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Keep A True Lent
Chapter 7
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[Keep A True Lent]
[Charles Fillmore's Works] [Unity on the Web Home Page]
Conscience
Chapter 7
THERE IS A divine goodness at the root of all existence. It
is not necessary to give in detail the place of abode of
each sentient part of this central goodness, for it is
there, wherever you look, and whenever you look. No man is
so lowly but that at the touch of its secret spring this
divine goodness may be brought to light in him. Even the
animals exhibit its regulating and directive power. This
goodness sleeps in the recesses of every mind and comes
forth when least expected. Many stifle it for years, maybe
for ages, but eventually its day comes, and there is a day
of reckoning. This is the law of universal balance--the
equilibrium of Being. It cannot be put aside with
transcendental philosophies or metaphysical denials any
more than it can be smothered in the forces of the blind
passions.
Men and women are loath to admit that there is within them
a monitor with which they have sooner or later to cope, and
they put off the day of reckoning as long as possible. They
do not like to deal with this leveler of Spirit. It is too
exact; it wants justice to the very limit.
Whoever has felt the prick of conscience has been spoken to
by the Holy Spirit. Whoever has sat at the feet of his own
inner convictions has been aware of God's presence.
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Man is never without a guide, no matter how loudly he may
be crying out for leading. There is always at hand a sure
torchbearer if he will but follow the light. It is too
simple, too easy! Man has formed in his mind a far-off God
who talks to him from some high mountain in invisible
space. By thus looking afar for his God he ignores the
spark of divinity shining in his own being.
Herein is man fooled into believing that he can do the
things that are not in harmony with his ideas of goodness
and yet escape the consequences. He presumes that God is
too far away to behold his shortcomings and he loses sight
of the fact that God is right with him every moment.
This is the meaning of the old saying that a man and his
conscience are good friends as long as the way is smooth,
but when it grows rugged they fall out. They fall out
because man has reached a point where he begins to consider
his ways and he looks carefully over the life he is
leading. This brings him to a beholding state of mind. He
sees that what he considered right in the clear light of
divine good is not up to standard. Here the divergence
takes place between man and his conscience. They were
friends in appearance only before or during the period of
license. The conscience may seem to assent to the
derelictions of man, but it is ever the inner protestant
that keeps knocking at the consciousness until the steps
are arrested.
Worldly fortune is not always a blessing to man.
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In fact, under present customs it is apt to be just the
reverse. As long as questionable methods are successful in
bringing results, conscience has but a small chance for a
hearing. It is only when failure follows the efforts of the
misguided that conscience gets his ear. Then the field is
surveyed with the eye of a general defeated in an unjust
cause. The heat of battle blinded him, and he gave no
thought to the lives he was uselessly sacrificing.
Here remorse gnaws the vitals of the unwise, and here the
true wisdom is revealed. It is said that experience is a
dear school, and only the wise learn therein. This carries
with it its own nullification, like many of the intellect's
wise observations. Experience is the school of fools. The
truly wise do not take lessons within her doors.
There are two ways to get understanding. One is to follow
the guidance of the Spirit that dwells within, and the
other is to go blindly ahead and learn by hard experience.
These two ways are open to everyone. It is recognized by
the man who has had experience that he can advise the one
who has not and thus save him the laborious steps of that
rocky road. In the light of omnipresent intelligence, is
there not One who knows all things, all roads, all
combinations, and what will be the outcome of every one?
Do not men and women by their constant efforts to peer into
the future prophesy a wisdom that knows all future? They
certainly do, and when man
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looks in the right direction he always finds such an oracle.
It is the prerogative of Spirit to know the future, and
when man consults Spirit with pure heart and unselfish
motives he has pointed out to him the very lines his life
shall be cast in if he is obedient to his most high God.
It is no great achievement for one who follows the leading
of Spirit within to forecast the future. To Spirit the
future is a succession of events based on the ideas
revolving in the mind at present. Whoever rides into his
own ideal realm can read his future for himself. He finds
there a chain of causes at work that he can easily see will
produce certain results. It is not necessary for him to
read the definite line along which each separate idea will
travel to its ultimate. This is the method of reasoning
from cause to effect. In Spirit, cause and effect are one.
