Chapter 18
Your Wonderful Body
1. Spirit is all. We are to bring the soul and the body into the Christ consciousness—the right use of all that God gives. Where would you draw the line between Spirit and the material, when there is no evidence that God has placed such boundaries? We see Spirit manifesting in the flesh, in the centers of consciousness, and in the organs of the body as expressions of energy and substance. If we make a separation in our consciousness, we shall have something that we do not know how to deal with. We are working with vital spiritual qualities, and we shall change the character of their manifestations as our growth makes change desirable and necessary.
2. Let God carry out His will and way in you now. He needs your temple for the uses of His Spirit, in bringing His kingdom into the earth. It is His temple, you know, and you have no right to think anything short of perfection about it. Begin this moment to use every ounce of energy and intelligence you have for God, and you will find that you will keep drawing more and more deeply from the wellsprings of His life and love. Your body will become the “living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service.”
3. The body is like a child. It needs constant prompting and training and discipline and praise and appreciation. Your body needs your attention, your love, your training.
4. Give all your thought and your love and your determination to perfecting your body. Look at that wonderful body temple. It is precious to you. Begin to see that body the instrument of the soul, which enables you to carry out God’s plans in the earth.
5. You have everything you need to enable you to do the many things you came into the world to do, but you need to let the Spirit of God take hold of your soul and set it to doing its perfect work in the body. This will require the exercise of good, common sense. Look at your chest: it breathes in the very breath of God’s life; God is flowing through it to supply all your needs. Look at your limbs and feet: God has created them to enable you to walk on the earth (which He created for you) and to move about freely and to do that which gives you practical knowledge of the laws governing life on this plane. Look at your arms and hands: they are God’s, and He has continued to dwell in them and sustain them all during these years. Your head is wonderfully poised, so that you may look about and see the beauty and power and life and light of God manifested in His creation everywhere.
6. After contemplating the wonders of your physical body temple and feeling the stirring of the new life which your thoughts will send coursing through you, think again, just as happily and intently, about the mental activities which must depend upon diese centers in the body for their success. Let your body know the joy of your loving attention and interest; give it the exercise it needs.
7. Perhaps long ago you conceived the idea that you could reach heaven only without your flesh. You may have had the early-day church belief that the body is dust and that it must be humiliated and neglected if the soul is to be truly loyal to Christ and prepared for entrance into glory. Such notions are not true to Jesus Christ’s teachings. They do more to tear down the soul and body than the so-called sins of this world.
8. So, just make up your mind that you are not going to worry about “overcoming.” You are just going to let the life and strength of God flow through you. God has bestowed his gifts upon you with the idea of your using them freely, here and now. You can do whatever you really want to do—but you will have to want it enough actually to make the effort to do it. If you want to glorify God in actually living the happy, healthy, everyday life He has wisely planned for you, you will do it. The Spirit of God in you is willing. But you must demand of the flesh that it obey the Spirit.
9. Study to renew your subconsciousness. Wherever a race belief has gotten hold, or an error concept has tried to work out, go to work with the Truth. Whatever change you make mentally and purposefully will begin at once to change every part of your life.
10. Then add to this spiritual treatment careful attention to your living habits. Bathe with the idea of opening all the millions of little doors of the skin to let out the used-up materials and to let in the sunshine and its energy. Eat with the understanding that you are providing God-given materials which the inner intelligence will use to nourish and cleanse and renew all of your body every day. There are foods for the muscle tissues, others for the blood, others for the glands, others for skin and hair and nails and brain and eyes.
11. The time will come when we can draw forth from the universal mind-stuff just the elements we need, in their right proportion and relation, to maintain the proper balance in our whole organism. The time will come, I am confident, when we shall be able to draw chemical, substance from the fourth dimensional realm down into our physical bodies. But in the meantime we need to malce practical the knowledge we have concerning bodily renewal, through using intelligence and discrimination, particularly in the selection of our food.
12. Perhaps you think that it would be too tedious a job to learn all about the body and its needs. But once you begin to think about it, it becomes a fascinating game to learn to discern your body’s hunger and to satisfy it, physically as well as spiritually.
13. Everything in God’s world is working toward perfection. The restoring power of God in the midst of you is working quickly and harmoniously to build in cells and substance that will knit together whatever place needs rebuilding.
