It is Good to be Made Whole
1912-07-07
This lesson from Charles Fillmore was featured on Bob Brach's Unity Classic Radio broadcast on August 11, 2015. Bob writes, "This is an early (1912) talk of Mr. Fillmore's. He has some nice comments about MIND - IDEA - EXPRESSION (p.7) and of two examples of going right to the point in our thoughts and consciousness (p.11). He also explains how we can drop in our consciousness to the old laws (p.20). I hope you enjoy these timeless treasures."
LECTURE
"IT IS GOOD TO BE MADE WHOLE"
-by
MR. CHARLES FILLMORE
-at
UNITY AUDITORIUM
913 Tracy Avenue, Kansas City, Missouri
SUNDAY MORNING, JULY 7, 1912.
One of the great problems of existence is to account for conditions as they exist, when they are directly opposed to what we intuitively know they ought to be. We try in various ways to remedy conditions, not always knowing the law of Cause and Effect. So we, like the heathens, have our little images, like "Billikin", "The God of Things as They Ought to Be".
We are told that the heathen doesn't really worship his little God. That represents to him something that he would like to have, but, living on the outer plane of consciousness, he thinks he hasn't got it, and he doesn't know how to get it, so he makes a little image of it to keep him prepared in that which he knows ought to be, ought to exist.
Now, people that live in that external realm; that believe in amulets, that believe in luck, mascots — they have their dogs and parrots, any little old thing that they can fix their minds upon as having something that will "bring them good.
Now, that is the intuitive perception of the mind that Good belongs to it; it ought to have it, but it is ignorance of this Cause side, and it doesn't know just how to go about it in the scientific lawful way. So, we find that it is necessary to convince our minds of certain fundamental truths. If you know the law of the power of the word, your own thought, to bring about that convincing condition in your mind, why, use that instead of depending upon these transitory superstitious things. It is always an evidence of superstition to have a lot of mascots around — believe in the dropping of the dish rag and the meeting of a black cat on a dark night, and all that stuff. Lots of people are just loaded up with those ideas, and it shows they live in the external world; and they are never real thinkers; they don't get hold of the law of what Jesus called the "I AM": "I am the Way; I am the Truth; I make the Law"".
You have got to believe these truths about God, about man, and it is found by metaphysicians you have just got to convince your outer mind, through the impulse, the impact of certain statements, oft repeated. Knowing this, we pray scientifically. We take our prayers and make them effective through holding definitely some state of, or sane thought that will produce in you a state of mind
Now, we know that it is God's will that we be made whole, we may be healthy always in our minds, in our bodies, and in all our affairs; yet, we look out upon conditions and we say, "Well, I have got to account for these outer conditions some way, I know that. If I would make a world, and put a lot of people in there, I would have them healthy, of course, and I would have them mentally strong and wise, so that they would have everything they would desire. That is the kind of a world I would make". That is just exactly the kind of a world God has made, but we don't believe in it, and are trying to work the problem out from the realm of appearances. We have all gone astray.
Now, let us get back and believe in the good God. Let us say to ourselves this morning, every one of us,
"I believe that it is God's will that I be made whole in mind, body and affairs."
Lots of you are, in a subtle way, believing and thinking: "Well, I am sure it is God's will that I am poor; all this sickness that I have got is in some way the result of something that God has got against me; the whole Universe is against me", or "This is working against me, or that". There is nothing in it. You are whole in mind and body and affairs, in the sight of God, your father, and I want you to come right up to that Standard. You have got to convince your mentality of it; you have got to pray, believing you have received all these things, and you will receive them.
That will "be our prayer, to convince yourself, not with any Billikin, on the outside, but within: "It is God's will that I be made whole in mind, body and affairs". That is a true prayer. Let us every one pray, it is based on Truth. Let us say that aloud: "It is God's will that I be made whole, in mind, body and affairs". Everybody repeat it three times, (repeated). Now silently. (Silence).
The responsive service is in the Unity that you find in your seats. These texts all sustain the subject this morning: "It is good to be made whole".
There are two classes of people in the world, and two states of mind in every one of us, in everything that we do. We are all working to fulfill some ideal. That ideal may be high or low, simple or complex - it doesn't make so much difference about the character of the ideal. If you analyze your mind you will find that everything that you do is preceded with some ideal, some thought, and you are exercising all of your powers to accomplish that thing.
