Infinite Way Letter
August 1956
By Joel Goldsmith
Part 1 of 6

CONTEMPLATIVE MEDITATION

The Middle Path
Why callest thou me good? There is none good but one, that is, God.
Matthew 19:17
The universe of God’s creating is within us. God’s love permeates, enfolds, and upholds this universe and all that is therein. All that exists is of God, and God is the good unto us and unto all creation. This is a spiritual universe, and in it there is nothing good nor evil. Let us make this lesson a meditation, whereby we prepare ourselves to be receptive and responsive to the experience of good by admitting God into our undivided consciousness. Let us close our eyes to appearances and open our Souls to Spirit, acknowledging God to be the only good, and realizing that all that exists partakes of God’s goodness.
Heretofore, we have lived in a world of two powers. In vain we have endeavored to invoke a good power to escape or overthrow an evil power. Now we will do neither. We will rest content in that which is, and by translating any appearance or suggestion into that which it is, we will behold harmony, health, completeness, and wholeness even where discord and disease profess to be. We will rest in the realization that there is no power apart from God; that God’s omnipresence, omnipotence, omniscience is the assurance that good pervades all being, all form, all effect. We will withhold all judgment and opinion as to good and evil and acknowledge that God alone is good. This calls for a rebirth on the part of each one of us. It means that we are to agree within ourselves that in all this world of persons and conditions God alone is good, and that God’s goodness permeates and pervades all that exists. There is no evil because God, infinite good, has not created evil, and there is no other creator.
If we have entertained an evil sense of person or condition, let us purify ourselves of such beliefs by realizing that no quality of evil, no power of evil exists; that regardless of what may be presenting itself in the way of harmony or discord is neither good nor evil, for only God is. If we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, and though we may seem to be consumed by disease, we will have no fear for, in and of themselves, they possess no causative factor of destruction, no element of death. Since all power is in God, they are nothingness. We will not say of these appearances that they are good or that they are evil—merely that they are nothingness. God is allness. Appearances are nothingness. God’s allness, God’s goodness, God’s power, and God’s law permeate this universe, all conditions, and all being.
Beholding good and evil is a state of duality, so keep foremost the truth that nothing, in and of itself, is either good or evil. However, a person, thing, circumstance, or condition becomes good or evil in proportion to your thinking or believing it so, so that something that may seem very good to you is evil to your neighbor; and what might appear as good to your neighbor seems evil to you. Your own way of thinking can make a thing good or bad in your experience, not as a reality but as an illusion which will seem very real if you entertain such thoughts.
“There is nothing from without a man that entering into him can defile him: but the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man.” One’s life experience is composed of that which emanates from one’s own consciousness. Therefore, never again can the inharmonies of your lives be ascribed to persons or conditions, because now you realize that nothing that man can do and nothing that goes into your experience defileth or maketh a lie; but, rather, that which emanates from your own consciousness determines your experience. If you persistently live in the world of duality by considering some things good and some evil you are casting the bread of duality upon the waters, and, invariable, that bread of duality will return to you.
The old proverb, “As a man thinketh, so is he,” does not mean what he thinks in his mind exactly, but what he thinks in his heart—whatever he is convinced of within himself, whatever he entertains in consciousness is what he draws unto himself. Therefore, if you entertain no awareness or consciousness or sense of evil none can react upon you. Cast upon the waters your understanding of oneness, the awareness of God’s grace as your sufficiency, your recognition of God as the all Good, and these will return to you.
The belief of evil which you entertain in your own consciousness is the only evil that can react upon you. “…for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” If you permit your consciousness to be occupied by a sense of evil, that sense of evil returns to harm your being, your body, your business. By relinquishing all sense of evil, and refusing to invest anything with such so-called power, your consciousness is cleansed and there is no longer any evil to operate in or upon you.
Evil has no existence regardless of any appearance of discord that may be evident at this moment. That which we have been fearing and hating and dreading is not evil, because God is all, and God is good. This understanding will lead us out of the age old belief of a power of God and a power of devil, a power of immortal mind and a power of mortal mind, into the fourth dimensional consciousness, which consciousness acknowledges that all that is receives its power, substance, cause, and law from God. Wonders of grace come into our experience in proportion as we withdraw judgments, theories, beliefs, labels, and terms from the world of persons and things and no longer speak a language of comparisons. Begin now by discarding all such ideas suggested by human sense in the understanding and recognition that God is the one causative Principle and that, therefore, this universe and all that is in it is spiritual.
God’s grace reveals that never has there been discord or disease or death in all of creation, but because we have accepted the world’s concept of good and evil that is what we have demonstrated. But now, as we advance into spiritual enlightenment, we will desist from labeling anything evil, and we will cease to believe that any condition possesses power of evil, pain, or destruction, because all power emanates from God. We will no longer believe in a law of opposites—there is only one law, one spiritual law, good, which governs God’s creation. Since God made all that is made, there is no other creation. “God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.” Therefore, we must not be deceived and tempted by appearances to say this is error, that is discord, and proceed to attempt to rid ourselves of it or rise above it. We must come into the realization that God made all that was made, and all that was made is maintained and sustained by its creative Principle. This spiritual perception will result in translating these false appearances into the vision of the divine harmony which is ever present.
As you retire into the depths of your own consciousness where all terms of a human designation are relinquished, you become aware of God alone, perfection and goodness upholding, sustaining, maintaining, and keeping His spiritual universe in perfect peace and eternal harmony. “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.”
End Part 1