14. When the harshness of others seems to crush you, you can send forth love, the power that not only blesses you but goes forth to redeem the adverse conditions in the outer. When petals of the fragrant rose are crushed by cruel hands they send forth their sweetness even more than before. “Love is the fulfilment of the law.” The law of God in your heart keeps you sweet always.
15. You may give up, this very moment, all resentment, all dread, and all questioning as to the future. For you are not obliged to continue living without the perfect use of all your functions and organs and members. Afflictions of all kinds exist primarily in the realm of mind, and have been caused by some failure of the mind to receive and understand and express the Christ ideas which God gives. Then, there is usually another cause: the mind directing the physical functions in the effort to avoid undesirable experiences, to shut out that which the soul feels is not for it, or to grasp and make use of something it wants and does not know how to gain in the divinely appointed way. The mind not only directs the faculties in their expression and takes account of these things about one; it actually is the means of constructing and reconstructing the physical organism.
16. You, as an individual soul, took up your expression as a living being to embody in consciousness and experience that which we think of as God’s image-likeness man. In other words, you are a child of God, an offspring, an expression and combination of God ideas or qualities of being. Your own soul desired a vehicle of expression, and through the use of the creative law of life you came in touch with those who helped you to build the physical body temple. Your own soul’s choice drew you to those who were in tune with your soul’s desires and expressions.
17. Body help comes, not in forgetting the things that were but in getting a different viewpoint, seeing back of the experiences themselves, and lifting one’s vision to behold God—the divine Father-Mother to which the soul is ever united and from which one may constantly draw light, strength, love, substance, and life.
18. ecause you came into a new body, and because your soul was obliged to make adjustments to accommodate itself to the conditions and persons about it, you may sometimes be unable to hold steadfastly to the light which your soul should receive from God-Mind and which it should use in its unfoldment.
19. Every experience will prove encouraging to you when you begin to understand it, for it will show you that the mind is powerful and that the body and its functions respond readily and fully to the bidding of the mind. So, you see, healing is always assured!
20. You are not to turn your mind and heart away from people and try to content yourself without a full, free expression of love and interest in others. This will be a great help to you in unfolding your spiritual consciousness and in bringing your body into perfection. Do not admit limitations as any part of you—they are just results of temporary mistakes. The way in which Truth will direct you lacks nothing of love, peace, joy, beauty, and well-rounded self-expression. Perhaps you do not do just as you had formerly dreamed you would, but the things that your clearer spiritual vision and your better use of your faculties and powers will prompt you to do will be even better and more satisfying and worth while.
21. Study and practice daily, keeping your mind and heart, your vision and your emotions fixed on God—God in you. “Christ in you” is your “hope of glory.” Christ is God’s perfect pattern of His own son in you. There is no real satisfaction apart from the interpretation of this Christ self in daily living. You are a soul who has come with a rich spiritual development. The very fact that you try to close out the undesirable things, that you love and take a great interest in your fellow man, and that you want to accomplish much, proves that you are ready to awaken to the Christ light—in which you will understand that there is really only one Presence and Power: omnipotent Good. All things are possible with you because you are here to let God express through you His own perfect plan of life.
22. When there is a sense of feeling lost, it is but the result of impressions received from without, from error thoughts and false convictions “wished on you” by the race beliefs and your own immature use of the senses and mental faculties. You are not lost! You are in your right place in the Father-Mind this moment. Look, then, to God-Mind, with faith, and you will begin to see the light. Keep your gaze upon the light and you can not possibly see any darkness. When you are looking toward the light, shadows fall behind you. The light is within you, and as you learn to look within, you become radiant, because light is a quality of mind and its essence is finding outlets through your mental faculties.
23. With Christ light flooding your soul, you see causes and effects correctly, and you behold the great Cause (God) in which are your perfection and freedom. This is the real healing for soul and body.
24. Make up your mind that you are going to see God everywhere, and you will begin to discern the God qualities expressing in everyone and everything, however imperfectly. Be determined to listen for and hear God’s voice and the radiation of God’s power and love, and the sounds that once disturbed will not affect you. Instead they will impress you with the fact that God’s life and power and love are in everything and are seeking expression.
