Eric Butterworth Unity Podcast #61
“How to Recession-Proof Your Life—3—Harness Your Faith Power” is a lesson about faith in God when the world is holding a faith in recession. Eric Butterworth’s message is to “Make a commitment now that you will hold to this idea of believing not in God, but from God.”
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ERIC:
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There’s a word that we’re hearing a lot these days coming out of Washington and The economists, newspapers talk about it, the word recession.
We’re dealing with this for a very special reason, because consciousness being what it is, we tend to absorb these vibrations in the world around us. Importantly, we condition ourselves to think for ourselves. Hit the tone of our own life. Your prosperity is not dependent upon the world around you, though it may come through that channel. The tone of your prosperity is set in your own consciousness or your thoughts and feelings.
It’s so important that we know this. When there’s a tendency to allow people and conditions, economists and economic indicators, to decide how you’re going to think and feel and act. But you can think and feel as you want on your own.
We’re using the word recession also as a metaphor for any kind of financial difficulty or problem that we have in our lives. You can be free from this tendency by certain techniques, certain attitudes, certain ideas that we’re dealing with in these weeks together.
Here we’re going to talk about faith. There’s no more important spiritual factor than faith when you’re trying to keep yourself in the consciousness of substance. I want to challenge you to a deep gratitude of faith. It can be harnessed to establish you in a satisfying prosperity stability.
What happens when someone says, “Just have faith and everything will be all right”? In a sense that’s kind of meaningless if you have a complex of having no faith. People often say, “I don’t have any faith. I’m not a very believing person.” There’s no such thing as a lack of faith. Faith is as natural to you as breathing. The proper question, who are you believing in?
In other words, worry is faith, in a sense, worry is faith that something negative is about to happen. Worry is faith. Insecurity is faith. You’re believing, but believing in the wrong things.
So faith is not something that you have to find somewhere. It’s nothing you’re going to receive at the end of a course of study. As Paul says, “Faith is the free gift of God. Which all persons have but only a few use rightly.”
Faith is normally the sole property of religion. It is usually a blind acceptance of a creed on confession of faith, little boy says, “Confusion of faith.” If you sign a lot of “I believe” statements, you become one of the believers.
Let me ask you sometime, what is your faith? In other words, your religion. What is your persuasion?
Normally faith, in this sense, is a package of custom made convictions. Now you have conversion, usually giving up one set of cliches and accepting in total another set. This is so much a part of our religious life.
I was speaking for a youth group in a Protestant Church some years ago. It was sort of an exchange of religions and I was there to represent something different from the one they believed.
I had a girl ask me, “What do you believe about that?” and she pointed out some doctrine appointed that was very important to them. I handed it back to her and I said, “What do you believe?” She turned to an assistant minister in the rear of the auditorium and said, “Reverend, what do we believe about that?”
Believing is personal, not collective. We don’t, “We believe.” Anything. I believe. I accept. I’m in tune with.
Jesus used the phrase, “To him that believeth.” Normally presumed to be believing in God. The religion of many persons consists purely in believing in God. Do you believe in God? Yes, I believe in God. What does that mean? How do you believe in God? What is God? Where is God? What does my belief in this something have to do with my life?
I’ve once said and you’ve heard me say it that the important thing is not to believe in God but to believe from God. God is the ground of our being, the essence in which we live and move and have our being. God is all life, all substance, all intelligence, present not absent, present at the heart of me.
Believing must come from that. We tend to believe in God. Usually believing in the God that’s up there somewhere, something outside of us. When we believe in God in this sense, you’re casting your burden on God as the old traditionalists say, “Cast your burden on the Lord.” You’re tricking God to do something for you, to work his miracle for you. We’ve all had that in our consciousness. That has to change.
God doesn’t do things for you. God works through you from within out. We think of God out here doesn’t expect you to do it and we procrastinate. We think, “Well, when he gets around to it, he’ll take care of it. In the meantime, I’ll just go ahead and go as I am.”
So we’re going to get the idea of believing from God. The awareness that we live in God. Genesis says in the beginning, “[aramaic 00:06:19], in the beginning, God.” In principle, God. Begin with the principle. The ever-present, all-knowing, all-sufficient God in whom we live and move and have our being. There’s a God-potential that’s there within you.
