|
Dynamics for Living
Conscience
[<- Go back to Adam and Eve]
[Dynamics for Living]
[Charles Fillmore's Works] [Unity on the Web Home Page]
THERE is a divine goodness at the root of all existence. It
is not necessary to give in detail the place of abode of
each sentient part of this central goodness, for it is
there, wherever you look, and whenever you look. No man is
so lowly but that at the touch of its secret this divine
goodness may be brought to light in him. Even the animals
exhibit its regulating and directive power. This goodness
sleeps in the recesses of every mind and comes forth when
least expected.
Many stifle it for years, maybe for ages, but eventually
its day comes, and there is a day of
Page 264
reckoning. This is the law of universal balance--the
equilibrium of Being. It cannot be put aside with
transcendental philosophies or metaphysical denials any
more than it can be smothered in the forces of the blind
passions.
Monitor
Men and women are loath to admit that there is within them
a monitor with which they have sooner or later to cope.
They put off the day of reckoning as long as possible. They
do not like to deal with this leveler of Spirit. It is too
exact. It wants justice to the very limit.
Whoever has felt the prick of conscience has been spoken to
by the Holy Spirit. Whoever has sat at the feet of his own
inner conviction has been aware of God's presence.
Guidance
Man is never without a guide, no matter how loudly he may
be crying out for leading. There is always at hand a sure
torchbearer if he will but follow the light. It is too
simple, too easy! Man has formed in his mind a far-off God
who talks to him from some high mountain in invisible
space. By thus looking afar for his God he ignores the
spark of divinity shining in his own being.
Herein is man fooled into believing that he
Page 265
can do the things that are not in harmony with his ideas of
goodness and yet escape the consequences. He presumes that
God is too far away to behold his shortcomings. He loses
sight of the fact that God is right with him every moment.
This is the meaning of the old saying that a man and his
conscience are good friends as long as the way is smooth.
When it grows rugged, they fall out. They fall out because
man has reached a point where he begins to consider his
ways and he looks carefully over the life he is leading.
This brings him to a beholding state of mind. He sees that
what he considered right in the clear light of divine good
is not up to standard. Here the divergence takes place
between man and his conscience. They were friends in
appearance only before or during the period of license. The
conscience may seem to assent to the derelictions of man,
but it is ever the inner protestant that keeps knocking at
the consciousness until the steps are arrested.
Questionable Methods
Worldly fortune is not always a blessing to man. In fact,
under present customs it is apt to be just the reverse. As
long as questionable methods are successful in bringing
results, conscience has but a small chance for a
Page 266
hearing. It is only when failure follows the efforts of the
misguided that conscience gets his ear. Then the field is
surveyed with the eye of a general defeated in an unjust
cause. The heat of battle blinded him, and he gave no
thought to the lives he was uselessly sacrificing.
Here remorse gnaws the vitals of the unwise. Here the true
wisdom is revealed. It is said that experience is a dear
school, and only the wise learn therein. This carries with
it its own nullification, like many of the intellect's wise
observations. Experience is the school of fools. The truly
wise do not take lessons within her doors.
Understanding
There are two ways to get understanding. One is to follow
the guidance of the Spirit that dwells within, and the
other is to go blindly ahead and learn by hard experience.
These two ways are open to everyone. It is recognized by
the man who has had experience that he can advise the one
who has not and thus save him the laborious steps of that
rocky road. In the light of omnipresent intelligence, is
there not One who knows all things, all roads, all
combinations, and what will be the outcome of every one?
Prophecy
Do not men and women by their constant efforts to peer into
the
Page 267
future prophesy a wisdom that knows all future? They
certainly do. When man looks in the right direction he
finds such an oracle.
It is the prerogative of Spirit to know the future. When
man consults Spirit with pure heart and unselfish motives
he has pointed out to him the very lines his life shall be
cast in if he is obedient to his most high God.
It is no great achievement for one who follows the leading
of Spirit within to forecast the future. To Spirit the
future is a succession of events based on the ideas
revolving in the mind at present. Whoever rides into his
own ideal realm can read his future for himself. He finds
there a chain of causes at work that he can easily see will
produce certain results. It is not necessary for him to
read the definite line along which each separate idea will
travel to its ultimate. This is the method of reasoning
from cause to effect. In Spirit, cause and effect are one.
