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Keep A True Lent
Chapter 15
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[Keep A True Lent]
[Charles Fillmore's Works] [Unity on the Web Home Page]
Faith-Thinking
Chapter 15
MAN CAN NEVER discern more than a part of the circle in
which he moves, although his powers and capacities are
susceptible of infinite expansion. He discovers a faculty
in himself, and cultivates it until it opens out into a
universe of correlated faculties. The farther he goes into
mind, the wider its horizon, until he is forced to
acknowledge that he is not the personal, limited thing he
appears, but the focus of an infinite idea.
That idea contains within itself inexhaustible
possibilities. These possibilities are projected into man's
consciousness as an image is reflected in a mirror, and,
through the powers vested in him, he brings them into
manifestation.
Thus man is the most important factor in creation--he is
the will of God individualized.
There is but one God, hence there can be but one ideal man.
Each individual is the focus of the life, intelligence,
love, and substance of this one universal man, Christ.
We draw all our substance, of whatever nature, mental or
physical, from Him: "In him we live, and move, and have our
being."
Our identity as individuals is formed by the infinitely
various combinations of His attributes. We are the will of
this Grand Man, Christ, and all of
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us draw on Him, through our sentient volition, for whatever
we need.
All that any individual has ever expressed, or may ever
express, is open to each one of us, because there is but
one fount and we all stand as equals in His presence.
There is one principle of music; but there are millions of
combinations, in symphony and song, of the few simple tones
on which that principle is based. These tones are expressed
in form as notes. They may be on the staff, in variations
beyond computation, and similar variations may also be
repeated above and below the staff.
So each one of us focuses the attributes of man in his
consciousness in infinite combinations on the staff--the
intellect; above the staff, the spiritual; below the staff,
the animal.
Certain arrangements of dominant tones are recognized by
musical composers as producing harmony. So in man; certain
combinations of the attributes of the Christ in the
individual, Jesus, produced the harmonious man, Christ
Jesus.
We refer to the Christ as man, because our language has no
word which expresses the two-in-one of Being. The Hebrew
Yeve is a term that includes both male and female
attributes.
Paul inspirationally said: "Have this mind in you, which
was also in Christ Jesus: who, existing in the form of God,
counted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be
grasped."
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This is the problem set before each one of us. We all want
to know how to let the mind be in us which was in Christ
Jesus. We feel the stirring of powers and capacities which
we have never been able to use because of a weakness in
some co-ordinating faculty.
One person may have a talent suppressed because of
diffidence; another may have a talent rendered obnoxious by
excessive egotism. This all shows that our powers are
making servants of us. We must know who and what we are; we
must take our place in the Godhead and marshal our forces.
There are various methods for doing this. Most of them are
limited; they never get above the intellect; they do not
venture into the spiritual. Most of the methods are
theoretical; they are written down by those who have
perceived the truth but have not carried it out in detail.
One man let his life be a demonstration of the bringing
forth of the powers of the Christ; this was Jesus of
Nazareth.
From within He gave forth the doctrine of the Christ;
externally He stood for perfected humanity, Jesus. His
apostles represented the powers of all men acting their
respective parts under varying moods, but eventually
blended into the one harmony--perfect man.
In order to command our powers, and to bring them into
unity of action, we must know what they are, and their
respective places on the staff of Being.
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The Grand Man, Christ, has twelve powers, represented in
the history of Jesus by the twelve apostles. So each one of
us has twelve powers to make manifest, to bring out and use
in the attainment of his ideals.
The most important power of man is the original
faith-thinking faculty. Note particularly the term,
"original faith-thinking faculty"; a great deal is involved
in this definition. We all have the thinking faculty
located in the head, from which we send forth thoughts,
good, bad, and indifferent. If we are educated and molded
after the ordinary pattern of the human family, we may live
an average lifetime and never have an original thought. The
thinking faculty in the head is supplied with the
secondhand ideas of our ancestors, the dominant beliefs of
the race, or the threadbare stock of the ordinary social
whirl. This is not faith-thinking. Faith-thinking is done
only by one who has caught sight of the inner truths of
Being, and who feeds his thinking faculty on images
generated in the heart, or love center.
Faith-thinking is not merely an intellectual process, based
on reasoning. The faith-thinker does not compare, analyze,
or draw conclusions from known premises. He does not take
appearances into consideration; he is not biased by
precedent. His thinking gives form, without cavil or
question, to ideas that come straight from the eternal
fount of wisdom. His perception impinges on the spiritual,
and he knows.
