(Back) Jesus and Zacchaeus The Parable of the Wicked Tenants (Next)
This is a series of lectures given by Mr. Edward Rabel, member of the faculty of S.M.R.S.
Winter semester 1976 - 2nd. Yr. Class. Lecture given on May 21, 1976
21:23And when he was come into the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came unto him as he was teaching, and said, By what authority doest thou these things? and who gave thee this authority? 21:24And Jesus answered and said unto them, I also will ask you one question, which if ye tell me, I likewise will tell you by what authority I do these things. 21:25The baptism of John, whence was it? from heaven or from men? And they reasoned with themselves, saying, If we shall say, From heaven; he will say unto us, Why then did ye not believe him? 21:26But if we shall say, From men; we fear the multitude; for all hold John as a prophet. 21:27And they answered Jesus, and said, We know not. He also said unto them, Neither tell I you by what authority I do these things.
In the Fundamentals course, one of the questions is, "Can one come into the realization of Truth by argument?" The answer, of course, is "No....", but there is some important psychology there, spiritual psychology, which will serve one well if he reads it and keeps it in mind. We often use the euphemism of discussion or involvement for this business about arguing. Arguing or discussing or contraversing or opinionizing is valid. It has a valid place in the structure of life. It is a field of activity, of expression; therefore, it has, somewhere along the line, its own type of validity. Coming into a realization of Truth is another validity, but they are not the same thing.
We can come into a realization of Truth, and we discuss and argue. They both have their time and place and validity, but to try to mix them up into one activity is adulteration, and it will not work. It will only cause confusion; and this is why, when you are coming into a realization of Truth, that will claim priority on this great power called attention. When you are arguing, there is even a stronger demand being made for priority on your attention. Even if you are arguing about Truth, while you are in that state, you are more concerned with the argument than you are the Truth you are arguing about, because arguing has a louder voice than realization and will call louder to the attention faculty. So here is your poor attention factor wanting to be an obedient and useful servant, and it is being called at, asked for priority, to two entirely different ballgames.
So, if you don't help straighten out the situation, this faculty of attention will become scattered, it will become divided; and, of course, scattered attention is another name for confusion. This business of realizing that your attention will give priority to what the real you tells you you want it to give priority to means that if you want it to give priority to winning the argument, then tell it that: "I want you, attention, to help me win this argument." Be honest with yourself. If it is that you want to come into a realization of Truth, then tell it to go away from the argument-ballgame and come into the realization of Truth-activity. It will obey you. It is your servant. Your intellect really is your servant if you will use it as such, and your sense-consciousness is really your servant, if you tell it and use it in that manner; otherwise, these factors will try to be master, because everything that is in existence, even parts of a whole, have this instinctive desire or ambition toward mastery. Be careful. Remember who is in charge.
Q. Another thing that applies to us here on the human level, is that everything, including ourselves and children, especially, want to know their identity.
A. Right, and if they are recognized within Truth, then they are being given their right identity and they respond beautifully. That is like what May Rowland used to say: "The body loves to be told the truth about itself." She did not say that the body loves to be denied any place in validity but that it loves to be told the truth; anything's right validity in the scheme of things, in the overall God-plan for life. This is one of the things that metaphysical understanding of Jesus' teachings helps a person to do, to keep his priorities straight and realize certain truths about his wholeness.
Q. What faculty would be involved here?
A. Actually, all twelve are involved here, but you are right to put the will first because it really is the executive faculty. It is the great permission-giving faculty or permission-withholding faculty, in some cases; or let us even put it this way: it determines the degree of willingness involved, which is a little different from permission-not-granted. That is mostly denial, but the willingness will determine the degree of willingness, which would involve all the twelve powers.
Jesus tells us that we have the light and that any part of us that is aware of God - and, folks, in this particular discourse, let's limit the meaning of the word light, as Jesus is using it, remember just for this lesson. This dissertation I am going to give, which does not mean this is the only meaning of that word but sometimes you must accept certain limitations to stay within a workable framework; so in this case let us regard it as "awareness of God and Truth". You can have a strong light, you can have a weak light, you can even have a flickering light, and the same is true of our awareness, you can have different degrees of intensities or regularities - any part of you that is aware of God in any degree has the light or is in the light.
