Eric Butterworth Unity Podcast #59
“How to Recession-Proof Your Life—1—Resolving Your S and L Dilemma” is the first of four lessons given by Eric Butterworth loosely based on Spiritual Economics. If you find yourself worried about financial matters, this lecture and the next three are for you.
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September is usually the time of starting back to school for children, back to work for folks who’ve been on vacations. New time and new beginnings. I like to think of our work here at Unity as a matter of spiritual education. It has to be worked at. Most of us as good students spend a lot of time in the practice in digging and working. In a sense, we can say we’re starting back to school today. Ring the school bell and we all say, “We’re ready to work.”
I was thinking of a story told of a little child. She came to school for the first day. He’s sitting there with a glum look. And the despondent teacher came up and said, “What’s the matter, Johnny? You home sick?” “No, I’m here sick.” Which has absolutely nothing to do with what we’re going to do today but it’s a good place to start.
Heard a lot of talk in recent weeks. References has made allusions, comments, prophecies about the word recession. Some say we’re already in one. Some say we might have one. Some say there’s no way we’re going to have one.
What is a recession? Is like a recession a day, like Labor Day, or the 30th of July? Some particular period? The term recession is a relative term. It’s like saying this is a happy day. But what makes a happy day, a peaceful day? Where does it begin and end? Recession is a comment of an atmosphere that hangs something like a paw over the economy. Sluggish economy, raising interest rates, layoffs, hardships to folks on fixed incomes and so forth. That’s a recession.
The one important thing that we want to think about is that a recession is not something that comes. We’re all involved in it, and everybody thus has a reaction, and is financial and emotional in physical life as a result. It’s important to know as students of truth, in the science of awareness of the spirit. It’s not necessary ever to follow the economic forecasters. There may be a recession in the world around you. Maybe business slowed down, and there are all sorts of talk of limitations and lack. Like the Psalmist says, “It need not come nigh unto you.”
“Ten thousands will fall at the right hand and one thousand to the left but it shall not come nigh unto you. If you dwell in the sea of the places most high,” say’s the Psalmist. It’s an important realization. Your world is an inward out experience. There are many problems out there in the world’s economy. The truth is, you’re a spiritual being. In residence in a spiritual universe and if you really know this realization you can go through any down turn in this economy without being hurt in any way.
You can make yourself impervious throughout the recession or depression. To business slumps and even massive unemployment. In these few weeks we’re going to deal with this. Hopefully, we can show ourselves how to make a recession free life, so that our security and our prosperity will go on untouched.
When I was in college, Economics was a required subject. I’ve always been grateful that I was, even though at the time reluctantly, introduced to our economic principles. Today, I have a strong conviction that everyone involved in living in the world, which I think means most of us, needs to become familiar with what I call spiritual economics. Some of you know I’ve addressed that need in my book Spiritual Economics: The Unity Book, the name.
It’s there to believe that in times of economic instability we’re all victims in the strange malaise about which there’s little anyone can do other than to wait and see. The economists and the economic forecasters love to squabble about the idea of recessions. Or, as the wall street people call it, the bear market. As if it’s something that just happens. It’s their talk of unemployment, lowering investments, returns. Like a deadly virus surging through the economy. Wrecking havoc on individual lives, which is why we need the perspective of spiritual economics.
Even as most physically ill they’re not considered to be psychosomatic in origin. You must begin to face the possibility that financial problems may be the auto manifestation of inner states of consciousness. In the state of your mind and the attitudes you hold, you become a part of the problem. Or, perhaps, hopefully a part of the solution.
The first step is to declare your independence, completely and finally. In the belief that your personal welfare is tied ever to economic fluctuations of the world out there. To establish yourself in the unassailable consciousness at the free flow of substance can only be damned up from within.
More of that in a minute, but first I’m going to refer to NewsWeek Magazine piece that was published a hundred years ago, which is quite classic. You may recall this. A man lived by the side of the road and sold hot dogs. He had no radio. He had trouble with his eyes, so he had no newspapers. But he sold good hot dogs. He put up a sign on the highway telling how good they were. He stood by the side of the road and cried, “Buy a hot dog, mister.” And people bought. He placed his meat and bun orders, and he rented a larger store to take care of his trade. He got his son home from college to help him. Then something happened.