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To the question, "Who do men say that the Son of man is?"
those who reflected the indefinite, guessing thought
currents of the day, answered: "Some say John the Baptist;
some, Elijah; and others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets."
But Jesus is not asking for secondhand opinions; He appeals
direct to the faculty in man that always knows. He says,
"But who say ye that I am?" and that faculty represented as
Peter, answers, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living
God."
Then the Christ blesses him, and says: "Flesh and blood
hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father who is in
heaven. And I also say unto thee, that thou art Peter, and
upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of
Hades shall not prevail against it."
The thinking faculty in man makes him a free agent, because
it is his creative center; in and through this one power,
he establishes his consciousness--he builds his world.
Through the volition of this faculty, he can refuse to
receive ideas from Christ; he can cut himself away from the
realm of original Truth or from the illusionary universe in
which he is forever unraveling tangled ends and chasing
shadows. Thus we see clearly that this faculty is the rock,
the foundation on which our consciousness must be built.
For generation after generation, humanity had exercised the
thinking faculty, and fed it on the illusions of sense, and
"every imagination of the
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thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." The root
of the Hebrew word here translated evil is aven, which
means "nothing." Thus man was feeding his thinking faculty
on nothing, instead of true thoughts from God.
As the result of this lack of conscious connection of the
thinking faculty with the Fountainhead of existence,
humanity had reached a very low state. Then came Jesus of
Nazareth, whose mission it was to connect the thinker with
the true source of thought. Thinking at random had brought
man into a deplorable condition, and his salvation depended
on his again joining his consciousness to the Christ. Only
through that connection could he be brought back into his
Edenic state, the church of God.
Then it was, in the darkness of intellect's night, that the
thinking faculty caught sight of its higher self and
joyfully exclaimed, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the
living God," and the response to that gleam of spiritual
perception was the acknowledgment of faith as the
foundation on which the church of Christ is built.
What an incalculable amount of time, energy, and effort has
been wasted trying to build conditions of harmony, by both
individuals and society, without making the connection
between the thinker and the true source of thought.
If you have not recognized the spiritual center within
yourself, and have not acknowledged allegiance to it, you
are drifting in the darkness of sense.
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You are allowing your thinking faculty to draw its thoughts
(which are its food) from the chaos of ignorance, and you
suffer the consequences in the discordant world it creates
for you. Do not forget that everything that appears in your
life and affairs, physically, mentally, or otherwise, has
sometime been sent forth from your thinking faculty. It is
only through the power vested in it that you can come into
consciousness of anything. Consciousness makes your heaven
and it makes your hell.
Some persons have let the thinking faculty run away with
them, and they cannot control their thoughts. So some
drivers let their automobiles run away, but the law always
holds them responsible for damage done, and they find it
cheaper in the end to give stricter attention to driving.
Get clearly into your understanding that you are not the
faith-thinker, Peter. You are Jesus; Peter is one of your
twelve powers.
Before this dawns on you, you are a carpenter; you are a
builder in the realm of matter. Peter is a fisherman, one
who draws his ideas from the changeable, unstable sea of
sense.
When you realize that you are Mind, and that all things are
originally generated in the laboratory of Mind, you leave
your carpenter's bench and go forth proclaiming this Truth
that has been revealed to you. You find that your tools in
this new field of labor are your untrained faculties. The
first of these faculties to be brought under your dominion
is Peter,
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the thinking power. This thinking faculty is closely
associated with another power, your strength (Andrew;
Andrew and Peter are brothers), and you say to them, "Come
ye after me, and I will make you fishers of men."
"Going on from thence"--that is, when you have trained
these faculties until they are in a measure obedient, you
discover two other powers: John (love) and James (justice).
These are also brothers, and you call to them both at the
same time.
You now have four powers under your dominion; these are the
first apostles of Jesus. With these you begin to do the
works of Spirit.
You now have the power to heal the many that are "sick with
divers diseases, and cast out many demons," and to preach
"throughout all Galilee."
That Peter stands today at the gate of heaven is no mere
figure of speech; he always stands there, when you have
acknowledged the Christ; and he has the "keys of the
kingdom of heaven." The keys are the thoughts he forms, the
words he speaks. He then stands "porter at the door of
thought," and freely exercises the power that the Christ
declares: "Whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be
bound in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth
shall be loosed in heaven."
You can readily see why this faith-thinker, Peter, is the
foundation; why faith is the one faculty to be guarded,
directed, and trained. His words are operative on many
planes of consciousness, and he
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will bind you to conditions of servitude if you do not
guard his acts closely.