So faith is not wishing for something or someone out there. It’s turning on something from within. Do you want to get that vision of believing in something, believing from something?
I think the first space scientists, they did not reach out into the universe and hope for help. They based the effort on the principles of gravity and inertia, things that are two. Gravity and inertia is primarily responsible in the orbiting of a satellite. Beginning with the premise of universal power, they did not just believe in these principles, they believed from them and their believing became a projection of energy and understanding and power and creativity, proceeded to create rocket and space vehicles.
The question that we might ask ourselves, does faith in God make God work for you? Most of us in our traditional past would’ve said, “Yes, I believe in God and God does something for me.” Is it the action of God working on you that gives you faith? The activity of this divine intelligence, this presence within you, the Father within that knows everything you ever need of that gives you the faith. Faith is born in this.
There can never be a limitation of this power, the power within to do all things is always within you. Never going to be any lack of it, there are going to be a limitation of the awareness of it. So your faith does not make God work, nor does it release some magic power. Your faith simply turns on the divine power that is always present.
The whole of divine life, substance and intelligence is centered within you. There’s nothing you can add to it or take away from it. And the centering is the same in all persons, leading to the shocking thought that the universe is no more centered in Jesus than in you and me. That is a shock I’m sure to some, because you think of Jesus as being much more centered in the power.
Jesus was centered in various levels, was centered in the realization of the allness of God. We’re centered in various levels of limitation. He said you can do all things that he did if you believe, if you center yourself in the creative flow as he was always so centered. This suggests and acts as a definition for faith. Consciousness centered in the universe of source. Consciousness centered in the universe of source.
Overzealous teachers and writers try to write the magic of believing, miracle works of faith. This is misleading, there’s nothing magic about faith at all. No possibility that faith can work magic. Faith uses law not [Caprise 00:09:27]. God is the only the force of life and intelligence that must act, it can’t help itself and we create the conditions to make the result inevitable.
A good example of that is a rheostat, you may have one in your dining room at home to dim the lights. The rheostat they use here in the auditorium to dim the lights and increase the lights. You turn it down it creates soft lighting, you turn it up to have more light and power.
It’s not a miracle. Nobody’s waving a wand making something magic happen. The power is there all the time. In a sense, faith tunes in on, to and turns on, a power that is ever present. A turned down rheostat symbolically is faith in lack. A turned up rheostat is faith in affluence. You always have the power to turn your faith up or turn it down and we do it all the time. In most cases our faith is turned so low, down so low we’re not aware of it being there at all.
There’s no lack of faith in any person, only the lack of the willingness to let your light shine, to turn it up, to increase the power. When faith is turned up to it’s highest you project this energy force, this all-ness of spirit and it goes forth as a means of contacting life and conditions and people in the highest possible level. And it becomes a tremendous power of accomplishment.
Haggerty A. Hadfield, British psychologist, conducted some tests, and he headed to prove the power of suggestion, which actually demonstrated the great potential in every person. They used a dynamometer, a device measuring the power of the human grip. In normal consciousness the average grip is about 101 pounds.
Under the hypnotic suggestion of weakness, person was told how weak he was, it was suggested to him in hypnosis. “You’re weak. You don’t have the power to do anything. You can barely hold your hands up.” In this suggestion of weakness the grip was tested at about 28 pounds average.
Under the hypnotic suggestion of strength, when a person is told how strong he is. He has [turned 00:11:45] his power. The average grip was 142 pounds.
What did we change in the person? There’s no more power in him. No more energy. It’s just suggestion, he was able to turn up the rheostat, and feel a great deal more power.
I suppose each person knowing that he could not grip more than 101 pounds, faced a desperate need, an emergency to lift 135 pounds let’s say. In three dimension consciousness you’d probably say I can’t. There’s no way I can do it. I can’t lift that much. I can only lift 100. No way I can lift 135, 140 pounds. But somehow he builds up his awareness, his faith, increase the energy that was always present. It’s amazing that some of the greatest feats that were accomplished.