His son one day said, “Father, haven’t you been listening to the radio? There’s a financial crisis in the country. International situation is terrible. The domestic situation is even worse.”
Whereupon father thought, “My son has been to college, he listens to the radio, he reads the papers, so he knows.” So he cut down his bun order. Took down his highway signs. No longer bothered to stand on the highway to sell hotdogs. His hotdog sales fell almost overnight. “You were right son,” father said to the boy, “We are certainly in the middle of a great depression.”
Can you catch the implication then? Your prosperity, or your recession, or your difficulty begins with you. Not the world around you. The world around you reflects the collective consciousness of people. If we really had the means and the will, it would be possible, I think, to have some very important voice, possibly the President or someone respected in industry and across the country, to begin talking about prosperity, security, abundance, and set off a chain reaction in the thoughts and actions of people.
We would wake up the next morning with a realization as the hot dog salesman did, “We’re in the middle of a great time in prosperity.” It would sweep across the land, because these things begin in thought, in consciousness. Someone says that the stock market usually has a great reaction if the president hiccups. The responsibility that travels around the world in financial circles.
That story we told you from from the NewsWeek magazine, is obviously a parable. But it deals with the problem at a gut level. In other words, things may happen in the outer world, but they can only be an influence in your life if they happen in your mind. You don’t have to permit people in conditions out there to decide for you what you’re going to think and feel and act. It’s your mind and in this room you’re the master, or you can be. You can resist the forecast of the experts. You can say, “That’s what you think, but I think otherwise. I’m established in the flow of substance in life, vitality, prosperity. “No one can impede its affirmation in the venue in your life but you. No one.
Near the end of the subject of prosperity, I feel the need to give a disclaimer. Because the truth about prosperity is all too often presented as the demonstration of affluence, or cars, houses, money, all kind of baubles. This is the object of the study of truth. Real prosperity has often been corrupted, to imply God willed us falling from the sky. The term millionaire is overworked. Develop a millionaire conscious, and you’ll be able to have all the money in the world and so forth.
It’s all material, all baubles. I’m very much embarrassed by this gross imperialistic rendering of a beautiful, spiritual truth, which often implies, and sometimes unblessingly proclaims that wealth, amassing wealth, is a kind of spiritual growth. It’s important that we correct that image. Turning prosperity as a law, there a vital aspect of our study of truth. As one writer wrote a few years ago, “God loves a prosperous man.” Means this is the activity of God has but one desire, to flow forth into fulfillment in individual lives. It’s right and good that we would have abundance, that we have prosperity. It’s important to keep it in context. We’re going to talk a little bit about that today.
Summary of this sector is your personal S and L dilemma. Of course, we’re not going to talk about savings banks. That’s a losing proposition. We’re going to talk about attitudes, states of mind. There’s another more personal S and L dilemma. Talking about substance and lack. It’s a great paradox, a great dilemma.
Often we referred to the omnipresence of substance. To believe that so much would be taken for granted, it’s part of the flow of truth ideas. Now in the omnipresence of substance. The divine idea of the underlying reality of all things. It is the spiritual essence, the living energy out of which everything is made.
Jesus considered divine substances the treasure field in which one can find fulfillment of every need. Jesus said in effect, “If you know the truth about the allness of substance, focusing your conscious in the support of essence, that conscious will mold and shape the things that flow into your life.” Implications of this are profound. Substance is everywhere, and there can be no lack, emphasize there can be no lack. I probably caused you, in an intellectual sense, to sit back there, “Wait a minute. What about the things we don’t have, perhaps can’t afford? What about the homeless and the hungry in this city and around the world? Everywhere we look there’s widespread lack and destitution. How can we say there’s no lack? And substance is everywhere.” It’s a dilemma at least to a degree for all of us.
It’s imperative that we get a clear perception of the relationship between substance and lack. Without this perception we would always be unable to understand human experience. You’d be unable to cope with life’s excellencies.
See, I’m not saying there are no hungry people, or that the problem is an illusion. These are very real experiences. They can be very painful, but they’re not the truth. They’re simply the frustration of it.
Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is at hand.” This is a metaphor they use to indicate the spiritual realm is not up there in the big clouds, but a realm in which you live and move and have being. Substance is the coin of the realm. Not dollars and cents. Though transcendent energy, not material, it stands under money. Substance stands under.
