Unity Metaphysics 2 (Blue Book)
Lesson 03 The Twelve Powers
INTRODUCTION TO CHAPTER
Inherent within humankind are twelve fundamental spiritual faculties which reflect God’s nature and which comprise our own divine nature. Through affirming their presence and by calling them forth into expression, we will quicken and develop them into real powers within us. In this chapter we will describe each of these attributes as it exists not only within consciousness but also within our bodies. We will discover how these twelve are to work together in the process of regeneration as we develop Christ consciousness.
3A THE TWELVE POWERS:
“Inherent in the Mind of Being are twelve fundamental ideas, which in action appear as primal creative forces. It is possible for man to ally himself with and to use these original forces . . .” (The Twelve Powers of Man 52)
The twelve powers are the twelve fundamental aspects of our divine nature, the twelve components of God’s “image and likeness” in humankind, the twelve disciples of our Christ mind. They comprise the pattern for perfection within us. At our present level of spiritual evolution these powers are incomplete in their development and expression. As we come to a fuller realization of our true nature we become more able to fully demonstrate our divine potential.
3B DEVELOPING OUR TWELVE POWERS:
“Our work here now is to awaken to the divine powers with which God has endowed us, to encourage and develop them under God direction and to get about the business of becoming that which Jesus demonstrated in his life and told us we could become” (Winifred Wilkinson Hausmann Your God-Given Potential 23).
“Within each person there is a new world awaiting discovery, a world in which there are capabilities of unlimited strength, perfect knowing, radiant life, and other latent abilities beyond our greatest present capacity to conceive” (Winifred Wilkinson Hausmann Your God-Given Potential 24).
Our increasing awareness of our twelve spiritual faculties will enable us to call them forth into dynamic expression within us. This process requires discipline, dedication, and a conscious recognition of ourselves as offspring of God.
3C REGENERATION:
“Mr. Fillmore’s plan for the regeneration of ‘man’ was based on the individual development of innate powers and abilities expressing through . . . the human body. These centers are to be activated as the qualities are developed in mind, all under the supervision of the Christ or God-self of each person” (Winifred Wilkinson Hausmann Your God-Given Potential 25).
Once the transformation in consciousness begins to occur, as the twelve faculties are quickened within us, there are results in the manifestation of purity and wholeness within our bodies as well.
3D THREEFOLD NATURE OF THE TWELVE:
“The following outline gives a list of the Twelve, the faculties that they represent, and the nerve centers at which they preside:
- Faith—Peter—center of brain.
- Strength—Andrew—loins.
- Discrimination or Judgment—James, son of Zebedee—pit of stomach.
- Love—John—back of heart.
- Power—Philip—root of tongue.
- Imagination—Bartholomew—between the eyes.
- Understanding—Thomas—front brain.
- Will—Matthew—center front brain.
- Order—James, son of Alphaeus—navel.
- Zeal—Simon, the Cananaean—back head, medulla.
- Renunciation or Elimination—Thaddaeus—abdominal region.
- Life Conserver—Judas—generative function”
The twelve faculties exist spiritually as realities in our mind and in God mind, symbolically as the twelve disciples of Jesus Christ, and literally as twelve centers of energy within the physical body of every individual.
3E FAITH:
“Faith is the perceiving power of the mind ... It is spiritual assurance, the power to do the seemingly impossible. It is a force that draws to us our heart’s desire right out of the invisible spiritual substance. It is a deep inner knowing that that which is sought is already ours for the taking, the ‘assurance of things hoped for’” (Keep a True Lent 148).
“Faith is that quality in us which enables us to look past appearances of lack, limitation, or difficulty, to take hold of the divine idea and believe in it even though we do not see any evidence of it except in our mind. Through faith we know with an inner knowing the Truth that has not yet expressed in our manifest world” (Winifred Wilkinson Hausmann Your God-Given Potential 38).
Faith is our ability to perceive the reality of God’s kingdom of good, despite evidence to the contrary. It is the faculty of positive expectation and definite assurance that the power, presence, and promises of God are real here and now.
3F STRENGTH:
“In the Mind of God, Strength is an idea of enduring power, which to us means the continuous and sustained energies with which Creation is projected and maintained” (Ella Pomeroy Powers of the Soul 13).
“Strength . . . Freedom from weakness; stability of character; power to withstand temptation; capacity to accomplish” (RW/Strength).
