Going Alone

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Seek light from the Spirit of Truth within you. Go alone. Think alone. Seek light alone, and if it does not come at once, do not be discouraged and run off to someone else to get light; for, as we said before, by so doing you get only the opinion of the intellect, and may be then further away from the Truth you are seeking than ever before; for the mortal mind may make false reports.   –Emilie Cady

In this passage, Cady is elaborating on a way to pray as mentioned by Jesus: “But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Matthew 6:6).

Jesus was commenting on those who make a public display of prayer, who are more concerned about how they look and sound than on what actually happens in their consciousness.

Information can come from many sources, some good and some confusing. God communicates through direct revelation, in the silence of our being. When we pray and we see a favorable change in our circumstances, we say, “See, God answers prayer.” If we see the change of conditions as the answer to prayer, then we assume that when conditions do not change, our prayer is not answered. This is usually when we go about seeking the input of others.

The mark of spiritual maturity is seeking God for the sake of knowing God. This we can only do in the inner room of our being. As Cady advises, if the light we seek does not come at once—and it probably won’t—don’t give into the temptation to seek it elsewhere. The light each one of us seeks is the light that is the life of us, the very essence of our being. It would make little sense to think that our spiritual essence would be located in a place other than our own heart and soul.

A good centering statement is the biblical, “Let there be light.” Speak these words calmly and expectantly. Understand that as you speak them the light is working through your consciousness and into your awareness at that very moment. Be patient and be at peace.

God Mind, Human Thinking

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Mortal mind, the term so much used and so distracting to many, is the error consciousness, which gathers its information from the outside world through the five senses. It is what Paul calls “the mind of the flesh” in contradistinction to spiritual mind; and he flatly says: “The mind of the flesh [believing what the carnal mind says] is death [sorrow, trouble, sickness]; but the mind of the Spirit [ability to still the carnal mind and let the Spirit speak within us] is life and peace.        –Emilie Cady

The perspective of life that we hold is governed by our understanding of God, ourselves, and the relationship we have with God. This understanding is filtered through perceptions based on input from our senses, “the mind of the flesh,” and is generally limited to what seems to be true at the material level only.

God Mind is the unlimited essence of Being. Mortal mind, an archaic term, is our perception of reality. Through the process of meditation, we release our perceptions and open our mind to pure Being. As we succeed in connecting with this deeper reality, our perceptions expand into alliance with God. Jesus’ affirmation, “on earth as it is in heaven,” is a way of saying, let my mortal thinking become aligned with the truth of God.

In truth, there is no separation between ourselves and God. However, the perception of separation produces similar effects to actual separation. Understanding the impact our thinking has on our quality of life is an important part of developing a consciousness that is aligned with the truth of our eternal unity with God.

While many see thinking as a cause, true positive thinking is the effect of actually experiencing God. We don’t think our life into a positive state; we open our inner being to our relationship of oneness with God and our thinking naturally begins to reflect the life, love, intelligence and power that God is.

One Source

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There is but one Source of being. This Source is the living fountain of all good, be it life, love, wisdom, power—the Giver of all good gifts. This source and you are connected, every moment of your existence. You have power to draw on this Source for all of good you are, or ever will be, capable of desiring.  –Emilie Cady

At first glance it may be difficult to reconcile this statement with the fact that much of the good we desire seems to exist in the material realm. How can we draw material objects and conditions from an unseen inner Source? It is from within that we build the supportive consciousness that stimulates ideas and sees opportunities that translate our desires into the forms we need.

Jesus specifically addressed the issue of material needs when he said,

Do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? (Matthew 6:25-26).

This is a beautiful argument supporting the logic of trust in God. When you live with the attitude that it is not your own wisdom and intelligence that draws your good, but the wisdom and intelligence of God, you live in faith that the things you need will appear at the right time, in the right way, and without making the pursuit of these things the object of your existence.

As Cady says, each one of us is connected to our one Source every moment of our existence. This means if your back is up against a wall, there is a way out for you. The life, love, wisdom and power of God are at work at this very moment to open new doors, present new opportunities, and inspire you with new and creative insight.

One Source

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There is but one Source of being. This Source is the living fountain of all good, be it life, love, wisdom, power—the Giver of all good gifts. This source and you are connected, every moment of your existence. You have power to draw on this Source for all of good you are, or ever will be, capable of desiring.  –Emilie Cady

At first glance it may be difficult to reconcile this statement with the fact that much of the good we desire seems to exist in the material realm. How can we draw material objects and conditions from an unseen inner Source? It is from within that we build the supportive consciousness that stimulates ideas and sees opportunities that translate our desires into the forms we need.

Jesus specifically addressed the issue of material needs when he said,

Do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? (Matthew 6:25-26).