Money is only a symbol of the wealth of the universe. A legal tender, which is supported by the universe of all sufficiency. Money has no value. Except the value that we give it. They’re pieces of paper perhaps the silver coins are worth a little something, but there’s no value in it in terms of the value that we give symbolically, $500.00, $1,000.00, $10,000.00. Money is an enabling symbol. It’s something that enables us to do certain things.
In the doing of them, in the thinking of them, in the creating of them we’re tuning in upon an inner flow of spirit substance, which is the coin of the realm. This idea of substance doesn’t compute for you, right now.
Make a mental note to yourself, as good students, you give Him attention in your reading, your thinking, and your meditation. Decide that sometime in the next few weeks you get a real clear conception of what substance means because we’ll be talking about it often. It’s vital in our ongoing.
For just a moment join me in a visualization exercise. I’d like you to close your eyes. You all have a faculty of imagination. You image certain things they become real to us as far as we feel them and see them. Let your mind reach out, beyond Earth’s horizon, to the moon, the planets, and the sun. To the stars of our galaxy, the Milky Way. To the vast aray of galaxies out, out, out to the farthest reaches of the universe and beyond. Realize that there’s a microscopic universe within you. Beyond the molecules, the atoms, the subatomic particles within particles, within particles. To a basic universe of substance in which all things are formed. Then realize that through all the macrocosm and the microcosm, there’s no lack. Only the ever word present abundance. Substance, the natural state of affairs in the universe.
Remember, in all this vast expanse substance is by law is existent as gravity, and just as omnipresent. And because it is present at all, it is present in its entirety at every point in space at the same time. Wherever you go you see evidence of the Psalmist vision, “the Earth is the Lords and the fullest thereof.” Okay, you can open your eyes now.
The thing that makes this exciting, you’ve been able to hold the image in your mind of the universe of without and within, it’s vast expanse. Almost unbelievable. One writer said, “The Universe appears to be like one great thought.” As you think the thought you’re in the universe, the universe is in you.
But the important thing is you’re not on the outside looking in. You may see pictures, there sure are a lot of them today with all the space flights going on. Pictures of going out into space, moving past planets and distant stars, see the Earth back from the moon, it’s this blue planet. But you’re always unconsciously looking in the window in a motion picture screen, or into the television screen. It’s always something that you’re looking at out there.
It’s important to put yourself in the picture. You’re not outside looking in. You’re in integral part of it, a dynamic center within it. Your life is formed of its basic substance. It’s easily supported by it. Wherever you see pictures of heavenly bodies, this great vast universe, remember that the universe starts with you. You’re the center of it. The very center of it, and it reaches out in all directions from you. Keep yourself in that consciousness. You have a new sense of security. A new sense of worthiness.
During the Jesus metaphor of the kingdom, which as I said, is the royal ground in which, and out of which all things exist. Jesus indicates the spiritual priorities. He said, “Seek first the kingdom, and all these things will be added unto you.” Seek first the kingdom. Suddenly so involved in trying to fulfill our needs for money, for jobs, for things. We draw all out attention immediately to affirming for these things, or treating for these things. I think it’s important to get the thought that as long as we pray for things, and pray for objects, and pray for material experiences like a job, you’re actually praying in a sense of lack. You’re praying in a sense of need. The important thing is to turn from the lack, turn from the problems, and identify yourself with abundance, with allness, with substance.
Turn first within to the feel, feel the fountain, the creative flow, and you’ll experience the new ideas and the spiritual power for which you can go on and do achieve what you want or need. With the realization of your oneness with the universe was a substance of God, that life is beneath all conditions. You have your realization to that then see the benefits as they unfold.
The goal should not be to make money to require things, but to achieve the consciousness through which substance will flow forth when you need it, and manifests the job, or the home, or the money. You’re always hosting within. If you get the realization of coming forth from within, you’ll never know lack, or you never even get the sense that your absence are cut off from any of it. You’re a part of it. You’re a part of the flow. All the substance of the universe is present in its entirety at every point in space, which means that you’re the center of all the substance of the universe, always. Substance doesn’t come and go. It’s always the underlying essence of energy in the back of all things.