Strength is the faculty of steadfastness, dependability, stability, capacity for endurance. It is not merely a physical endowment, but a degree of spiritual awareness. It is not force, manipulation, or defensiveness It is spiritual courage and confidence. Nonresistance is the highest expression of strength. Nonresistance does not mean non-action; it is an effective, calm, single-minded God-centered attitude of mind.
3G JUDGMENT:
“Judgment ... Mental act of evaluation through comparison or contrast ... spiritual discernment” (RW/Judgment).
Judgment is the faculty by which we appraise, evaluate, and discriminate in order to make correct decisions It is our ability to maintain enlightened objectivity about our life and our world.
3H LOVE:
“Love, in Divine Mind, is the idea of universal unity. In expression, it is the power that joins and binds together the universe and everything in it. Love is a harmonizing, constructive power. When it is made active in consciousness, it conserves substance and reconstructs, rebuilds, and restores man and his world” (Keep a True Lent 151).
“Divine love is impersonal; it loves for the sake of loving . . . Love is an inner quality that sees good everywhere and in everybody. . . . Love is the great harmonizer and healer” (RW/Love).
Love is that attracting, harmonizing, unifying faculty of mind; it is the constructive building force of Spirit. It is our power to comprehend oneness. Spiritual love is the total, unconditional acceptance of everyone and everything.
3I POWER:
“From Divine Mind man inherits power over the forces of his mind—in truth, power over all ideas. A quickening from on high must precede man’s realization of his innate control of thought and feeling” (The Twelve Powers of Man 61).
“The mind and the body of man have the power of transforming energy from one plane of consciousness to another. This is the power and dominion implanted in man from the beginning” (The Twelve Powers of Man 63).
“Power, we must understand, is not an end in itself, not a goal to be sought. Rather, it is simply a means that enables us to attain the end of bringing forth God ideas on earth . . . It is to be exercised not for the purpose of controlling others, but for the purpose of taking dominion over our own thoughts and feelings in order to come into a greater God awareness” (Winifred Wilkinson Hausmann Your God-Given Potential 95).
Power is the faculty that enables us to have authority over our thoughts and feelings. Our greatest creative power is generated by our realization of the power of God within us. Our spoken words are vehicles through which this power is manifested in our lives.
3J IMAGINATION:
“It will be found that every form and shape originated in the imagination. It is through the imagination that the formless takes form” (The Twelve Powers of Man 71).
“The idea is first projected into mind substance, and afterward formed in consciousness. The mind of man sees all things through thought forms made by the imagination” (Christian Healing 103).
Imagination is our conceiving, picturing faculty. It is the formative power of mind which shapes thoughts into mental images which have color, variety, and dimension. The highest use of imagination is to shape thoughts into images which most fully reflect the nature of the original divine idea.
3K UNDERSTANDING:
“Spiritual understanding is the ability of the mind to apprehend and realize the laws of thought and the relation of ideas one to another” (RW/Understanding).
“So we find that there is in man a knowing capacity transcending intellectual knowledge” (The Twelve Powers of Man 88).
Understanding is the faculty by which we receive enlightenment and insight. It is our capacity to gain direct perceptions of Truth. It is our faculty of spiritual intelligence.
3L WILL:
“The will is the executive faculty of the mind, the determining factor in man” (RW/Will).
“The will moves to action all the other faculties of the mind ...” (The Twelve Powers of Man 97).
Will is the decision making, directing, choosing faculty of the mind. It is our capacity to say “yes” or “no” to opportunities and options. The highest expression of will is willingness, conscious consent to the will of God.
3M ORDER:
“Order in the Mind of God is an idea of harmonious progress, evolution. Order in man is his ability to perceive and cooperate with the law of growth” (Ella Pomeroy Powers of the Soul 138).
“The divine idea of order is the idea of adjustment, and as this is established in man’s thought, his mind and affairs will be at one with the universal harmony” (RW/Order).
“To develop divine order in our life, we must learn to cooperate with spiritual law” (Winifred Wilkinson Hausmann Your God-Given Potential 156).
Order which we establish harmony balance, right adjustment, and right sequence of action in our lives. Order is the one underlying law of manifestation, and we must participate consciously in that process which enables growth without struggle.
3N ZEAL:
“Zeal is the great universal force that impels man to spring forward in a field of endeavor and accomplish the seemingly miraculous” (Atom-Smashing Power of Mind 26).
“To be without zeal is to be without the zest of living. Zeal and enthusiasm incite to glorious achievement in every aim and ideal that the mind conceives. Zeal is the impulse to go forward, the urge behind all things” (The Twelve Powers of Man 130).