This is a beautiful argument supporting the logic of trust in God. When you live with the attitude that it is not your own wisdom and intelligence that draws your good, but the wisdom and intelligence of God, you live in faith that the things you need will appear at the right time, in the right way, and without making the pursuit of these things the object of your existence.

As Cady says, each one of us is connected to our one Source every moment of our existence. This means if your back is up against a wall, there is a way out for you. The life, love, wisdom and power of God are at work at this very moment to open new doors, present new opportunities, and inspire you with new and creative insight.

The Call From Home

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Hitherto we have turned our heart and efforts toward the external for fulfillment of our desires and for satisfaction, and we have been grievously disappointed. The hunger of everyone for satisfaction is only the cry of the homesick child for its Father-Mother God. It is only the Spirit’s desire in us to come forth into our consciousness as more and more perfection, until we shall have become fully conscious of our oneness with All-perfection. Man never has been and never can be satisfied with anything less.

–Emilie Cady

One of the outstanding features of the Unity teachings is their ability to instill the feeling of familiarity. Though I was quite young when I discovered this work of Cady’s that we are now considering, something in me felt like it had come home, like a lost connection I had forgotten had been restored.

By social and cultural default, we have been trained to seek outside of ourselves the remedy to the inner homesickness, that sense that something deep and important is missing. In truth, nothing is missing. We have simply been trained to look in all the wrong places for the satisfaction we instinctively crave. Like the prodigal son, we have pursued this missing something in the far country of positions of authority, money, relationships, and a host of other things that promise but fail to satisfy our longing for home.

When we read or hear words from home, we know they are true. Everything in our being recognizes them. We need no one to confirm that they are true. We know they are true. The prodigal son was not advised to go home. He reached a point where he knew he was away from his real home. Severe lack forced him to come to himself, arise, and go to his father.

His decision to return home resulted in his being clothed in abundance. Heeding the call from home, his homesickness was cured. The power of this parable lies in the fact that it is about you and me.

The Creative Life Force

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Many have thought of God as a personal being. The statement that God is Principle chills them, and in terror they cry out, “They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him” (Jn. 20:13). … God is the name we give to that unchangeable, inexorable principle at the source of all existence. To the individual consciousness God takes on personality, but as the creative underlying cause of all things, He is principle, impersonal; as expressed in each individual, He becomes personal to that one—a personal, loving, all-forgiving Father-Mother. –Emilie Cady

In this passage, Emilie Cady addresses the age old question of the personal and the transcendent nature of God. For some, the concept of God as a bearded old man watching over the world from a throne in the sky is comforting. Others find such imagery counter intuitive, irrational and illogical enough to debunk all of religion. Cady helps us understand God as both the universal energy and intelligence that permeates every aspect of the universe and as the personal, all-sustaining presence that numbers even the “hairs on your head.”

My preference is to know God as the Creative Life Force whose nature is to perpetually express more life, love, power, and intelligence through all of creation and through me specifically. As such, God is my guiding, healing, prospering Source that beckons me to be still and know when I am seeking the highest and best both for myself and for others.

The universal nature of God assures that my personal thoughts and actions do not affect or change the behavior of God; they only change and affect the way I relate to God. I cannot disappoint God any more than I can disappoint the law of mathematics by insisting that 2+2=5. God, “with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17) is personal and universal, a present help and an eternal support of all that I am and all that I desire to be.

From the Inside Out

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Man [the individual] is a threefold being, made up of Spirit, soul, and body. Spirit, our innermost, real being, the absolute part of us, the I of us, has never changed, though our thoughts and our circumstances may have changed hundreds of times. This part of us is a standing forth of God into visibility. It is the Father in us. At this central part of his being every person can say, “I and the Father are one” (Jn. 10:30), and speak absolute Truth.  –Emilie Cady

Spirit, soul, and body are the three traditional terms used in Unity to model the individual. I have taken these same ideas and renamed them the native soul (spirit), consciousness (soul), and body (physical body) as a way of making clearer the often confused terms, spirit and soul.

The process we refer to as spiritual growth is an activity that takes place within the consciousness and is reflected through the body, and our larger body of circumstances. As Cady points out, the spirit, the native soul, is the “real being, the absolute part of us, the I of us, [that] has never changed, though our thoughts and circumstances may have changed hundreds of times.” Our consciousness is a perceptual lens through which we view everything. If we hold onto ideas that are out of integrity with the nature of the native soul, we hinder the fuller expression of our true essence. Spiritual growth is the process of bringing our consciousness, the sum of our beliefs, into alignment with what is true of us at the deepest level.