In the three dimensional world there’s an indisputable fact: there’s widespread hunger and deprivation. A great concern in many persons. They say there is poverty and unemployment. There’s a huge national debt. There’s no point in trying to deny these things, they’re not negative. It’s accepting the reality of things. But you can’t [unshed 00:19:57] deny that this native is permanent. These conditions are not lack, lacking in attitude or state of mind that forms or deforms the human experience.
Jesus said, “Judge not according to appearances, but judge righteous judgment.” See, if we live and work in a three dimensional consciousness our lives are bound and limited. There’s a sense that life is being used up. Things are deteriorating. The years are making us older, and that money, like sand in the hour glass, is running out. Seeing things from a level of appearance one can easily fall into despair.
But Jesus said, “In the world you have tribulation, lack and limitation. But I have overcome the world.” To overcome the world is to come over the appearances. To know the truth and identify as a spiritual being in a spiritual world governed by spiritual law. It’s knowing that there’s a world of transcendence. There’s an allness for every illness, and all these sufficiencies, for every insufficiency. If the universe desires to give it to us. Jesus says, “It’s the Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”
Opulence is the ever present reality of the universe. Think about this, if the stock market goes startling down, as we’ve seen it do in recent years, out of control. It’s running down and down until it looks like the bottom’s going to fall out. If that happens one day, you wake up the next morning, you go off to work. The strange thing is if we know the truth, in the facts of what’s happening, there’s no less substance in the economy than there was before the change. In the night, the federal reserve system puts 100 million dollars worth of money into circulation to counteract some economic problem. There’s not a cent more of value in the economy there was the day before.
Unlike Peter Pan who lost his shadow, you can only separate or cut off from the unlimited resource. You can be fired from a job, but you can never be fired from the universe. Think about that. You’re always in that “may be coming outlet for all there is in God.” You may have a cash flow problem. You’re not getting outside of the universe of flow, which is inseparable within you.
These are things that are very important to hold in consciousness, to keep yourself stable when all around you is instability. Of course, you may be experiencing frustration to this flow as an experience of lack, but lack is not a condition. Lack is a state of mind. Surely, it’s not God’s will. It’s not bad luck, or just one of those things.
You may recall that interesting and lovable character of Mike Todd. He used to say, “Many times I’ve been broke, but I’ve never been poor.” This is the kind of consciousness that will enable any person to go through all the turmoil that the world can offer, and see move onward to his good. We need to remember that there are many different levels of consciousness in which you live. You may be in a lack consciousness, or a failure consciousness. You will draw to you, or express from you the things and experiences in that consciousness.
In most cases, if we are alert and willing to do so we can take a look at our lives and we see difficulties happening constantly. We seem to always be having problems. It’s important to know that somehow I’m in problem consciousness. As long as I’m in a problem consciousness, I will attract to me a continuity of problems. If I’m in a lack consciousness I’ll feel lack and need, even when I have a pocket full of money, and the bank is overflowing. A so called millionaire can feel poverty stricken. He can have a lack consciousness.
It’s strange, but this is something we see quite often in our day. We need to remember that if you’re not secure in your faith, you’re not well grounded in your perception, the presidency prophecies of the economic movers and shakers will have their effect on upon you almost instantly. If you’re moved and shaken of every slight turn of events, if you buy into the world talk about recession, and the unstable employment picture that everyone is worrying about, if you let around like conditions of which you have no control, you may even testify your feelings by saying, “I have no choice. It’s happened.” You read the papers, they tell you how business is bad, and how the stock market has gone down, and things are going ... People are unemployed everywhere.
Like the man in the story, that’s right. There’s a great depression on, because I’ve accepted it in myself. If you buy into it, it will have an immediate effect upon you. There’s an error that must be corrected. You always have a choice. It’s never a choice-less life, a choice-less experience. Because you read about the terrible things that are going to happen, you have the choice of determining that your life is centered in the universal flow.
You may not be able to determine the conditions around you, but you’re going to choose to react into them. You choose your moods. You choose you attitudes. You can choose to follow your faith, your vision. No one can take that from you.
On a country road in western Canada are deep ruts leftover from rains that turned the roads into a quagmire, and hardened by a very dry spell. On the sign it says, “Choose your route with care. You may be on it for the next 30 miles.” You can say that when you’re experiencing concerns about things you’ve been reading about, or hearing about in terms of economic difficulties, and the possibility of unemployment and so forth, layoffs, choose your route with care.
