Chapter 13
The Christ Spirit
1. The same Christ Spirit that was in Jesus is implanted in all children of God. As you find the Christ in yourself, you realize that you are one with Jesus Christ in God-Mind. Your soul has taken deep root in the universal Mind, and you are growing and unfolding, drawing upon the Invisible and making God manifest. The power of Divine Mind is irresistible, and your part is to have faith in it to make its good things manifest in your life and affairs.
2. The Christ Spirit in you is a magnet to attract the Christ love. And of course, the outer symbols of love and substance are being provided to meet your every need. Realize this truth: Whatever is your own under the law of good comes to you; whatever does not belong to you is taken away to find its right place.
3. All true followers of Christ Jesus find that they must continually discipline their thinking and bring it in line with the Truth. Thoughts are formative; they are like seeds that produce after their kind. “As he thinketh within himself, so is he.” Thoughts are back of all conversation, so you see that you must co-operate with your Maker by training yourself to think life-giving, health-producing thoughts. Every day during your periods of communion with the Father in the silence, pray for wisdom and guidance. Make yourself open and receptive to the leading of the Spirit. It will be revealed to you just what steps to take in doing your part to establish divine order.
“To him that ordereth his way aright
Will I show the salvation of God.” (Psalms 50:23)
4. There really is no limit to spiritual unfoldment. The Spirit of truth within your own soul is giving you a right understanding of every experience that comes to you, and you are calling some of your inactive, unused soul powers into expression to meet the need. You are developing your soul, and this is the important thing. The more you exercise your powers the stronger they grow. So, you have the assurance and the satisfaction of knowing that your faith and all the rest of your spiritual faculties are being gradually developed until the Jesus Christ degree of unfoldment is reached.
5. All new experiences that try your faith are just opportunities for you to make the Good manifest. Best of all, these experiences are the steppingstones upon which you are progressing to more advanced things. They cause you to quicken, awaken, and bring forth into expression more of your innate capabilities that are awaiting your use.
6. God not only has created the earth, and us, but He is actually the very essence of all that we see about us, and all that is within us. We are free agents; we must learn to take and combine the ideas and the manifest materials into the souls and bodies we are to use.
7. You see, it isn’t that we are doing something by ourselves, and occasionally asking God, outside of us, to help. In reality, God is working out through His offspring that which He has conceived to be the ideal creation and life. But He has given us the power which He is—just as any wise father gives his son full freedom to become the son he feels sure that son will be. The wise father gives his son the best start he knows how to give, then leaves it with the son to use his heritage to make his own way in life. That is just what God is doing with us.
8. When you truly go to the Christ within yourself, instead of to your own thoughts, you will receive whatever you need. And unless you heed this instruction, drop the unwise things you have been insisting upon, and begin to think of God in you and about you as the total fullness of every good, you will seem to go through an eternity of confusion and lack and hungering. You must direct your prayers up—not up in the skies, but up into God consciousness. When you truly drop thoughts of conditions and personal desires and personalities, and center your attention in God, and think God only, and give thanks that God only is expressing and manifesting everywhere in His universe, then you will speedily dissolve the old error beliefs and their counterparts in the manifest world.
9. Let me say it again: Stop trying so hard to know that everything is as it should be. Just rest your mind and heart and emotions and body in God-Mind. When you are truly thinking God, you cannot struggle to do anything. It is when you are thinking of self that you struggle and. see nothing but darkness and grief and failure. No one, not even God, can change you or your circumstances so long as you insist upon looking at and thinking of and worrying about yourself and your problems. Your problems do not exist except in your own mind. And they are there only because you have made them. As soon as you withdraw your thoughts and feelings from the things which you have invited and built up, they will fall flat and dissolve. By abiding in God-Mind (which means perfect order and satisfaction), you will build a new world of peace, joy, wholeness, and success according to the direction of Christ ideas.
10. “There is only one presence and one power in earth and the universe: God, the good, omnipotent.” “All authority hath been given unto me [the Christ] in heaven and on earth.” Remember this: whatever you have done, whatever you contemplate, you are learning lessons, growing, and going forward to a day of light, joy, and freedom.
11. The solution of your every problem lies with you and the Father. Others cannot tell you what to do. Others cannot keep you from doing that which is best. As you consecrate yourself to God and seek earnestly and persistently and patiently to do His good will, you will find that real peace, strength, freedom, and wisdom are yours. The Mind of God, active in your consciousness, is your present help. If you turn to God and away from human reasoning, longing, and fears, he will show you the way that leads to the fullness of your good.
12. The really important thing, you know, is to lift your consciousness above the things of the material world—above personality and human limitations—and unfold your Christ consciousness. Instead of letting the mind dwell on people and seeing them as personalities, the follower of Jesus Christ should keep his attention upon universal Truth, and gradually lift all his thinking to the Truth standard.
13. Thinking habitually about people, their actions, their human limitations, tends to bind one to personal consciousness. To do the great works that Jesus promised His followers would do, one must raise his consciousness to the place where he is able to see the perfect image and likeness of God in all people. One must not let himself be influenced by the likes and dislikes of the human nature. Christ is the real self of each individual. By seeing only the Christ in all people, we not only strengthen our own spiritual consciousness but help all whom we contact to realize and express their innate divinity.
