The Power of Oneself. Charles Fillmore
The will plays the leading part in all systems of thought concentration. The simple statement, I will to be well, gathers the forces of mind and body about the central idea of wholeness, and the will holds the center just so long as the I AM continues its affirmation. No one ever died until he let go his will to live, and thousands live on and on through the force of a determined will.
19. The "devil" that we are to overcome is the adverse will, which seeks to master man in the without. This "adversary" troubles us because we strive to maintain personal freedom instead of submitting to divine guidance. Self-confidence is a virtue when founded on the Truth of Being, but when it arises from the personal consciousness it keeps man from his dominion. Are you trying just from yourself to be free from the traditions of the outer world, or are you resting in the understanding and assurance that you are a son of God? To know yourself as a son of God is to overcome the "devil"--the personal self. The "devil" makes you believe that you are the son of the flesh. To overcome, say: I put Satan behind me by the realization that God is my Father. I am centered in Him, and all things are under His dominion. I live in the infinite Power that produces all self-control. I have no necessity for controlling people. Events and people are controlled by divine law. There is an eternal law of justice. I am one with that law and I rest in it.
20. Among the apostles of Jesus, Matthew represents the will, and Thomas the understanding. Matthew was the taxgatherer who sat at the gate, representing the executive part of the government; so the will is the executive faculty of the mind and carries out the edicts of the I AM. All thoughts that go into or out of man's consciousness pass the gate at which sits the will, and if the will understands its office, the character and the value of every thought are inquired into and a certain tribute is exacted for the benefit of the whole man.
21. Thomas, the understanding, is represented as under discipline; that is, not yet in the light of Spirit. The understanding, in its first steps in Truth, wants its lessons and accompanying demonstrations to be couched in terms like those used in the outer world. When Jesus showed Himself to Thomas, the latter said that he would not believe unless he could see the prints of the nails and feel the wound in the side of the Lord. This double proof was given him, and Jesus said: "Be not faithless, but believing." Thomas was then spiritually awakened and he made the acknowledgment: "My Lord and my God."
22. The people who are being educated in Truth through the written and the spoken word will finally arrive at that place where the true light from Spirit will dawn upon them, and they will, like Thomas, see with spiritual understanding and have proof of the reality of the Christ Mind.
The Establishment Of Will And Understanding
(To be used in connection with Lesson Ten)
1. My understanding is established in Divine Mind.
2. "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."
3. The will of God is ever uppermost in my consciousness.
4. "Not my will, but thine, be done."
5. I firmly believe the guiding Intelligence that directs all my thoughts.
6. "There is a spirit in man, and the breath of the Almighty giveth them understanding."
7. The willfullness and stubborness of the flesh have no power in me. I am obedient to Spirit and receptive to all its secret thoughts.
8. "Not . . . of the will of flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God."
9. I am willing to change my mind.
10. "Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind."
11. The Christ of God is born in my consciousness, and I am glorified in my understanding.
Lesson Eleven
Judgment and Justice
1. "Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured unto you".--Mt. 7:1,2.
2. "And thou shalt put in the breastplate of judgment the Urim and the Thummim; and they shall be upon Aaron's heart, when he goeth in before Jehovah: and Aaron shall bear the judgment of the children of Israel upon his heart before Jehovah continually".-Ex. 28:30.
3. The Urim and Thummim (Lights and Perfections). These were the sacred symbols (worn upon the breastplate of the high priest, upon his heart) by which God gave oracular responses for the guidance of His People in temporal matters. What they were is unknown; they are introduced in Exodus without explanation, as if familiar to the Israelites of that day. Modern Egyptology supplies us with a clue; it tells us that Egyptian high priests in every town, who were also its magistrates, wore round their necks a jeweled gem bearing on one side the image of Truth, and on the other sometimes that of Justice, sometimes that of Light. When the accused was acquitted, the judge held out the image of him to kiss. In the final judgment Osiris wears around his neck the jeweled Justice and Truth. The Septuagint translates Urim and Thummim by "Light and Truth." Some scholars suppose that they were the twelve stones of the breastplate; others that they were two additional stones concealed in its fold. Josephus adds to these the two sardonyx buttons, worn on the shoulders, which he says emitted luminous rays when the response was favorable; but the precise mode in which the oracles were given is lost in obscurity.--Bible Glossary of Antiquities.
4. The law as given by Moses is for the guidance of man in the evolution of his faculties. The figures, personalities, and symbols represent potentialities developed and undeveloped on various planes of consciousness. The high priest stands for spiritual man, officiating between God and sense man. The breastplate in an armor protects the most vital part, the heart. The heart is love, the affectional consciousness in man; it may be subject to the force of weak sympathy, unless balanced by another power in which is discrimination, or judgment.
5. The breastplate had on it twelve precious stones, representing the twelve tribes of Israel. This clearly means that the twelve faculties of the mind must be massed at the great brain center called the solar plexus. It means that all the intelligence of man's faculties must be brought into play in the final judgments of the mind. The Urim and Thummim (Lights and Perfections; under the Egyptian symbology, "Truth and Justice") are the oracular edicts of Divine Mind that are intuitively expressed as a logical sequence of the divine principles, truth and justice.
6. A modern metaphysician would interpret all this as signifying the omnipresence of Divine Mind in its perfect idea, Christ. Truth is ready at all times to give judgment and justice. As God is love, so God is justice. These qualities are in Divine Mind in unity, but are made manifest in man's consciousness too often in diversity. It is through the Christ Mind in the heart that they are unified. When justice and love meet at the heart center, there are balance, poise, and righteousness. When judgment is divorced from love, and works from the head alone, there goes forth the human cry for justice. In his mere human judgment, man is hard and heartless; he deals out punishment without consideration of motive or cause, and justice goes awry.
7. Good judgment, like all other faculties of the mind, is developed from Principle. In its perfection it is expressed through man's mind, with all its absolute relations uncurtailed. Man has the right concept of judgment, and ideally the judges of our courts have that unbiased and unprejudiced discrimination which ever exists in the Absolute. A prejudiced judge is abhorred, and a judge who allows himself to be moved by his sympathies is not considered safe.
8. The metaphysician finds it necessary to place his judgment in the Absolute in order to demonstrate its supreme power. This is accomplished by one's first declaring that one's judgment is spiritual and not material; that its origin is in God; that all its conclusions are based on Truth and that they are absolutely free from prejudice, false sympathy, or personal ignorance. This gives a working center from which the ego, or I AM, begins to set in order its own thought world. The habit