Now, this law can be applied to the individual, or to society at large, and it works every time. It is axiomatic, the principle. And. in our analysis of ourselves, and taking advantage of the very best that is in us, we should take this Law into consideration, because its observance will save us many steps.
We find ourselves traveling around, and around and around, through the means, to an end, observing the means instead of going direct to the Cause. Now, in this respect, we have the example of Jesus Christ. There was a man who believed in arriving directly at the object for which he was seeking, regardless of law, regardless of custom or conditions. In this respect he differed radically from the Scribes and Pharisees that contended for the law: "You mustn't do anything, unless you observe the law". Why, he healed the demoniac on the Sabbath day, and they all rose up in indignation - the idea of working on Sunday. But he said, "Isn't it good to heal people on the Sabbath day?" "All that didn't have anything to do with it, you were breaking the Sabbath- day!"
Now, you may think that we have wonderfully reformed since that time; that our healers go just as freely and faithfully on the Sabbath Day as any other day. Yes, but in some other directions we may be just as far short as those old Pharisees and Scribes were. Some way to accomplish the result may be holding us instead of the result. What we want is the direct route and the quickest way to get the thing that we desire, that is the Truth. And yet, the custom of doing that thing, the way of arriving there, the obstacles that come up before us, seem unsurmountable. We hear it said, "Be careful how you disturb existing conditions, don't you know".
Right after the War, when there was great talk about resuming specie payment, thousands of different methods were put forward, and old Horace Greeley wrote in the Tribune one day, "The way to resume specie payments is to resume. That is the way!" That is the way Jesus Christ, he went right to the thing to be done, "If it is good to do this, let us do it!" And when the Russians were talking about building a railway from St. Petersburg to Moscow, the engineers came to the Czar with their different routes, with a dozen different routes, and every one in succession explained to him, "This obstacle, this mountain, had to be crossed, and this great river had to be bridged", and after they all finished, he said, "Give me the map", and they gave him the map, and he took his pen and drew a straight line from St. Petersburg to Moscow, and he said "Build that!" and they built it.
That is the way to get at things direct, and, if you overlook all these apparent obstacles, these apparent opposing forces, why, they drop away, thousands of them.
We are deterred every day from doing things because we find so many obstacles in the way, the opposing forces. Really, the works that we have set up for ourselves in our mind become so large that we say, "Oh well, I don't believe I had better try to do that; I will just settle down to the old routine, and maybe the Lord, or maybe something else will help me come out. I will just trust to luck to help me out". You will never get out that way. You may, but you will get out a great deal quicker if you go right straight for your object, keep the object "before you. Say, "I am going to have that thing now", and build it up, and pretty soon, like when they pull one of our steamboats off the sand-bar. They drive a great big stick on the shore some way, then they take their block and tackle and pull themselves up there, now, if they put their stick down good and strong - of course, there is a certain connection, you have got to have the rope and power and all that - but if the stick was missing, if they didn't have a strong hold there, if there wasn't a fulcrum, they would fall short.
As metaphysicians, we have found that, by building up a great big ideal in our minds, we can easily pull ourselves up to it, while, on the ether hand, if your ideal be never so large, and the unsurmountakle seeming difficulties that you will put between you and your ideal are in proportion, why, it is awfully hard, of course, to work out the problem.
Now, this applies to every detail of life. There is hardly a thing that you can mention in your life that you are not stopped from attaining it through the obstacles that come in before you and that ideal. You are bound hand and foot by a thousand different laws. The Scribes and the Pharisees, they have laid down some laws for you, some rules, and they say, "You have got to observe these; you can't do things without following, well, the modus operandi" of experience, of the things as they have been.
Now, as a matter of healing, we give a good deal of attention to healing processes, and the first proposition is, "Is it right and good that man should be well?" Why certainly! I can bring you thousands of people that believe that, in some way it is ordained that man should be sick. They take a real pleasure in their sicknesses; some times they nurse them. They believe that the good God has put certain diseases upon them as a trial, or as a test of faith, or for some thing. Now, don't you know that Jesus Christ laid down that as the law of Blasphemy - it couldn't be overcome. That is the sin of crediting the good God with some evil. That is a sin that never can be forgiven. And you can see why. If you believe that God can be evil, He must be evil, if he visits evil on hie creation, you can never see Him as Good; you can never see the Goodness of God, until you do away with that thought of evil, that he visits upon you that evil condition, why, it is preached from thousands of pulpits to-day that God loves poor people a little bit better than rich people. God loves all people alike; doesn't know anything about rich and poor; and if you think that it is God's will that you be poor, why you are a sinner to just that extent. It is God's will that you should have freedom in your affairs, that you should have plenty. That is the teaching of Jesus Christ.