You take the attitude that they mandated we’re in a great depression. Times are going to be hard. Things are going to be difficult. That becomes your rut. You move along in that run, and be impelled in certain directions by it, even if you wanted to move the other way. That’s the way consciousness works. Choose your route with care. Choose the state of mind that you’re going to live with with great caution, and great determination. Keep yourself in the awareness of abundance.
Work on the idea that you’re living in an oppulent universe. In a limitless sea of substance in which there can be no lack. This attitude cannot be achieved without much discipline and effort. On a continuing basis, not just an occasional part-times. It calls for an attitude, or mindset in a self-image of affluence. No one can do it for you, but you can do it. It will have an immediate effect and influence in your life.
Someone might say, “Well, if they lay people off at my office or shop, I’ve always been lucky, so I’ll probably be the lucky one that’s kept on.” It’s not very loving and caring, of course. It’s also very foolish, because if you get yourself in the consciousness of lack or chance, and you live a very difficult experience. Like Dickens character who always waiting to see what turned up. That’s no way to live.
There is an other tendency in the human person to look for simplistic solutions, and magic demonstrations. A person could say, “Well, maybe I’ll win the lottery. Maybe I’ll receive an inheritance from a distant relative that I didn’t even know I had.” Strange thing, in many of the discussions, classes, lectures about prosperity these things are often brought up. Demonstrations have been made by people, demonstrating substance in a time of difficulty, times of lack and unemployment. “He won the lottery. Might’ve been that great. Maybe I’ll win the lottery.”
You put yourself on this chance experience, and your life is precarious, indeed. There’s so many folks involved on the fringes of the study of truth, who toy with the prosperity ideas. In all their hopes upon the unexpected turn up of things that are going to happen. I got money from ... Internal Revenue some money back, which is a switch. Or you got a sudden bonus at the office, or I had a aunt die and leave me some money, or I won the lottery, or whatever. It’s not saying that these things can’t happen. I say it’s a very foolish thing to put your trust in the possible happening of things.
Maybe my metaphysical truth consciousness you can stop the lottery will to having your number. I said even full well knowing it, so much of the prosperity teaching is based on this. I think it’s foolish, because there’s so much more for us in conscious, in awareness of who we are. Expanding our thought to include and be a part of the whole universe. There’s always abundance present. When you really know that, the other consciousnesses of substance manifested every point in space. And who does?
In the element you see Jesus going forth without script or purse. That’s true prosperity. He didn’t pay for money for things, for things to happen, to feed them. All those things were taken care of. He was in consciousness of oneness, trust. Identify with the whole universe of substance. There’s no lack.
Why do we find it so difficult to think of an invisible substance? Capable of manifest, you feel a particular need. Consider when the rains commence. The air is filled with humidity, which is in the process called precipitation. It turns to rain. And water, tons of it, floods the park rays in the parks. Where was all that water before?
They say we had ... on one day we had two inches of rain. Just poured down out of the skies. Where did it come from? We had these two ton truck of water hanging up in the sky? Yet the two tons of water manifest and flow down. Where did it come from? It was in the present, in the form of un-precipitated moisture in the atmosphere. Before your very eyes, the invisible became visible. Is it a miracle? No it was a perfectly natural phenomenon.
To have a recession free life is not a matter of doing or changing things in your world. Not a matter of saying, “I’ll believe when I have my bank account filled, and I have the things I want.” It’s not trying to do these things to get these things to happen. Fantasizing states in your mind. That you get a relief, that you’re living in substance. Substance is the security and support of you at all times. You never know lack.
I remember a story when the early days of Unity, when Charles Fillmore was developing a large printing plant, which they’ve developed into become a great plant through the years. In the beginning of this he was getting some printing equipment. He’d ordered it, and the payments had not been made on time because he was having a little difficulty, and he overstepped.
The sheriff came to repossess the printing equipment. Charles Fillmore says, “Well, I think you better leave because I have a rich father.” The man was convinced that maybe if he’s got a rich father, he’ll probably pay the bills. So we better let it go. They let it go for a couple of weeks, and in that time the bill was paid. He had a rich father. He had an awareness of oneness with the flow of the universe.
