Hi Friends -
I am asking you to consider how much subtle, unconscious anxiety may be driving your life, triggering emotions that lead to foolish choices. And I about to recommend a program called Capable Life as the best resource available today for surfacing, addressing and managing anxiety’s grip.
I am asserting that by becoming aware of anxiety and tracing its likely source, we have a precious key to identify and manage all sources of hostility in our life and in the world. Anxiety may or may not be the cause of disfunction and hostility, but I have found it always reveals and points to that which I do not clearly see. The trick is to recognize the symptom and follow the thread. It really is that simple.
According to Newspapers.com, the RMS Lusitania was a luxury ocean liner that sank off the coast of Ireland after being torpedoed by a German U-boat on the afternoon of May 7, 1915. The ship carrying 1,959 passengers and crew went down in 18 minutes, claiming the lives of nearly 1,200 people, including 123 Americans. The tragedy swayed public opinion and indirectly led to the United States entering WWI.
Three months later, Unity Magazine published Charles Fillmore’s article “Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace”, which is shown below. Charles Fillmore really tears into the powerful and wealthy families who ruled Europe at the time. Their riches and privileges had filled them with anxiety, leading them to disastrous decisions.
Charles Fillmore appears to be a bit rattled himself. That seemed strange when I first read the article. Charles Fillmore, angry? It was not his best writing.
But then I came to see that below the anger was something else: anxiety. Charles had let his simmering anxiety get the best of him. And he wrote, just as I have done all too often, a post filled with anger and accusation.
The reason it’s relevant today is because we are only one torpedo away from a real mess. And, because of social media, we are, emotionally, all one family.
It’s likely that you are reading this because you want a more peaceful life. If you are a licensed teacher or minister it’s likely you want to foster peace through your ministry. If you are part of a church leadership team I bet you want your church to be more “of one accord.”
If so, the most important thing you can do is to devote some time exploring anxiety. All I can say is that when I begin exploring anxiety many things came to the surface that, until then, were completely unknown to me. Other things that were troublesome came into focus. By becoming more aware of anxiety I was able to see many sources of anger.
Click here to read what I have to say about Steve Cuss. Click here for his personal website. Click here to see his program, Capable Life. Click here to buy his first book (managing anxiety in the church family). Click here to buy his latest book (managing anxiety about God).
Please let me know if you choose to participate.
Wednesday, May 8, 2024
Download PDF of this article from Unity magazine August 1915
Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace
Charles Fillmore
Extracted from Unity Magazine, August 1915, pages 124-127
THE conflict of nations in Europe is stirring the sympathetic hearts of the people of America and there is a widespread desire to do something to bring about peace. Our readers are pouring in upon us plans and suggestions for prayers, petitions and treatments, asking and even commanding in the name of Christ the restoration of the principles for which the Christian religion stands.
We are in complete sympathy with this humane and natural desire of all sane people for a universal peace the world round, a peace than can never be broken by the ambition of any nation. This enduring peace is sure to be established when men see the insanity of war, but it will never be entered into by the whole world until certain deep-seated errors are eradicated from human thought.
Every experienced metaphysical healer knows that permanent healing is never accomplished until the mental cause of the disease is removed. It is possible to bring about an appearance of health in many cases through will-suppression. This is not spiritual healing but merely a species of mind dominance. Jesus was a true healer, and when he cast out the error that caused the condition, he said, “Go and sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon thee“ (John 5:14) The “thing" was caused by sin. Then the true way to heal the thing is to find the cause and forever put the thing out of commission.
Although the patient and his friends may clamor for speedy help for the suffering, it should not be granted until the sinful thought is uncovered and properly dealt with.
What is true of individuals is also true of nations. We cannot give a mental opiate to the warring nations by treating for peace when there is no peace. That is, when there is no effacement of the deep-seated errors that have caused all European wars. It is an easy matter to point to the immediate causes that brought about the present conflict, but these are far removed from the primal cause that has through thousands of years led up to the final struggle. Many writers in the public press have pointed out that this is a war of families. In the Cleveland Plain Dealer, George Saint Amour, a Frenchman, writes:
"I am ashamed of Europe. Europe is a madhouse, an insane asylum, a collection of families fighting each other with the ferocity of wild beasts infected by hydrophobia.1
“We do not need to ask the cause of the chancellories of Europe. They could only say that the Hohenzollems and Savoys and Hapsburgs and Romanoffs and Hanovers, all related more or less closely, had a cheap row, and decided to grab some more money and power from each other—and so set the millions of 'patriots’ to murdering each other.”