I remember hearing, reading in Time Magazine. I remember when it was, it was the year 1960 because I was in England and I was reading a European edition of the Herald Tribune, the Time Magazine I should say. There was an article in the back of the Time Magazine talking about a woman in Florida who lived in a rural farmhouse, and her nearest neighbors were about a half mile away. She was home alone except for a young son. He was out in the front yard with his car up on blocks, underneath working on the car.
The mother was sitting on the front porch. She was recuperating from a very serious illness and operation. She was very weak in condition, and she sat and watched. Suddenly the car over her son lurched, and fell trapping him, pinning him to the ground. He called for help. The very life breath was squeezing out of him.
There was no one around to help. The husband had gone to town, the wife was the only one there. She picked herself up from where she was sitting, very slowly, and weakly walked down towards the car, stooped and braced herself, lifted the car off the son. He rolled out to safety and then the car crashed down. She fell in the heat, fainted.
The doctor was called later. There wasn’t anything wrong with her, she was just exhausted. The doctor said, “I only wonder how far she’d be able to lift the car if she’d been strong.”
There are many stories like this, and you’ve had experiences like that yourself, [inaudible 00:14:44]. The power is tremendous, and I should really say there is no limit. Because we are in tune with the whole universe. We’re a channel for its dynamic power unfolding, turns on our faith. What can you believe in?
It’s important that we dissolve and eliminate this whole idea of believing God out there will do something for us. That’s the procrastinating, just putting it off. God out there doesn’t do things for you. God is present as you. The all-ness of the universe is present within you. There’s no limit to what man can do. The limit is only his faith. His acceptance.
Most of us go through life, rather than be holding a tin cup under the [inaudible 00:15:37] of God’s plenty. We may be called a small fry expectancy. This may manifest in some person as a string-saving, make-do can’t afford it habit. At least what I call marginal living. Jesus gave us example.
Jesus wasn’t acting under a special dispensation of power. This has been our belief. We miss the whole ideas of his teachings, of his life demonstration if we believe that. Jesus had no special power. He specialized his powers. That’s the difference. He was no more centered in God than we are, but he was centered in the consciousness of God, and he kept that centering.
But it’s startling to imagine that when Jesus began to realize his divinity and experiment with faith, he had doubts about his ability to do things that his heart supposed. Does is shock to think of Jesus having doubts?
Jesus was unlike each of us. He started from a particular point, but he progressed, he grew, he expanded his awareness, increased his faith. He became a channel for the complete essence of the universal power. Can you imagine that Jesus was faced with certain conditions during his life. He would say, “I can’t do that.” Imagine feeding 5000 people, I wouldn’t know how.
Is it hard for you to believe that early in life Jesus had the same difficulties that we do? The same instructions in his mind. Remember he said, “I have overcome the world of the flesh and the devil,” and then indicate that he has something to overcome. We need to see that. It’s important.
I think we miss the whole meaning of Jesus’ life, and the real dynamics of his teaching once you see that possibility. He didn’t say I’m more divine than you. He said in a fact, “I’ve overcome the world. All that I have done is an example of an adventure that you may take with the same assured success. That’s the way it is. Prove it for yourself. Strap the gift of God within you. Walk by faith and not by sight.”
In a statement of Embolden Treatment and Affirmation, saving the faith for some good in your life. We need to make a commitment to move from one state of consciousness to another. And of this commitment we lack the key to open the door. You may take a stand on faith supervisions that I believe in God. I believe that God will work this out for me. But your faith is something you’re doing, other than what you are. Faith is not a doing, it’s an accepting, a letting.
Under cosmic law, when we have a need there’s an answer already moving toward us. Before we even formulate a desire in mind, there’s God in us that desires. Before we have an urge to do a thing, there’s a movement of spirit in us prompting us in that direction, before they call I will answer we’re told.
So faith is really our consent to let thy kingdom come, let thy will be done. Let the creative intention manifest in us.
Faith is the perceiving power of the mind, along with power to form and shape substance.