Zeal is the faculty of enthusiasm, intensity, and exuberance. It provides our inner urge to progress; it is our motivation to achieve. The highest expression of zeal is in an unflagging, fervent interest in knowing, speaking, and doing good.
30 ELIMINATION:
“A letting go of old thoughts in order that new thoughts may find place in consciousness. A healthy state of mind is attained when the thinker willingly lets go the old thoughts and takes on the new. This is illustrated by the inlet and outlet of a pool of water” (RW/Renunciation).
“Thoughts are things; they occupy space in the mental field. A healthy state of mind is attained and continued when the thinker willingly lets go the old thoughts and takes on the new” (The Twelve Powers of Man 144).
Elimination is the faculty by which we release false beliefs and accomplish a mental cleansing. Elimination enables us to surrender to Spirit any thought that is not for our highest good so that transformation and purification of consciousness can take place.
3P LIFE:
“In the phenomenal world, life is the energy that propels all forms to action” (The Twelve Powers of Man 161)
“Life in man is his increasing consciousness of his world, his inner activities, the forces and movements about him. It is his power to express the eternal activity of God” (Ella Pomeroy Powers of the Soul 144).
Life is the faculty of movement, vitality, wholeness, and creativity. It is the expression of the pure, eternal life of God within us.
3Q OUR WORK/OUR GOAL:
“Our work is to transmute the natural powers (starting where we are in consciousness and spiritual growth) into the spiritual powers we are designed to express for the fulfillment of our Christ potential. Each faculty is discovered first as an intellectual concept. This concept is explored and nurtured through prayer as it gradually grows into the spiritual idea from which it came. Finally we have no sense of separateness, but rather a realization of our oneness with the God-power itself, expressing through us entirely under the guidance and direction of the Christ” (Winifred Wilkinson Hausmann Your God-Given Potential 27).
“Remember, each power functions in three ways - first, the perfect idea in Divine Mind; second, the growing concept in our consciousness; third, the expression through the physical center, and (indirectly) through our entire body. The long-range goal is to attain a complete and perfect expression of all twelve powers through all phases of our being. This would be the fulfilling realization of oneness with our Creator. We believe that Jesus reached and demonstrated this oneness” (Winifred Wilkinson Hausmann Your God-Given Potential 28).
Our transformation into fully conscious and enlightened beings is achieved through the development of our twelve spiritual faculties. Our goal is to express our Christ potential unselfishly, lovingly, and powerfully.
SUMMARY STATEMENTS
THE TWELVE POWERS ARE THE TWELVE FUNDAMENTAL ASPECTS OF OUR DIVINE NATURE WHICH COMPRISE THE PATTERN FOR PERFECTION WITHIN US.
OUR INCREASING AWARENESS OF OUR TWELVE FACULTIES WILL ENABLE US TO EXPRESS THEM IN CREATIVE AND USEFUL WAYS.
SPIRITUALLY, THE POWERS EXIST IN OUR MINDS AS DIVINE IDEAS. SYMBOLICALLY, THEY ARE THE TWELVE DISCIPLES OF JESUS. LITERALLY, THEY ARE TWELVE CENTERS OF ENERGY WITHIN EACH INDIVIDUAL.
THE TWELVE POWERS ARE: FAITH, STRENGTH, JUDGMENT, LOVE, POWER, IMAGINATION, UNDERSTANDING, WILL, ORDER, ZEAL, ELIMINATION, AND LIFE.
OUR WORK IS TO DEVELOP OUR TWELVE SPIRITUAL FACULTIES SO THAT WE BECOME THE FULL EXPRESSION OF OUR CHRIST NATURE.
TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION
- Name each of the twelve powers and describe their function.
- Relate your understanding of the twelve powers to your current concept of regeneration.
THOUGHTS FOR REFLECTION AND MEDITATION
Supreme Being,
is the source
out of which
all creation evolves.
God-Mind is an omnipresent spiritual realm
comprised of creative ideas.
Through prayer and spiritual realization
we may lay hold of these ideas . . .
and create out of them
the ideals of our hearts"
(CEM/11).
SUPPLEMENTARY READING
Hausmann, Winifred, Your God-Given Potential, chapter 1 and 2, "From Primordial Cell to Christ Oriented Man," ''Discover a New World Within."
Fillmore, Charles, The Twelve Powers of Man, chapter I, "The Twelve Powers of Man."
Fillmore, Cora, Christ Enthroned in Man, chapter 14, "Twelve Power Exercise."
Transcribed by Bill Toon on April 3, 2019.