Why give up, then, to that preaching of the opposite, and why give up to the seeming poverty conditions, and the conditions that have environed you in lack. Don't consider them for a moment. Go direct to your proposition: "I am going to have plenty. It is God's will that I be made whole in my finances, and I am going to have that wholeness". Now that ideal then will come before you every day, and stop, cut out, the intervening laws and thoughts of lack that surroundings bind you . Deny them right away. They are entanglements, they are the cobwebs of thought that bind you. Bind your own thought. Lift yourself up by your bootstraps. We can do that. We have thought that was an impossibility, but the fact is that we have invisible forces here that we know nothing about, and it is these invisible forces that we are looking to; it is the Cause Side; it is the Principle, the healing Force.
Now, it is God's will that we shall be healed and to be whole all the time. We never shall be sick; but, through some ignorance on our part, we break the law, and - break our arms. Why should they go through a long process of healing? Why the Doctor says, "Yes, you have got to have your arm put in splints, and not use it for a certain length of time and give nature an opportunity to work. It is a slow process to heal it. It isn't necessary at all! If it is your birth-right in the presence of the Omnipotent One, to be whole, why you can be made whole that quick (snapping).
I was told of a case, I think just last week. One of the little boys who comes to our Sunday School broke his arm, and was attended to by the surgeon, put in splints; but that night he said he prayed to the Lord Jesus Christ to heal his arm, because he wanted to play ball the next day, and the next morning he asked his father to take the splints off, and said his arm was all right. His father took them off, and the next afternoon he was playing ball. This, I was told, was a true story. He came up with this law of healing. Certain fevers, we are told, have to run a certain time, but the metaphysician comes in and, knowing the truth that every one of us is in the sight of God whole, the fevers don't have to run that length of time, don't have to carry out that man made law which we have established. We have established certain ideals in our own mind that we are going to have a spell of sickness, and when certain symptoms appear, we say, "Oh, I know I am going to be sick". Well, if you think that way, you will bring about the desired result, because you are free. Whatever you want you can have. If it is your ideal that you have a spell of sickness, why set up that ideal, and it will surely work itself out.
But, will you have to go through all that? Not at all! It is God's will that you be made whole. When? In six weeks or three days, or an hour? No! Right now! That is the day of salvation. All things in Divine Mind are fulfilled now. But you say, as some, "when I held these thoughts of unbelief, I find it sometimes does take time. I find myself going through these changes. This is because the old thought is allowed to work there. Now, these two planes of mind are constantly at work. The ideal, that which sees the thing it wants and it becomes, is the attainment of that. Some metaphysicians give up to the process. They say, "Yes, you will be well now in three days, "or, "You are getting better, I can see that. You just cling to this thought, and gradually you will get well". We all find ourselves dropping in the lawlaid down hy the Scribes and Pharisees. Way can't we wipe that out? We can, just to the extent that we really believe in that goodness of God, and wholeness of God, and our direct "birthright. We are heirs, from a spiritual Father, to everything that that Father possesses. We are heirs right now. We are all heirs. Why do we depend upon the law? Because there is a human helief, an imposition, I might say, of the power of the Law. We are constantly holding up the law, regardless of the effect. We so far forget the effect sometimes in our acceptance of this law, that the wool is pulled over the eyes of people, and they submit meekly to laws, to conditions, that have been set up by men, regardless of the destructive attendances.
Take, for example, our patriotic method of celebrating the Fourth of July. Look at the thousands of people that were killed and maimed everywhere, because of our insanity. All at once progressive people began to preach that it wasn't necessary to have fire works on the Fourth of July; it wasn't necessary to give to our children those destructive things that would blow off their fingers and put out their eyes, and maim then for life, and kill them. Eighteen hundred people were killed every year on the Fourth of July, and since sanity began to reign, it was only twelve.
Now, we look back in history and find that the Aztecs were a people who, as one historian says, had religious methods that were, so atrocious that they couldn't "be described; that they took the victims they offered to their gods and cut their hearts out and gave their blood to their gods. Now, we read that with horror, and yet we didn't have any special horror in passing out fire works to our children, so they could put out their eyes, blow their fingers off, kill them frequently. Oh we had to do that, because we must be patriotic, don't you see. Couldn't celebrate the Fourth unless you bowed to that custom, that law.