This light is, in many respects, the most precious thing in both your inner and your outer world. Every part of you from your lowest level of instinct to your highest level of consciousness and then extending into your realm of physical function has the innate ability and intelligence to be aware of God. Notice I did not say that these are all aware of God at all times. This may or may not be the case, but every part of your being has the innate ability be aware of God, from the very highest level of your consciousness to the most mechanical or instinctive function of your organism.
Nothing is left out of the possibility of being aware of God, so that you have the light. You have the innate or potential of being aware of God in all parts of your being, but because one has the potential or innate possibility does not mean that a person is fully aware of God always. There is darkness, which means non-awareness of God in certain aspects of our being.
There is not one atom or cell of your being which cannot have an awareness of God's presence and power. Not, let me jump the gun a bit. When you are in a state where every atom and cell of your being is having an awareness of God, we call that regeneration, Christ-consciousness, total spiritual awareness, oneness, really realization of oneness, transfiguration and illumination, total radiant illumination. Jesus achieved this state, as far as we know, only when incarnate. Evidently, at that moment, even the most instinctive cell of cells in His body partook of the God-awareness, so even His very person radiated illumination into the physical plane, into the vibratory plane, and we had a spectacular phenomenon; but it only happened once with Him as far as we know. It can happen. It could happen with Him because it could happen with anybody, which means that no part of your being is excluded from the possibility of becoming aware of God.
Now, you might ask what kind of an awareness there would be in that very lowest, physical, instinctive, functioning of me? I do not know, but I do know that it can be there, that my toenail can be aware of God, you see, just as much as my pineal gland can be aware of God. Where is the determining factor? Where is the one in charge that will let even the toenail be aware of God? I AM-consciousness, the dominion, the authority, the Christ-realization, the image and likeness, creative Spirit, indwelling me as my real Self. Here is where it all starts and extends into all phases.
The more aware of God any part of you is, the more light that part of you has and is capable of radiating. Now, Jesus says first of all to believe in the light. Notice that He says you already have it, but He doesn't just let it go at that. In order to know that you have it and to utilize the fact that you have it, there are some things to be done. Just like everybody has a healing consciousness, but evidently everybody cannot utilize their healing consciousness; so there are some other things one must do to be able to express and share that which one already has. In Ed Rabel's teachings on healing, spiritual healing, he always presents belief as the first required component for sharing the healing consciousness. Jesus does it here with this radiating the light. He says, "Believe in the light and then walk in the light not just with the intellect but with all thoughts, feelings, and words.” In other words, do not deprive any part of yourself of this life, in your mind, in your feeling-nature, in your physical organism, try to walk in the light; but it requires first, believing in the light.
We must really believe that God-awareness is possible, possible to share, to radiate in every atom and cell of our being. This means that wherever you are and whatever you are doing, try to take into this with you, your awareness of God; and this can be done. Take your God-awareness into all your life activities, all of your involvements, all of your sacrifices, even. Have your God-awareness there with you. This beautiful pamphlet that we have in Silent Unity, "You Are Not Alone", there is always you and God, and to have an awareness of this in every situation is keeping every part of you in the light, which is your inherited divine right.
Keep the light of awareness of God burning even in the most trivial, mechanical and ordinary things. If you are giving any sort of attention to your body, literally tell your body to be aware of God's light and energy, in all of its organs and processes; even when you are trimming your toenails, bless the chunk of big toenail before you throw it away. In a silly little thing like that, know that it is no longer a part of you but a part of Christ and of God. Be thankful for the service it has given; then, bless the in-growing new tissue. You do not have to tell people you are doing this the way I am doing now. It is just that you are capable of doing such a thing and that you do not feel foolish because you know what you are doing. You are sharing, bringing the light in secret ways; but very often secret ways are the most valuable ways. You never know. If you are doing any kind of physical work, let all your movements be done in an awareness of God's power working through you. Remember what power is, folks.
