How I Used Truth - Lesson 10 - Annotation 3
What is the primary cause of failure, poverty, sickness, and death?
3. The primary cause of failure, poverty, sickness, and death is not being aware of our divine origin, and the nature of God's ideas that form our spiritual inheritance. With this unawareness has come the feeling of being separated from God and His good. Belief in separation indicates a belief in two powers, good and not-good, or God and an opposite power. It is one thing to accept intellectually (or think about) the truth of our divine nature and our relationship to God as His son, and quite another actually to know or experience this truth in our life. Until we have added feeling to our intellectual thinking we do not know completely the truth that "shall make you free" (John 8:32). John 8:31 reads, "If ye abide in my word, then are ye truly my disciples." This indicates that we are to abide in the word, or feel the truth as well as think about it. We are then making the law or truth of Jesus' words part of our consciousness.
Belief in two powers, rather than the one Presence and one Power, leads to wrong use of our mental abilities, resulting in conditions of failure, poverty, sickness, and death. (See Lessons in Truth Lesson 1 Annotation 1.) Failure, poverty, sickness, and death all represent suffering in the human race. Ignorance of our divine nature causes us to think contrary to Truth. This chaotic condition of our mind seems to make us unwilling to release the negative mental beliefs that bind us to these undesirable conditions. Unless a mental cleansing is accomplished we cannot walk the "straight white line of absolute Truth" (How I Used Truth 97) that enables us to bring forth demonstrations of success, abundance, wholeness, and life.
"Ignorance of the Truth is the cause of all misery."
—Attributed to Buddha.
Webster's dictionary gives the root meaning of the word ignore to be "not knowing." Thus we see that "ignorance of the Truth" is not being consciously aware of it. The truth is that as spiritual beings we are free from failure, poverty, sickness, and death, but only as we know this can we claim it in our human experience.
"For freedom did Christ set us free: stand fast therefore, and be not entangled again in a yoke of bondage" (Gal. 5:1).
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Preceding Entry: What is demonstration, and how is it made?
Following Entry: Explain each of the following terms: omnipresence, omnipotence,
and omniscience.