They appear as one and the ultimate is just as clear as the
inception.
In mind, all things reach fruition the very instant they
are conceived. Time not being a factor, how can there be a
beginning and an ending? The architect plans a house and
sees it finished in his mind before a single stone is laid
or a pound of earth excavated. He can change his plan many
times before the construction
Page 268
commences. He can destroy it entirely if he so desires. So
man builds the house of his own conscience. If he has been
planning to build a home for himself alone, in which there
is but one room, he created in mind just such a plan, and
it is complete and awaits its coming into visibility. If he
has made a plan of a larger structure, in which are many
rooms, this plan will also come into visibility.
Wasteful Speech
Some persons build their houses far ahead in mind and say
nothing to anyone. Such persons make very substantial
plans, which are infused with the most enduring substance
of the invisible.
Talking is a waste of energy--a dissipater of power. If you
wane the greatest success, do not talk too much about your
plans. Keep a reserve force of new ideas always on hand as
a generative center. Let your work speak for itself.
Dynamics
The electrician recognizes a certain universal law of
action in the revolutions he builds into his dynamo. The
energy produced is based on the size and texture of the
dynamo and the rapidity of its motion. Mind has a law of
dynamics equally as scientific. The character of an idea is
the estimate of its size. One's active faith in it
determines
Page 269
the rapidity of its motion. Ideas generate energy with a
swiftness unparalleled in physical dynamics. Rather than
moving inanimate things, they move men and women. Rather
than temporarily lighting our streets for a few hours, they
light the lamps of intelligence that burn eternally.
The secret of doing this successfully lies in knowing how
to handle our ideas. The electrician constantly improves
the efficiency of electricity by studying the machinery
that generates the power. The same rule holds good in
mental dynamics. We must study ideas if we want to improve
the service of our body, of our intelligence, and of our
surroundings. From ideas flow forth the currents that move
the machinery of all of them. If our beliefs are based on
Truth and we are satisfied that they will stand the test of
the most rigid justice, we do not want to let the currents
they produce in our mind leak away on some grounded wire.
The world is full of people who are filled with high and
mighty resolves to do good. They are sincere, but they are
connected with grounded wires. We must keep our wires
properly insulated, or our plant will not prove successful.
For instance, we are holding an idea of health, which is
generating currents in our mind
Page 270
that might flow out on the wires of faith and heal the
world. But we have broken the current by believing that it
should pass through a pill, a magnetic hand, or the mind of
someone who we think is stronger than we are. We must stop
all this and send our idea of health straight to the mark
on the wires of our own true word. We have an intuitively
correct idea of the truth on every question that comes to
our mind, but we do not trust the idea. We impede its free
currents by believing that some book, some person, or some
church organization has sifted the truth and somehow
established it before we came into existence. This fallacy
makes a menial of the genius and puts out the light of the
world in the minds of generation after generation of the
sons of God.
Spiritual ideas must have spiritual wires, or their power
dissipates. So we need to watch both the beliefs we hold
and the words with which we set them free. If we have an
ideal world in which we see things as we want them, yet
think it an impossibility that that world may be realized
here and now, we are dissipating the power that our ideas
are generating. So throughout the category of thought
generation, every idea must have a wire that corresponds to
its circuit or current. Our words, our acts, and our whole
life must be in accord with our ideas.
Page 271
Available Ideas
The realm of ideas is at the call of each of us. It is, in
fact, the source from which we draw our real sustenance. It
exists in Being as universal intelligence. Since it is the
cause and source of all intelligence, sooner or later it
must assert its unobstructed sway in the life of all
mankind. When this realm of ideas becomes so active in the
consciousness that it attracts our special attention, we
call it a quickening conscience. It is the universal
intelligence of Being asserting its inherent moral
equilibriums. Man cannot always distort the fair face of
the God-Image, whose likeness he is. He may for a season
wear the grotesque mask of the mountebank or the fool, but
in God's own good time he will be unmasked by the silent
inner self that must be heard when its hour has come. God
is not mocked, nor is the secret place of the Most High in
every heart forever made a cave for thieves.
Listening
When conscience cries out in your heart, "Make straight the
way of the Lord," you will save time by heeding it. Let its
cleansing waters of denial flow over you. Change your
beliefs. Be meek and lowly. Let your thoughts go up to the
Christ Spirit. Acknowledge Him as One whom you, in your
Page 272
human consciousness, are not able to comprehend in the
majesty of His spiritual understanding.