As an example, when practicing the affirmation, “I am now complete,” you are not referring to your consciousness; you are referring to your native soul. The purpose of the affirmation is to bring your consciousness into alignment with the truth of your native soul. This holds true when you affirm prosperity, divine order, health, peace, and any good thing. You are simply stating what is true at your spiritual level and opening your mind and heart to let this truth shine forth, from the inside out.

Your Divine Core

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One drop of water taken from the ocean is just as perfect ocean water as the whole great body. The constituent elements of water are exactly the same, and they are combined in precisely the same ratio or perfect relation to each other, whether we consider one drop, a pailful, a barrelful, or the entire ocean out of which the lesser quantities are taken; each is complete in itself; they differ only in quantity or degree. Each contains the whole; and yet no one would make the mistake of supposing from this statement that each drop is the entire ocean.  -Emilie Cady

One of Unity’s basic teachings is that each person is an expression of God. By this we mean that the core of every person is divine. How each individual expresses this divinity, of course, is varied. So varied, in fact, that much of what we see being played out on the human level indicates that the understanding of a core divinity has been lost to many. Certainly the traditional Christian approach that insists on humankind’s sinful nature—sin to the core, so to speak—doesn’t offer a lot of help when it comes to realigning our thinking with the truth of our being.

Because we live our lives according to what we believe about ourselves, it is important that we come to the truth that we are spiritual beings expressing through a consciousness that is likely littered with misperceptions that clog our thinking. Our work in spiritual growth is more about letting go of these misperceptions than about becoming better people. To be perfect even as our heavenly Father is perfect is to recognize that perfection already exists, that we are to wake up to it rather than create it

Think of your true essence as a single drop of pure ocean water existing in and as you right now. Imagine this pure drop expanding into a fountain that literally fills you from the inside out. See this flow continue into and through every aspect of your life and you have an understanding of how Unity’s teaching about you.

The Resurrection Principle

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“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” - John 12:24

The Easter story, one that is told with great passion year after year, is celebrated as a time when, over two thousand years ago, Jesus died for the sins of humankind. As with all stories found in the Bible, this one has a literal meaning and it has a spiritual meaning. The majority of Christians, having come to believe that God can punish the sinner with eternal damnation, celebrates the literal story as a sign that God’s love is so great that He has given us the opportunity to escape the fires of hell by sacrificing His only son.

To those who base their understanding on God as unconditional love, we see a deeper meaning to this story, one that is in keeping with the principle of growth and new life that we see expressed in Jesus’ above statement on the grain of wheat.

The Easter story contains five important elements: 1: the arrest, 2: the trial, 3: the execution, 4: the resurrection, and 5: the ascension. When you set a goal for some greater good in your life, it is usually a matter of time before you are, like Jesus, arrested by negative thoughts and appearances. You are put on trial, and are challenged to hold fast, as Jesus held fast, to your vision of greater good unfolding. You must totally let go, die to the old fears and attitudes that have kept you from moving into your freer life. From this death, this letting go, the new is born and a resurrection occurs. As your new life unfolds, you ascend into a higher state that is reflected in your body, mind and circumstances.

This resurrection principle applies to the simple, daily needs of your life and it applies to your life as a whole, this spiritual journey of your ever unfolding consciousness. To bury a seed in the ground gives the appearance that nothing new will come of it. But we know that it is only a matter of time before the seed dies to its former self and emerges as something greater and much more productive.

The Everlasting Arms

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God … is the substance (from sub, under, and stare, to stand), or the real thing standing under every visible form of life, love, intelligence, or power. Each rock, tree, animal, every visible thing, is a manifestation of the one Spirit—God—differing only in degree of manifestation; and each of the numberless modes of manifestation or individualities, however insignificant, contains the whole. –Emilie Cady

As I read this text, I am reminded of a verse from Deuteronomy:

“The eternal God is your dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms” (Deuteronomy 33:27).

Shifting from the notion that God is a human-like figure who resides in the sky to the understanding that God permeates and sustains all life is a big step for many. And yet as we make this change in our thinking, we come to know God as an imminent help and sustainer in our time of uncertainty. To think of God as our dwelling place and ourselves as being upheld and guided by God’s presence opens our mind to this truth. We take a peaceful, centered approach to our life.

God is your substance and the substance of all you desire. This is a prospering statement, one that helps open your mind to the truth of God as your unfailing resource. Instead of thinking “there are four months to harvest” the truth that God is your ever-present substance opens your mind to the “fields ready for harvest” right now. The same is true with health. God is your present source of health. The healing energy that God is works in and through your mind and body now.

The statement, I live in God, and God lives in me aligns your thinking with the truth of your relationship to God. Speak these words when you are alone, quietly when you are with others, while you are out for your walk, driving your car, or alone in a meditative setting. Do not reach out to God; reach in. Wherever you are in life, open your mind to God’s prospering, healing presence.