to the Truth standard. We should carry the light,
joy, peace, and strength we receive on the spiritual
heights of consciousness into our everyday life for the
purpose of redeeming the human part of us.
Jesus had His times on the mountaintop, but afterward He
descended to minister to the needy ones. This symbolizes
our habit of giving attention to thoughts of lack,
weakness, negativeness and redeeming them by bringing them
into the Spirit, after we have entered the "secret place of
the Most High" and communed with the Father.
The thing to bear in mind is to take with you and hold on
to all that you gain on the mountaintop of prayer, and not
let go of it when you meet the thoughts and states of mind
on the material plane that need to be spiritualized. In
other words, maintain your spiritual poise and control when
you meet adverse thoughts; otherwise you cannot redeem the
Adversary.
When we seek God, our temporal as well as spiritual needs
are supplied. The providing law will always work for us
when we work with it.
"By wisdom a house is built,
and by understanding it is established;
by knowledge the rooms are filled
with all precious and pleasant riches" (Prov. 24:3-4).
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It is through the development of our minds that we find the
way to success. God is mind. "We have the mind of Christ,"
and it is for us to make conscious union in the silence
with the all-providing Mind, lifting our thoughts to its
standard of Truth and holding them in this Truth as we go
about our duties of living.
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[Myrtle Fillmore's Healing Letters]
[Charles Fillmore's Works] [Unity on the Web Home Page]
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