A metaphysician sees the bursting upon the heads of these warring people the accumulated thoughts of family selfishness for unnumbered generations. It began with the cave-man, progressed to the robber-baron, then enlarged to the nation. But in all its growth the selfishness of the family has been the dominant note. No permanent peace will ever he established until this separation between men and nations is wiped out of human consciousness.
Jesus Christ was called the Prince of Peace. At his birth the angels sang, “Peace on earth, good will to men.” Yet in Matthew 10 he said, “Think not that I came to send peace on the earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law: and a man's foes shall be they of his own household.”
This plainly points to the disruption of the family through the advent of the Christ-Mind. One great foe to the progress of the race is this holding together of families, clans, classes, nations. Christ, the Son of God, whose Father is the Father of all men, brings a sword to this family selfishness.
This great combat for supremacy by ambitious families was foretold by the prophets of old, and they saw the peace that would follow when Christ should “judge between the nations and reprove many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more."
But before this peace is established all the states of mind that bring about war must be broken up. The royal families of Europe must be cast into the scrap heap. The aristocracy which wealth has built up must be humbled and its foundations destroyed. Every institution that has brought about separation between man and man must be brought low. Cast systems that have bound men to hereditary occupations shall be destroyed. They belong to family heredity. The common people are to be given their rights before this great war is over.
Christ is the Prince of Peace, but he cannot rule in the hearts of men and nations so long as they cling to false ideas of the rights of all the people. The idea that certain families are born by divine right to rule other families of less royal blood, must be destroyed before the kingdom of Christ can be set up in the earth. He said, "Whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant."
When the pride of aristocracy, and the pride of family, and the pride of wealth, and all the other prides that have hardened the hearts of the peoples of Europe and made them many nations when they should be one, are done away with, then they will be ready for a lasting peace. The present war is revealing the weakness of the mortal ways and methods of men. Their navies are proving cockleshells easily sunk; the dead of their armies encumber the ground—the living burrowing like moles in it. The glory of conquest is fading away. The ablest financiers see bankruptcy and ruin for every nation involved. The end will be rebellion of the people against the leaders, revolution—and exhaustion. Then when men give up in despair and call upon God, the Prince of Peace will come to their rescue.
So we see much yet to be done before peace is declared. The nations have not asked for peace. When they have proved futile their own efforts to bring about lasting peace, our prayers and words of peace will find a resting place in their land.
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SELF-CONTROL
The man who resists, resents, strikes or answers back, is allowing sway to his reflex actions: he who controls such actions, who practices non-resistance, is acting on the level of the more developed being; he is exerting self-control. And self-control is the thing to be desired more than almost anything else. To sit in the castle of your body and to feel that you are its full and complete master; that every muscle acts or refrains from acting as your mature judgment dictates, and that no man can make you do otherwise, there are few things more to be desired; and yet this self-mastery is only to be attained by practice. It is useless to say that you are the master unless you are put to the test; it is useless to say “I would not hit back, I would not steal" unless you have, been placed so that the desire to do these things has been very strong. Non-resistance is resistance transferred from the external to the internal; non-resistance is self-resistance. Every day we are confronted by situations where non-resistance, that is to say, self-control, means a chance to strengthen our inner power, while giving way and striking back means a chance for self-mastery lost. One may well be too proud to fight, too proud to allow his poise to be upset by someone who chooses to injure or insult him.
And in a very large proportion of cases, since the aggressor is himself acting under a momentary impulse, to ignore it means to allow it to burn itself out, while resistance means to start a chain of actions the end of which no one can foresee.—The O.E. Critic.
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I will trust, and not be afraid; for the Lord Jehovah is my strength and my salvation.—Isaiah 12:2.
- hydrophobia: extreme or irrational fear of water, especially as a symptom of rabies in humans. Hydrophobia is thought to happen because the rabies virus lives in the saliva – so reducing the amount of saliva in your mouth by drinking water would reduce the virus' ability to spread. As the virus progresses, they will start to experience seizures and fall in and out of consciousness.