If we could know that in our own experience, not that we put off paying our bills. If we get a sense of security, but you can never get all the money that you want in the bank. I have a rich father. I live in a rich, opulent universe. Substance is always present. Seek first the kingdom, and the inner awareness. Contact with the divine flow. Have that guide you, and direct you, and influence you in your decisions, and the work you do.
To have a recession free life, it’s a matter of having a consciousness is more than relevant in this divine process. You have faith that nothing can ever go wrong in your life because you know you’re one with God. But you have to choose for yourself. Whether the uniquely surrounded of the conscious of the pessimist and the doom-casters, they’re called the bears of Wall Street, and fall into a state of worry, and anxiety, and fear. I want to affirm that you’re a spiritual being living in a spiritual universe governed by spiritual law.
“You will definitely find yourself walking at the beat of a different drummer.” As Thoreau says. Remain positive and creative, and open and receptive to the flow os substance. It will manifest in the guidance to take certain courses of action, and the contrast in this word of universe. You’ll always remain hopeful, and optimistic, and happy, and bullish on the economy. You need to become familiar with the word unlimited.
Unlimited, it’s a marvelous word. There’s no limit in the universe, in God. There’s no limit to you in God consciousness. However, human consciousness in the world around us is different. There are distinct limitations to money. $10.00 is not $20.00. $1,000.00 is not $1,000,000.00. There’s centered a fence around it. The one that says a dollar and a dollar bill, in a sense this is only a dollar. Only a dollar. Only $10.00. Only $20.00.
The point is the universe can’t fill your lack. If you have a feeling of lack, a feeling of emptiness, a feeling of want only the universe can fill this. Because lack is a limited state of consciousness. The universe can’t fill your lack.
It’s like going to a free flowing fountain with a cup to be filled. Hold the cup upside down, there’s no way it can be filled. The water just flows over it and falls off. Turn the cup over, and instantly it’s filled to overflowing. This overflow is the main stock and trade of the person who consciously works from within out.
Again using the symbol of the cup, the tendency is to think of taking your cup to the company paymaster to be filled. You take it to the bank, and empty it on the counter. The teller puts it into your account. But actually, the prosperity consciousness is just opposite of this. You’re already one with substance. You’re already a rich child of God. You already have a rich father.
But we can only have the use of that which we can give way to. The work is not a means of earning a living, and getting money out here. As much as it is the means of making a life. Giving way from within yourself. You give way to the energy, you give way the love, the commitment. You only invest that energy and to curve it into the work you do. You say unto operation a law which returns unto you in like manner.
We get so confused because we think of the outside, we think of the money out here. That’s what I want to get. You own the job to get the money, but it’s all on the outside. A wise student trying to get himself in tune with the fullness of life. All this start in the beginning, you create a process works for within me. Life is lived within out.
My work should be done from within out. I start with inspiration, the flow of energy, the love of work, and it brought me into this job. And invest something into the job. See, the outer directed worker is a taker. You’ve go to be aware of that. But in his work, he’s a taker. He’s always thinking of, “Another day another dollar. I want this, I want this. I’m going to get this. I want this raise in salary.” He’s always thinking in terms of out here. Making the money out here. Investing it out here. Spending it out here. But yet, he’s so totally cut off. Like the prodigal son, he’s in the far country. As the prodigal son, he came to know want. He came because he lost sight of who he was. He lost the inner contact.
An inner directed student is a giver. His work is a place to give. 23rd Psalm says, “My cup runneth over.” This overflow expressed in the feeling of joy makes a person of prosperity. It also helps to make one’s employer prosperous and successful. The worker should be thinking not taking something from the employer, but giving something to the employer.
Someone once said, “Why not give the boss a raise?” What I mean by that is giving the boss the raised consciousness of yourself, a sense of service, a sense of commitment. Giving into the operation, which becomes successful. In doingly so, you’re prosperous in the process. There’s always flowing from within out.
“Come ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you through the foundation of the world.” (Matthew 25:34) In other words, it’s important that you claim you inheritance. Stake your claim in the substance of the universe. He’s on his way to support your needs. He says, “The Father knoweth of the things you have need, even before you ask him.” So I say, don’t ask. Especially if our prayer and worship is asking, pleading, supplicating. God up there has all the substance to be able to say, “Give some to me. I need it.”