The people who let their thinking faculty attach itself to
the things of earth, are limiting or "binding" their free
ideas, or "heaven," and they thereby become slaves to hard,
material conditions, gradually shutting out any desire for
higher things.
Those who look right through the apparent hardships of
earthly environments, and persistently declare them not
material, but spiritual, are "loosing" them in the ideal,
or "heaven." Those circumstances must, through the creative
power vested in the thinker, eventually arrange themselves
according to his word.
This is also especially true of bodily conditions. If you
allow Peter to speak of erroneous states of consciousness
as true conditions, you will be bound to them, and you will
suffer, but if you see to it that he pronounces them free
from errors of sense, they will be "loosed."
Until faith is thoroughly identified with the Christ, you
will find that the Peter faculty in you is a regular
weathercock. He will, in all sincerity, affirm his
allegiance to Spirit, and then in the hour of adversity
deny that he ever knew Him.
This, however, is in his probationary period. When you have
trained him to look to Christ for all things, under all
circumstances, he becomes the stanchest defender of the
faith.
How necessary it is for you to know the important
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place in your consciousness that this faculty, Peter,
occupies. You are the free will, the directive Ego, Jesus.
You have the problem of life before you--the bringing forth
of the Grand Man with His twelve powers.
This is your "church." You are the high priest without
beginning of years or end of days, the alpha and the omega,
but without disciplining your powers you cannot do what the
Father has set before you. Your thinking faculty is the
first to be considered. It is the inlet and the outlet of
all your ideas. It is always active, zealous, impulsive,
but not always wise. Its nature is to think, and think it
will. If you are ignorant of your office--a prince in the
house of David--and stand meekly letting it think unsifted
thoughts, your thinking faculty will prove an unruly
servant and produce all sorts of discord.
Its food is ideas--symbolized in the gospels as fish--and
it is forever casting its net on the right, on the left,
for a draught.
You alone can direct where its net shall be cast. You are
he who says, "Cast the net on the right side." The "right
side" is always on the side of Truth, the side of power.
Whenever you, the master, are in command, the nets are
filled with ideas, because you are in touch with the
infinite storehouse of wisdom.
You must stay very close to Peter--you must always be
certain of his allegiance and love. Test him often. Say to
him, "Lovest thou me more than
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these?" You want his undivided attention. He is inclined to
wander. We say our "mind wanders." This is an error. The
mind never wanders. The faith-thinker, Peter, wanders; he
looks in many directions. He stands at the door of heaven,
the harmony within you; the same door has the world of
sense on its outer side.
Peter looks within--he also looks without. This is his
office, and it is right that he should look both ways. But
he must be equalized, balanced. He must look within for his
sustenance; he must recognize the Christ before he can draw
his net full of fish.
Keep your eye on Peter. Make him toe the mark every moment.
Teach him to affirm over and over again. Say unto him "the
third time, Simon, son of John, lovest thou me?" He may
say, "Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I
love thee."
This is a very common protest. We hear in this day of
modern metaphysics that concentration is not necessary;
that it is only necessary to perceive spiritual Truth; that
the demonstration will follow. Jesus gave us many lessons
on this very point. He knew Peter like a book. He knew that
this faculty was versatile but apt to change its base
frequently. When in the exuberance of his allegiance Peter
protested that he would lay down his life for Jesus, the
Master said, "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, The cock
shall not crow, till thou hast denied me thrice."
You must teach Peter to concentrate. Teach him to center
himself on true words. It is through him
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that you feed your sheep (your other faculties). Keep him
at his task. He is inquisitive, impulsive, and dictatorial
when not firmly directed. When he questions your dominion
and tries to dictate the movements of your other powers,
put him into line, with, "What is that to thee? follow thou
me."
Descartes said, "I think, therefore I am." This is
precisely as if Jesus had said, "I am Peter, therefore I
am." This is the I AM losing itself in its own creation.
Exactly the converse of this statement is true: "I am,
therefore I think."
Thinking is a faculty of the Ego, the omnipotent I AM of
each one of us. It is a process in mind, the formulating
process of mind, and under our dominion.
The I AM does not think unless it wills to do so. You can
stop all sense thought action when you have learned to
separate your I AM from the thinking faculty. Know this,
and live in Christ.
Be no longer a slave to the thinking faculty. Command it to
be still and know. Stand at the center of your being and
say, "I and the Father are one." "I am meek and lowly in
heart." "All authority hath been given unto me in heaven
and on earth." "I am, and there is none beside me."
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[Keep A True Lent]
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