#16 – Wisdoms of the Infinite Way
Rest in the deep, clear well of contentment within you. Peace already IS.
From the book – The Infinite Way
Joel S. Goldsmith

From Consciousness Transformed
July 7, 1963
Princess Kaiulani Hotel
Meditation Is The Key

Good Afternoon. The entire secret of The Infinite Way lies not in the books, but in meditation. In fact the secrets of life or the mysteries of life are not to be found in any book or in any message. If messages alone could give us the secrets of life, then Lao Tzu, Buddha, Jesus, John, Paul, or Shankara have given us all of the secrets that have ever been revealed or perhaps ever could be revealed; but unfortunately, as Paul wrote: “The natural man receiveth not the things of God.” The natural man, the creature, is not under the law of God and that is why no message can reveal truth to you until such time as you are no longer the natural man, but have become the child of God – until you have attained spiritual discernment. There is not any message that can reveal its secret to you. There are people who have found a higher lifetime of joyous freedom through Christian Science, through Unity, through The Infinite Way. Why then has not everybody who has read their books attained this same freedom, and the answer is: The secret is not in the books, the secret is within you and until you discover the secret within you, you cannot find it in any books.
The kingdom of God is within you. What is the kingdom of God, the realm of God? The consciousness of God, God-consciousness – this is the kingdom of God, this is the realm of God. The kingdom is not a temporal one. It is not built with streets, houses, or temples. The kingdom of God is a “Temple not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” The kingdom of God is “neither lo here nor lo there.” It is not up above you, nor beside you, nor beneath you. It is actually your own consciousness. This is heaven – this is the kingdom of God – this is the realm of God – and it is the only place in which you will ever find God. Do not look for God in a book or in a holy temple or in a holy man or in a holy woman. This is folly. The kingdom of God is consciousness, but there is no consciousness other than your consciousness. There is no consciousness floating around in this room, nor up in a cloud. The only consciousness here is yours and mine, and the only consciousness on earth is the consciousness of mankind – and it is within that consciousness that you must find God.
It is for this reason that meditation is the key to the secret of The Infinite Way, because it is through meditation that we are led back to the realm where God lives. Within your own consciousness is where God is to be found. There are several things that make meditation difficult, until you discover a few little secrets of your own. Probably the major difficulty that we experience in our early days is that we do not know what God is. We have been taught so many concepts of God and we have had so few proofs of God, that we really do not know what we are looking for when we meditate.
It will make it easier if you will remember that God is the soul of man. God is your own soul and this soul is not only within you, “closer than breathing” but it really constitutes all that is real of you. You might say it is your identity. “I am soul” or “soul constitutes me.” So if we say “I have sinned,” what we really mean is that we have in some way violated our Soul – we have in some way violated our spiritual identity – we have acted in a way we find unnatural to us. In other words, as soon as I do or think anything I know to be not right, I know it because it is a violation of my true identity.
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