So we pray for this stuff to come down from Heaven on the outside. Much of our religious experience is exterior oriented. It’s all outer directed. We pray out here, talk to God out here, view spiritual things things out here. We’re cut off. We’re not related to it.
“Be still and know that I am God.” Said Psalmist. Be still, and know your oneness within. All things begin from within through this creative flow. If you’re alert and serious and sincere in your study of truth. You begin every day getting centered and knowing that you’re in one with the divine flow. You willingly, and lovingly give way to that flow. Pouring it into your work, into your relationship, into all of the things that happen around you.
Others may not know the difference. People say, “I don’t know why that guy’s always so lucky.” But you’ll know the difference. You’ll know that in one case you’re working from the outside in. In your case, you’re working from the inside out. Letting the divine flow manifest in you.
Keep this in your mind was the idea that abundance is the natural state of affairs in the universe. Anyone that’s experiencing less than abundance, in every aspect of life, in some way he’s blocking the flow or pushing it away. Take charge of your own life, you mind, your own thoughts. Own up to the fact that if you’re having difficulty in your life, if your finances are in shambles, whether you know it or not, in some way you’re blocking the flow.
You say, “Well, it’s because they laid me off. It’s because these people owe me money, and don’t pay me. It’s because prices are so high. I don’t have enough money to go around.” It’s a cop out. Because your life is centered in the divine within. You’re a spiritual being. You may not be aware of it. You may not be acting the part. Your relationship with the universe is within out.
If there’s any kind of lack, or difficulty in your life accept the fact that somehow you’re blocking the flow. If you work from that point, you begin to analyze your thoughts, your feelings, your sense of resistance, your fear of lack. Maybe you’ve had a longtime fear of unemployment, of insecurity. These things are a part of consciousness. They have a great effect on what happens to you, because life is lived from within out.
The mystic monk, Brother Lawrence said, according to the illuminating phrase, “The practice of the presence of God.” It doesn’t mean having Christ as a mystical insight, or even spending long periods of meditation. We see of the doctor, he practices medicine. It doesn’t suggest that he’s having an emotional experience, it’s merely a description of how he he is living. The practice is presence. It does not mean titillating yourself with some mere spirit of God that comes and goes. The presence of God is that of God, which is present, holy, ceasingly, it never changes. It doesn’t come and go. It is. To the practice of the presence of God means continually reminding yourself the activity of God ever working with you. Much as the student of mathematics works continually to remind himself of the principals.
The presence of God cannot be absent. You may have an absent consciousness. You may think the separation, but God is always present. You don’t have to talk to God, reach for God, plead and supplicate God. You need only to let God be God in you as Meister Eckhart says.
Practice of presence is to experience that realization that the presence of God is the ever present activity that’s seeking always to give to fulfill itself in you, and through you. To make a deeply rooted commitment that you will practice the presence of God’s substance. Ever reminding yourself that you’re in the presence of an infinite, internal substance though which all things proceed.
Resolve that you will think and work and live, if you really believe that the whole universe of creativity and substance are present in every project of your work, every transaction of your investments as a never failing resource. If you diligently practice the presence of God’s substance you become impervious through happiness and inflation or recession can established in the experience of affluence. You will be centered in the free flow of substance.
Let’s be still for a moment.
Get the picture of living in this great field, the kingdom of God within. The ground of this field is pure substance. It’s your milieu. See yourself centered in this field of substance. Get the picture so strong in your mind. Whenever in your experience to come in the days to come, you feel the littlest twinge of fear of insecurity, a sense of lack, or need that you remember the you’re established in substance.
In your life there can be no lack. Reject the thought of recession. Reject the thought of financial confusion. Keep yourself aware of oneness with the whole. Substance is the ground under your feet. It’s how He stands under everything that you have. It’s limitless, and inexhaustible, ever flowing. As you know this, you will know true prosperity. If you ever keep the great perception that there’s a secret relationship between substance and lack. Lack is another thing, it’s simply a frustration in consciousness and the free flow of substance. It can that much easily be resolved.
First, let’s give thanks for the realization of universe of abundance. See prosperity flowing through the land. See the barriers for those who are involved in thoughts of recession inspired by new ideas, new light, new awareness that prosperity is in the land. There can be no confusion, no lack. You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. So be it.