They appear as one, and the ultimate is just as clear as
the inception. In mind, all things reach fruition the very
instant they are conceived. Time not being a factor, how
can there be a beginning and an ending? The architect plans
a house and sees it finished in his mind before a single
stone is laid or a pound of earth excavated. He can change
his plan many times before the construction commences. He
can destroy it entirely if he so desires. So man builds the
house of his own conscience. If he has been planning to
build a home for himself alone, in which there is but one
room, he created in mind just such
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a plan, and it is complete and awaits its coming into
visibility. If he has made a plan of a larger structure, in
which are many rooms, this plan will also come into
visibility.
Some persons build their houses far ahead in mind and say
nothing to anyone. Such persons make very substantial
plans, which are infused with the most enduring substance
of the invisible. Such were the plans of Napoleon when he
silently determined to be emperor and of the shepherd who
resolved to be Pope. Vanderbilt's rule of life, to which he
attributed all his success, was to reveal his plans to no
one.
Jesus said, "Let your speech be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay."
Talking is a waste of energy--a dissipater of power. If you
want the greatest success, do not talk too much about your
plans. Keep a reserve force of new ideas always on hand as
a generative center. Let your work speak for itself.
The electrician recognizes a certain universal law of
action in the revolutions he builds into his dynamo. The
energy produced is based on the size and texture of the
dynamo and rapidity of its motion. Mind has a law of
dynamics equally as scientific. The character of an idea is
the estimate of its size, and one's active faith in it
determines the rapidity of its motion. Ideas generate
energy with a swiftness unparalleled in physical dynamics.
Rather than moving inanimate things, they move men and
women. Rather than temporarily lighting our streets for a
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few hours, they light the lamps of intelligence that burn
eternally.
The secret of doing this successfully lies in knowing how
to handle our ideas. The electrician constantly improves
the efficiency of electricity by studying the machinery
that generates the power. The same rule holds good in
mental dynamics. We must study our ideas if we want to
improve the service of our body, of our intelligence, and
of our surroundings, for from these ideas flow forth the
currents that move the machinery of all of them. If our
ideas are based in Truth and we are satisfied that they
will stand the test of the most rigid justice, we do not
want to let the currents they produce in our mind leak away
on some grounded wire.
The world is full of people who are filled with high and
mighty resolves to do good, and they are sincere, but they
are connected with grounded wires. We must keep our wires
properly insulated, or our plant will not prove successful.
For instance, we are holding an idea of health, which is
generating currents in our mind that might flow out on the
wires of faith and heal the world, but we have broken the
current by believing that it should pass through a pill, a
magnetic hand, or the mind of someone who we think is
stronger than we. We must stop all this and send our idea
of health straight to the mark on the wires of our own true
word. We have an intuitively correct idea of the truth on
every question that comes to our mind, but we do not
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trust the idea. We impede its free currents by believing
that some book, some person, or some church organization
has sifted the truth and somehow established it before we
came into existence. This fallacy makes a menial of the
genius and puts out the light of the world in the minds of
generation after generation of sons of God. Spiritual ideas
must have spiritual wires, or their power dissipates. So we
need to watch both the ideas we hold and the words with
which we set them free. If we have an ideal world in which
we see things as we want them, yet think it an
impossibility that that world may be realized here and now,
we are dissipating the power that our ideas are generating.
So throughout the category of thought generation, every
idea must have a wire that corresponds to its circuit or
current. Our words, our acts, and our whole life must be in
accord with our ideas.
The realm of ideas is at the call of each of us; it is, in
fact, the source from which we draw our real sustenance. It
exists in Being as universal intelligence. Since it is the
cause and source of all intelligence, sooner or later it
must assert its unobstructed sway in the lives of all
mankind. When this realm of ideas becomes so active in the
consciousness that it attracts our special attention, we
call it a quickening conscience. It is the universal
intelligence of Being asserting its inherent moral
equilibrium. Man cannot always distort the fair face of the
God-Image, whose likeness he is. He may for a season wear
the
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grotesque mask of the mountebank or the fool, but in God's
own good time he will be unmasked by that silent inner self
that must be heard when its hour has come. God is not
mocked, nor is the secret place of the Most High in every
heart forever made a cave for thieves.