Now, are we any better than those heathen Aztecs? Why no! Only they would stab their victim to the heart, and he died quickly, but we kill off eighteen hundred of our children, and sometimes grown men that didn't know any better, with these fire works everywhere. Repeated it year after year.
Now here was the protection of the law. We didn't see the result until someone woke up to the fact and said, "Let us have a sane Fourth of July. It wasn't right to have injured children because of it".
Now, in a thousand different ways, we are protecting ourselves by the Law. In the matter of our eating and drinking and in our smoking. Now, every man knows that tobacco is a poison. It isn't necessary to take a little nicotine and put it on the tongue of a dog and kill him in a short time, to see it is a poison. You know, if you are a smoker, or a chewer, you are slowly committing suicide. If the poison that was found in the tobacco in a drug store were kept in bottles he bould have to label it "Poison"; you know the druggist "would have to stick on a label on every cigar, on every pound of tobacco there would have to be a label "Poison". That is what it is — poison — it poisons the nerves, the stomach, it poisons the entire system. Yet, the people who manufacture it say "We are protected by the law; the law is back of us. But we say it is poisoning the people, it is a destructive element! "Oh, that don't make any difference. We have the law".
Now the same thing with alcohol, whiskey. Sixty thousand people are drunkards, go to their graves every year. But there again the law permits it. The United States Government allows people to manufacture whiskey; that it is a poison, killing all these people every year; but they say, "Doesn't the government allow us to do this? Why certainly! Then we must be protected in our rights; we must be protected in our rights". Consequently it goes right on. Supposing that every bar keeper had to label every glass of beer or whiskey he put out "Poison", don't you think after a while people would quit using that which was killing and destroying their people? Certainly! But the law doesn't say they should do that. But supposing we, as a people, should hold the thought we are not going to be bound by any law in this matter. If these things are destructive, let us get at the thing itself; let us be like Jesus Christ, put aside all the law, and head to the object. Let us do away with these destructive things. Let us do away with all the obstacles that limit us to the fulfillment of our true ideal. Let us reform the world now, instantly, not put it off to some future time. Let us reform ourselves; let us live up to our highest ideal, and, holding to that, the great God of the universe will throw us quickly into the fulfillment of this ideal. Why, it is wonderful how quickly you can realize an ideal, if you make it the one object of your thought, hold your ideal up, hold it up in your mind; hold yourself up to your ideal, and say, "I am the fulfillment of that thing". You will be surprised how the forces of the Universe, within and without, would begin to work for you. Don't lower your standard. If you want to do a thing, hold that thing is already fulfilled in me. If you want to hold it in your mind, hold that God is making you whole, that you are whole. Don't allow any doubting that you are whole. Hold to the proposition, "I am now whole, and it is God's will that I be whole". This is the central idea: "I am whole in mind, body and affairs, because it is my Father's good will that I inherit His kingdom".
Now, the kingdom of God is perfection. The kingdom of God is wholeness; the kingdom of God is health; the kingdom of God is prosperity for every one of us. Now, we pray that the that Kingdom may cone into the earth as it is in the heavens.
When? Oh, we are not so very anxious about the coming. We pray sometimes in that parrot-like way, not realising the fullness of what we are praying for. But now let us enter into the substance of our words. You know your words may take on a power and a substance, if you work them in your mind. You can take ideas and work them in your mind, as the woman works the couch, or as you work something that you want to get the substance of. Ideas can be worked that way. Ideas are made up of a whole lot of potentiality, and the more you stir them up, the more they separate, the more they express themselves.
Exactly this thing is true of ideals. Your ideal is connected with all the ideals of all the people in the world, and the more you hold to it, the stronger it will become, the more it will attract from the everywhere present Universal Mind those potentialities, these powers that make its fulfillment for us.
Then, let us hold to our ideal; let us do away with the Scribes and Pharisees, those states of mind that are constantly laying down laws, trying to environ us with conditions, obstacles that don't exist. Napoleon said, when they told him about crossing the Alps: "There are no Alps"; there are no obstacles. Hold to your central ideal, and it will help you in all your affairs. Everything will become smooth; everything will become plastic to your thought; everything will come to you, if you will hold to the central proposition, that "It is God's will that I be made whole, in mind, body and affairs".
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