Think about this, the perceiving power. Faith is a perception. It enables you to see things not as they, but as they can be. There’s a factor of faith that is so helpful. It is not something an abstract idea. Faith is a perceiving power that enables you to see people be what they can be. How do you have real faith in a person? If your faith is coming from that inner depth of your own awareness of God, you see beyond the appearances, you can see in his potential. You can see his possibilities. You see his beauty, his strength, beyond all to the contrary. When you have faith in people in this way, you become an actual catalyst for releasing the greater potential within him.
Many of us have explored this, how to touch the potential of helping people. If there’s a person you like that you’re concerned about that’s not living up to his fullness, his possibilities. He’s limiting himself and those around him. He’s living a frustrated life. By believing in him, believing from the consciousness of God, you’re believing becomes a projection, a spiritual energy. A projection that sees the wholeness in him, and becomes a means of forming and shaping that wholeness.
You have a tremendous influence over another person, especially one you love. A child, an offspring, a parent, a spouse, a co-worker, an employer, an employee, by faith, harnessing the power of this potential within you, you have the power to see something in that person that no one else sees in the same way. By continually seeing that, working with him in this faith consciousness, you’ll actually be an influence in his life, immeasurable. Many of you have experienced this, none of us use it enough. Faith perception is a dynamic aspect of human consciousness.
You see the thing is, when we work in life, we’re constantly trying to change things. We don’t like things, when people are in conditions, sometimes we say under our breath, or perhaps overtly, I’m going to straighten him out. We express all our energies towards trying to change the person in some way, making him what we think he should be, making him as we think a person in his life should be expressing. But the key is not to set things right, but to see them rightly. No matter what the condition is, the problem.
You can be very disturbed about what’s going on in the world, or your office, what’s going on in your neighborhood. You may kind of find ways of changing it outwardly. The politicians and city offices trying to change the difficulties in our city, the crime in our streets, honestly there’s much that can be done. But we should all [inaudible 00:22:23] the possibility, every one of us can be an influence.
Have I said it right? Am I seeing it rightly? Seeing the presence in the power of God, everywhere present. Protecting presence with people, as a guiding influence, you have to lift the consciousness of the whole.
As I’ve often said, whether you are or not, you’re either on the side of the problem or the side of the solution. There’s very little in between. It may be that if you’re seeing things as they are and reacting to them, resenting them, fearing them, worrying about them, arguing about them, projecting negative attitudes and feelings towards them, whether you know it or not, you’re on the side of the problem. You’re on the side of the darkness in the community. You’re on the side of difficulties. Even if you will, straddling as it may seem on the side of the crime, it’s one or the other. Seek to set it right or see it rightly.
If you’re disturbed about something and you don’t have to read the paper very much or listen to television very much before you have the tendency to be disturbed, there’s so much to be disturbed about. It’s important to know immediately. I’m going to begin with faith.
Faith that believes in the all-ness of God that is present, as the changing, harmonizing, protecting power. Also faith that perceives good that is present. Looks for the good. Expresses the good. Directs the energy of creativity through his faith. One has to work on himself an awful lot, because we live in the world. Jesus said, “I’m in the world but not of it.” There’s no way we can be aloof in the world and get in some fourth dimensional vehicle and just make contact with things we need, but be above it and away from it. You’re in it. You go to work. You ride the subway. You walk the streets. You’re in this world, but Jesus said you don’t have to be of it. You can be of something else, something deeper that comes within you, that flows through you. Your faith is a vehicle through which this can happen.
Harness your faith power. Take advantage of this tremendous possibility that is yours. And choose to walk by faith, and not by sight. That doesn’t mean to walk with your eyes covered, means you walk in the consciousness of the all-ness of God present. And the ability for each of to project that energy in creative and meaningful ways.
It would be helpful if all of us could make a commitment to practice this insight in faith. You’d have to work a little, how do they do, crack the edges that are so deeply embedded within you, and believing, believing in God, having faith. Always remember that you’re believing from God. You’re believing is based upon a fundamental principle. It is the root of your being. In this principal there’s a floor of divine essence, substance, love, life, creativity, you’re a channel for it. When you have faith, rooted in the divine within you, your faith from this consciousness, your faith becomes a projection almost like a searchlight that goes out in front of you. That’s tremendous power. You become an influence.