When conscience cries out in your heart, "Make straight the
way of the Lord," you will save time by heeding it. Let its
cleansing waters of denial flow over you. Change your
ideas. Be meek and lowly. Let your thoughts go up to the
Christ Spirit. Acknowledge Him as one whom you, in your
mortal consciousness, are not able to comprehend in the
majesty of His spiritual understanding.
If you are of haughty domineering, self-sufficient will,
you stand as Herod, the ruler of Judea. You are married to
the passions of the human soul. These passions lead you
into sense gratifications so deep, so degrading that you
cut off the head of the conscience that would have turned
you into the highway of good. But the reign of the sense
man is short-lived. Your kingdom is taken from you, and you
are banished from your native land. This was the fate of
Herod after he beheaded John the Baptist. This is the fate
of everyone who refuses to listen to the voice of his
higher self.
The key to the development of Jesus of Nazareth's great
powers was in His meek and lowly submission to the Father.
He disclosed this when He said, "Blessed are the meek: for
they shall inherit
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the earth." Whoever makes himself nothing in the presence
of God may be possessor of all things below God.
Man is open to God when he wills to be open. This opening
is made by our attitude of absolute mental humility in the
contemplation of spiritual realities. Thus, the likeness
takes on the express image of the Father, and in no other
way can it be done.
"I am meek and lowly in heart," said the mighty Nazarene.
"Not as I will, but as thou wilt," was the mental attitude
He always took when communing with the Father. It was
always in the same spirit of love and willing obedience to
the guidance of a wisdom that He knew transcended His own.
Jesus did not take the universe on His shoulders by
affirming His self-sufficiency. He unloaded every burden
and rested in the all-sufficiency of the Father. "I can of
myself do nothing"; "the Father abiding in me doeth his
works." This is the total denial of self--the giving up of
all personal desires, claims, and aims. Before man can do
this successfully he must change his ideas--there must be a
mental house cleaning.
The command, "If any man would come after me, let him deny
himself . . . and follow me," is not broadly interpreted by
the world. Some men think that self is denied sufficiently
when they acknowledge God as mind, life, love, substance
and all else as error; others think that they have only to
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give up the recognized sins of the world and believe in a
personal Saviour, Jesus. But the denial of self goes deeper
than all this. To be effective, it must reach the very
depths of the consciousness and dissolve all the organic
forms that the ideas held by the personal self have there
precipitated. Every human body has its stratified layers of
consciousness. These strata have, like the earth, been
built up layer after layer through ages and ages of
sidereal time. The body we live in is the result of a labor
that we began millions of years ago. It is the stored-up
memories of our experience in thought generation. We may
have dissolved that body ten millions of times, but no part
of its reality has ever been lost to us. Because we have
failed to energize it to the perpetuation of its form
indefinitely is no argument against its being the very body
we have had for aeons upon aeons. The form of it changes,
but the mental pictures we have formed in all those ages
are intact somewhere in our own private gallery.
But now the clouds are clearing away from our world, the
"sun of righteousness" is rising with "healing in its
wings." We are awakening to our powers and possibilities as
sons of the Most High.
The day of selflessness has come. This day delivers us from
all our burdens. We find that we do not have to bear any of
the cares of existence on our shoulders. We say with Jesus,
"All things have been delivered unto me of my Father." We
do not
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breathe for ourselves, but rather God breathes in and
through us. We do not have lives of our own, but we feel
the life of God surging through all our organs. We say to
our feet, our hands, and every part of our body, "You are
now one with God; you are perfect in His sight." We do not
think and speak by ourselves alone; we think and speak
God's thoughts after Him, which rush through our mind like
a mighty wind. Then tongues of fire come upon us, because
we are inspired by the Holy Spirit. Neither do we have
possessions of our own nor cares nor troubles about our
life or our families; we leave all these things to God--we
are absolutely without responsibility when we have fully
denied ourselves and followed the Christ. All
responsibility drops from us when we let go of the idea
that we are personal beings and possessed of parts,
passions, and faculties that belong to us individually.
Nothing like a personal man exists in the idea of God. The
idea of God is Jesus Christ--one universal man. Men are but
the mind organs of that one man--they do not possess of
themselves anything whatever, but all that the Christ
possesses flows through their consciousness when they have
ceased to believe in personality. This is the
at-one-ment--"I am in the Father, and the Father in
me"--and the apprehension of that at-one-ment dissolves
forever that inner monitor called accusing conscience.
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