Lessons In Truth - Lesson 4 - Annotation 8
Explain why there is no reality in fear, jealousy, or the sense of bondage. How may these feelings be overcome?
8. Only what God created can have reality. There is no reality in fear, jealousy, or the sense of bondage, because God did not create them. They are changing, unpleasant, negative, detrimental feelings that are not of the nature of God, the Good, and so are not real. These negative emotions are the result of false or ignorant beliefs we have held in our mind about God, ourselves, others, and the world about us.
If there is, as one of the denial statements of this lesson tells us, "no absence of life, substance, or intelligence anywhere" then we see the Truth of the basic statement used in Unity:
"There is only one Presence and one Power in the universe, God, the good, omnipotent,"
and there can be reality only to that which God created.
The emotions of fear, jealousy, or the sense of bondage cannot have reality for they have no principle or divine idea back of them to sustain them.
Fear is the name we give to the painful emotion caused by a belief in evil and the expectation that it will harm us or someone we love. We do not fear anything that we understand when we cooperate with the law that governs it. When we come to the understanding that there is no reality in fear because only what God created can have reality, we overcome the belief in fear. This overcoming often takes much denial and prayer.
In the common usage the word jealousy refers to a feeling of fear that we may lose to another some good that we consider ours, whether it be the love of someone dear to us, a position we think we should have, or an advancement that we consider is our right. Jealousy is always an indication that we are not yet fully aware of our true nature and of our divine inheritance, so we reach out to people, to things or position to possess them in order to satisfy a feeling of emptiness. Once we awaken to the truth that we really are spiritual beings, all sense of possessiveness leaves us and our relationship with others is one of true understanding.
Bondage is mental enslavement to anxieties, fears, frustrations, all beliefs that keep us from expressing our true nature and becoming in manifestation that which we were created to be -- sons of God. When our spiritual powers are not finding their true outlet through our life, then we are reaping the results of this limitation and we feel a sense of bondage. A sense of bondage can be overcome when we are willing to face the fact; that it is our own limited pattern of thinking that is binding us and not people or things or circumstances. Then we are ready to begin the thrilling task of building, through denial and affirmation, an entirely new concept of ourselves. This will enable us to replace these negative states of mind with positive states and to say victoriously:
"I am not bound in personal consciousness" (denial);
"I am free with the freedom of Spirit" (affirmation).
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Preceding Entry: Copy the four denials listed in the text and explain each in your own words.
Following Entry: Why is it necessary for us to realize our oneness with the Father?