At the same time, lift yourself to the greatest possibility that is yours. We seldom go through a day, [inaudible 00:26:07], many situations that call for new ideas, new creativity, new ingenuity, new sense of overcoming power, the need to fulfill the greatness that’s in you. In all cases we can change our life by harnessing this inner power, and having faith. Faith is a believing consciousness, a believer who is constantly involved in releasing and expressing this tremendous potential within us. A believing consciousness is the attitude of a success person. Especially as it concerns your financials, your substance, your supply.
Being faced with this attitude of a recession this far in the world that people will lose jobs, down in business, stock market will fall, prices will go up, there will be shortages. The kind of conflicts that go round and round in a so called recessionary tendency. You can recession proof your life. You become impervious to these conditions. As the Psalm 91 says “A thousand may fall and 10000 may fall on your left.” You can think of this in terms of jobs, or loss of money, stock market going down, whatever. “10000 they fall thy left. 10000 if thy right. They shall not come thy unto you,” he said to those who draw in the secret places most high.
Draw in the consciousness, to be a source, the source of all prosperity, the source of all substance, is within, in the other dimensional side of the universe, and the other dimensional side of you. Leap into possibilities that are ever impressed with you. You are a channel for the expression.
Become impervious to all [inaudible 00:28:03]. If you still react negatively to things you hear or read, the very eminent economist would say, “There’s no doubt about it, we are in a great recession.” You can say, “That’s what you think.” If you want that in the world fine, I believe from the consciousness, the divine stability and prosperity, and flowing substance, and just on this being the aura of my life. You work in the consciousness, and only be oblivious and impervious to the things going on out there, your life will be orderly and prosperous and secure. And more than that, you’d be an influence to the economy as a whole.
One thing that’s been discovered, it’s almost a metaphysical realization, but it’s being believe to be righter and righter to an extent today, that is that the economy of a country, and the conditions of a stock market is very definitely the result of the attitudes and feelings of the people.
If the consciousness of a group of people is high enough, to keep a sense of attunement with the divine flow of substance, there could be no recession. A recession no matter what it may be, could be resolved and cured overnight, in idealistic sense, if enough people would hold to the realization of oneness and the secured flow of substance, [inaudible 00:29:34] would run another night itself, believing from the consciousness of God.
Whatever happens to the world around you, whatever happens to the economy of the nation or the world, let it happen in you. Your life can be secure. Your supply can be an even flow. Harness your faith. Act on faith as a perception. Seize the good, the best, the highest, and most potential in everything, and you will have an experience of freedom, and fullness, and prosperity.
Let’s be still for just a moment. It’s so important that we utilize the tremendous potential of our mind. Each of us has a tremendous power and vision.
Imaging, we use it all time, but we use it often negatively. We imagine all sorts of things that we don’t want to happen but we imagine them because we were worried about them, we were centered in the negative. Just for moment, in stillness, accept the realization that you live in the security of God’s consciousness, the very ground of your being. Your life is built upon this consciousness of that greater God.
His activity within you, through the root of your being, has no other goal for you except to fulfill itself in you, to lift you to the highest of your potential experience. The rising, lifting process, upward pull of the divine in you.
Just imagine yourself, rooted in this fundamental principle, and be the sense that, like the rheostat in the dining room, or the rheostat on the lights, you can turn the rheostat up, increase the power, aberrations of light. You can increase your faith, faith coming out of this bit of consciousness which is limitless, a resource which is endless.
In this consciousness of an energy flowing through you, you look out on your life as you do. Look at your job, the company for which you work. The prosperity and security of the community in which you live. Nation as a whole. The perceiving power that forms and shapes the substance of good, let this process work in you. Believe from this consciousness that you can say to yourself, with this image, I believe in prosperity. For this image, I believe in security. I believe in stability. I believe in wholeness.
Make a commitment now that you will hold to this idea of believing not in God, but from God. Wherever you are, whatever you may be doing, you stir up this faith consciousness. Tremendous power, creativity, and you’re free from limitation. Free to express the best and highest that’s in you, and draw forth the best and highest from all persons. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. So be it.
