How I Used Truth - Lesson 4 - Annotation 10
How do we "loose him and let him go" (John 11:44)
10. We "loose him and let him go" every time we erase our misconception of an individual and instead conceive of him as the son of God. "Loosing him" belongs to the process of denial, and "letting him go" belongs to the process of affirmation. By the former we deny reality to the wrong mental picture we have of another who apparently does not measure up to the Truth. By the latter we affirm, silently or audibly, the freedom which is his as a spiritual being.
In Annotation Nine of this Lesson the statement is made that we can never be the "door" or the "way" for another person. However, our uplifted consciousness may be the only open door that God can use at that particular time to help another to develop the divinity within himself. Our willingness to "loose him," by erasing from our own consciousness any limited concept of him, may be the first step in lifting a burden from his mind. Our Scripture says, "No more consciousness of sins" (Heb. 10:2). Then we go further and "let him go" into the Truth of his divine nature, Saying to them that are bound, Go forth" (Isa. 49:9). In this way, our understanding and compassion can be used as channels for God's love to touch his heart and stir him into "seeking the Christ" within himself. Love is a solvent that can melt the hardest heart, making it receptive to the inflow of God's blessings of illumination, health, harmony, abundance, and success.
Nearly all of us, desiring to help friends and loved ones, feel that there must be something we can do. Doctor Cady answers this in the text on page 53 by saying:
"Yes, there is something you can do, and a very effectual something, too. . . . You can, whenever you think of your friend, speak the word of freedom to him. . .. You can tell him mentally that Christ lives within him and makes him free, forever free" (How I Used Truth 53).
We may ask, "What is the word of freedom?" It is declaring the friend or loved one free from the negative beliefs and habits that are enslaving him in undesirable conditions of mind, body, and affairs. It is declaring that he has the Christ power within him that enables him to take dominion and authority over all his thoughts, feelings, words, conditions, circumstances. To "speak the word of freedom" is to declare, with deep conviction, that this one is the beloved of God, of the same nature as God, free with the freedom of God.
Part of the action we take when we "loose him and let him go" is seeing the friend or loved one as an evolving soul as well as a spiritual being. When we can do this, we see him finding the "way" and the "door," gaining the right guidance to learn and to grow spiritually. We keep our eyes on the divine pattern that is emerging, and not on the appearances that have come forth during the growing process. When we truly "loose him and let him go" we find ourselves following Jesus' profound instruction:
"Judge not according to appearance, but judge righteous judgment" (John 7:24).
In Lesson Two of How I Used Truth, the Annotations explained the Bible verse found in John 20:23: "Whose soever sins ye forgive, they are forgiven unto them; whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained." When we use the word remit in place of forgive as it appears in the King James Version of our Bible, we can see more clearly what Jesus was teaching. When we forgive, or remit, the shortcomings of others that may have caused us much anxiety, we are in effect saying, "I loose you and let you go." On the other hand, if we do not reach the point of loosing and letting go, we retain in our own consciousness the very problem we want released from another person. Our failure to release from our own mind a shortcoming (sin) in another may also influence him to remain in the state of bondage from which we desire to see him freed.
Yet I could not solve the problem
That harried and plagued me so
Till I harked to the voice of wisdom,
To loose it and let it go.
-- M. Helen Peterson: Best-Loved Unity Poems.
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Preceding Entry: What did Jesus mean when He said, "I am the door" (John 10:9) and also "I am the way" (John 14:6)?
Following Entry: What is it that is capable of supplying each soul with the fulfillment of its own particular desires in abundant measure?
