Chapter 15
The Secret Place of Spirit
1. WE are on the threshold of a new heaven and a new earth—a new consciousness. John the Baptist came to herald Jesus Christ. He said, “Repent ye; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” We know more than the people of that day understood about the kingdom of heaven. We are turning from the world of the outer and are coming into the wonderful place which is called “the secret place of the Most High.” Jesus Christ called this place the “inner chamber.” He said, “When thou prayest, enter into thine inner chamber, and having shut thy door, pray to thy Father who is in secret.” We do this in the consciousness of the Father’s presence within. As we enter, we close the doors of the outer senses and get away from the whirl of material activities. We feel a divine calmness; we gain understanding of ourselves.
2. Let us take this affirmation to help us realize the Christ consciousness:
God’s perfect idea in me is now building a perfect body, and I am satisfied.
3. As the little germ in the seed brings forth its kind, so in each human being is put the divine image and likeness, the potentiality of bringing forth perfection in mind, body, and affairs. Jesus Christ is our example of perfection. He was the first to teach of the new birth, the new growth of mankind. In order to be satisfied we first must have the perfect idea and then the perfect body.
4. We are longing to bring into manifestation that which has been given us to bring forth; that is why we are sometimes restless and discontented. That which the world has to give does not satisfy, but when we go into the secret place, when we learn to be still and to know the I AM (God’s perfect idea of us), we lack nothing. We can become like Jesus Christ if we abide in the secret place of Spirit.
5. The silence is a kind of stillness, a place of retreat into which we may enter and, having entered, may know the Truth. We go into the silence by observing the instructions, “Be still, and know.” The only way really to know is to become perfectly still, to get away from the outer and from looking for things, into the inner quiet where we are alone with wisdom. In the silence, wisdom is given for every need.
6. In the outer we are always trying to get pleasure from things. We call it pleasure; it is pleasure momentarily, but it does not last. The pleasures of sense gratify for a little while, but after the pleasures are over we feel bereft and empty. Outer pleasure is like moonlight: Sometimes it is very beautiful, but there is no element of growth in it. It does not help the power within us to come forth.
7. The silence is like the sun: it is always shining. It brings forth the best that is within us, the image and likeness of God that is waiting to be brought into activity, that will show itself after the fashion that God intended it should.
8. In the silence we get the wonderful inward joy that is of God. We see what the real is. Those who seek pleasure in the outer are in reality seeking eternal joy: the joy that no man can take away, the joy that Jesus Christ promised us, the joy that comes when we know what it means to be a child of God, when we know what the Father would have us know.
9. To help us forego outer pleasure for the inner joy, let us take a fitting word for meditation. Let us become willing to sacrifice the pleasures of the senses that are fleeting and unsatisfying; let us be willing to relinquish outer pleasures for the joy of Spirit—the consciousness of the presence of the Father. Let us take this statement for meditation:
I am willing to sacrifice the pleasures of sense that I may enter into the joys of Spirit.
10. In sacrificing the pleasures of sense for the joys of Spirit, you are not depriving yourself of pleasures; you are exchanging the moonlight for the great glory of the sun. Jesus said, “The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” The flesh can say nothing when Spirit decides; the flesh has no power, no profit in itself. It is Spirit that quickens.
11. Unity of Spirit conquers the world for the Lord. We are sending forth peace to every land. Nations will forget to fight if we continue to know that all people express the one Life.
12. No one will deny that God is omnipresent or that God is all, yet we talk about a great many presences, a great many powers, and other things that do not belong to God. No one denies good. All persons seek after it when they know how. When we find that there is only one Presence, the real Presence of infinite goodness, we find no place for the opposite quality.
13. When we recognize the one Presence, we eliminate the many presences. One of our great scientists says that he never found God until he found Him in his laboratory. He says that he looked upon the world and saw many different things that were called God, many different powers that were called God, but he himself did not find God. However, in the laboratory many things that he tested in his crucible went into the invisible. He had a name for this invisible product; he called it the ether. He found that ether has intelligence and power, and that the different forms in nature are the garments with which God clothes Himself.
14. We are learning the law by which we bring forth from invisible substance. We like to think that we can deal with it as God dealt with it. We bring it forth according to our thoughts, making of it different forms and shapes, making our worlds according to our ideas. But the great pattern which God gave is unchanged; it is revealed to us through Jesus Christ. We are to work by that pattern, to bring forth the life idea that Jesus Christ brought forth. We may feel confused by the manifold activities in the world, yet there is only one impulse back of them all. When we get so still that the One becomes visible to us, then we see our own Christ within. Truly, we know that there is only one Power, one Presence, one Wisdom.