The faculty of power, which is your ability for movement, begins as an idea, a divine idea in God-mind; now, the divine idea of power is the ability to transform substance from one plane of expression to another. All right, what are you doing when you do any kind of physical work, washing dishes, for instance; you are taking energy from the stillness plane, and you are transforming it into the energy of the movement plane for a very constructive purpose called "keeping the place clean" and keeping the place clean is just as spiritual, if you see it that way, as building a new church. Do not designate things as trivialities and unimportant, because if you do, so they become to you. If you are realizing the true perspective, the true sense of priority in all the activities of your existence, you are living light, and light is catching.
Now, there is one more aspect of this. When you are feeling emotional about something, try to let these emotions, whatever they are, be determined by an awareness of God's love and beauty. Notice, I did not make any attempt to tell you there which emotions are okay and which are not okay, did I? I am telling you that whatever emotions you are feeling at that moment, connect them to the divine idea behind all emotions, which is love and beauty. I am mellowing a bit, folks. At one time I would have told you which emotions to have and which to not have. That was before I realized that all emotions are, to some degree, in some manner, an attempt on the part of an individual to express a divine idea. It may be a distorted, grotesque type of effort, and it may turn out badly, but nevertheless, it is an effort. The effort had to have been that somehow that soul wanted to give expression to its current longing for or interpretation of the original emotion.
Q. I think that is something that needed to be said, because it has been put down so much by Truth teachers who meant well.
A. Yes, because under the divine law of grace, even when we give the negative a place of expression where it is bound to react back on us, then we are going to have to go through some more of the old rigmarole; we still have this marvelous power of denial and forgiveness, you see. It is not just cause and effect, point-blank, and that's that. It is cause and effect, but it is also grace; and even when you have done a harm causing-effect expressing of a negative emotion, that beautiful thing called forgiveness, denial, and reforming is always at hand.
Q. I tried something this last week in the line of using emotion in a different way than I ever had before. I had a real disappointment, and I felt badly. Normally I try to work back up out of it. I thought I just didn't need to do that this time, so I let the emotion be felt to see what would happen. It helped so much because I thought, "Okay, I did not bring forth that which I thought I was going to be able to attract. So, why didn't I?" It let me really analyze my motive in a lot better way than it ever happened before. What you are saying has a great deal of meaning in this way. I think I found wisdom through this emotional thing.
A. Yes, because you took a look at it with open eyes; therefore you shed light on it, you see.
Before we end this lesson, folks, I appeal to you to remember this new insight I am sharing with you. It is as new to me as it is to you, maybe. It is this: that the divine idea, the original divine idea behind all my emotions really is love and beauty. What I do to that in my mood or mode of expression is up to me. That does not change the purity of the origin of our emotional nature. The divine idea behind the feminine of us is love and beauty, so all of this mode of thinking, feeling and expressing with our God-awareness, Jesus calls simply light, living and walking in the light; and perhaps most crucial of all is when we are facing troubles and unpleasant situations in our life. Here, above all times, is where we need to remember the light most but where we are most prone to not remember it.
Remember what I said about the battle for the priority of your attention? When you are facing a problem or unpleasant situation, your reaction to this is usually a clamoring for the priority of attention in that situation; and here is where we have to be alert. As Jesus said, we have to watch and pray and in that particular challenge, if we remember then to, again, give the priority of the attention to the light, the truth, then that light that we are giving priority to in attention will be shed into the problem and the unpleasant situation enabling us to see things which we would not have been able to see had we not been shedding light into it, had we been only reacting to it, which is what most of us are prone to do, unfortunately, until we practice otherwise. Stay aware of God. Affirm the truth of His presence. Right into all troubles, right answers will be revealed, which may have been hitherto hidden. Guidance will be given.
Remember, folks, all attention to divine ideas brings forth guidance from that divine idea. This is one of the strongest realizations I have had this year, that belief in and attention to a divine idea does not just reveal the divine idea, but the divine idea will then bring forth its own needful guidance, whatever is needed in the matter. When you see it work as it will, you are so tempted to call it magic, just plain old-fashioned magic is the word that comes to mind when you witness what this does. I checked this out with Martha, and she used the same word, magic; so we must be doing something right. Right answers are always irresistibly attracted to the light.
Behind every thought is the divine idea of knowingness, of pure intelligence, omniscience.
Text of the original transcript from p.260 to the last paragraph of p.263.
Transcribed by Margaret Garvin on 04-11-2014