If you are of a haughty, domineering, self-sufficient will,
you stand as Herod, the ruler of Judea. You are married to
the passions of the human soul. These passions lead you
into sense gratifications so deep, so degrading that you
cut off the head of conscience that would have turned you
into the highway of good. But the reign of the sense man is
shortlived. Your kingdom is taken from you, and you are
banished from your native land. This was the fate of Herod
after he beheaded John the Baptist. This is the fate of
everyone who refuses to listen to the voice of his higher
self.
Meekness
The key to the development of Jesus' great powers was in
His meek and lowly submission to the Father. Whoever makes
himself nothing in the presence of God may be possessor of
all things below God.
Man is open to God when he wills to be open. This opening
is made by our attitude of absolute mental humility in the
contemplation of spiritual realities. Thus, the likeness
takes on the express image of the Father, and in no other
way can it be done.
"I am gentle and lowly in heart," said the
Page 273
mighty Nazarene. "Not as I will, but as thou wilt," was the
mental attitude He always took when communing with the
Father. It was always in the same spirit of love and
willing obedience to the guidance of a wisdom that He knew
transcended His own.
Jesus did not take the universe on His shoulders by
affirming His self-sufficiency. He unloaded every burden
and rested in the all-sufficiency of the Father. "I can do
nothing on my own authority"; "the Father abiding in me
doeth his works." This is the total denial of self--the
giving up of all personal desires, claims, and aims. Before
man can do this successfully he must change his
beliefs--there must be a mental house cleaning.
Denial
The command, "If any man would come after me, let him deny
himself . . . and follow me," is not broadly interpreted by
the world. Some men think that self is denied sufficiently
when they acknowledge God as mind, life, love, substance,
and all else as error; others think that they have only to
give up the recognized sins of the world and believe in a
personal Savior, Jesus. But the denial of self goes deeper
than all this. To be effective, it must reach the very
depths of the consciousness and dissolve all the organic
forms that the beliefs
Page 274
held by the personal self have there precipitated. Every
human body has its stratified layers of consciousness.
These strata have, like the earth, been built up layer
after layer through ages and ages of sidereal time.
The body we live in is the result of a labor that we began
millions of years ago. It is the stored-up memories of our
experience in thought generation. We may have dissolved
that body ten millions of times, but no part of its reality
has ever been lost to us. Because we have failed to
energize it to the perpetuation of its form indefinitely is
no argument against its being the very body we have had for
aeons upon aeons. The form of it changes, but the mental
pictures we have formed in all those ages are intact
somewhere in our own private gallery.
Selflessness
Now the clouds are clearing away from our world. The "sun
of righteousness" is rising with "healing in its wings." We
are awakening to our powers and possibilities as sons of
the Most High.
The day of selflessness has come. This day delivers us from
all our burdens. We find that we do not have to bear any of
the cares of existence on our shoulders. We say with Jesus,
"All things have been delivered to me by my Father." We do
not breathe for ourself, but
Page 275
rather God breathes in and through us. We do not have a
life of our own, but we feel the life of God surging
through all our organs. We say to every part of our body,
"You are now one with God; you are perfect in His sight."
We do not think and speak by ourself alone. We think and
speak God's thoughts after Him, which rush through our mind
like a mighty wind. Then tongues of fire come upon us,
because we are inspired by the Holy Spirit. Neither do we
have possessions of our own nor cares nor troubles about
our life or our family. We leave all these things to God.
We are absolutely without responsibility when we have fully
denied ourself and followed the Christ. All responsibility
drops from us when we let go of the belief that we are a
personal being, and possessed of parts, passions, and
faculties that belong to us personally. Nothing like a
personal man exists in the idea of God.
The idea of God is Jesus Christ--one universal man. Men are
but the mind organs of that one man. They do not possess of
themselves anything whatever, but all that the Christ
possesses flows through their consciousness when they have
ceased to believe in personality. This is the at-one-ment
and the apprehension of that at-one-ment dissolves forever
the inner monitor called accusing conscience.
Page 276
[Go forward to Judgment and Justice ->]
[Dynamics for Living]
[Charles Fillmore's Works] [Unity on the Web Home Page]
|