The Infinite Way Letters
August 1954
By Joel Goldsmith
Part 1 of 5

The Silence

“There is communion deeper than the word, more intimate…the poetry unheard, the swift-flashed look, the touch, the warm caress, conveying messages of tenderness. Life has so much to tell which it must tell in silence; words dilute the magic spell of Intuition’s subtle swift exchange, soft nuances of feeling past the range of words, words, words, those packagings of thought that rattle like crisp popcorn sacks when taut receptive nerves are waiting to respond to Beauty pulsing in from the Beyond.

 

The Heart is like a film exposed to light, sensitized to values, dark and bright, to shades of gray, the fugitive and sky, evading capture by the seeking eye. So, go in stillness to the rendezvous with Beauty, listen…she will speak to you in wordless speech. Accept what you have heard and do not limit it by thought or spoken word. Joy is artesian, pulsing, surging, flowing up. Put lips to the Heart’s red curve…its only Cup.”

                                                (Joy is an Inside Job: Dan Blanding.)
 

          All great religious literature down through the ages has revealed the secret of harmonious living when life is lived through prayer. As you continue in your study of The Infinite Way, you will see that it is not a religion in the sense of a church, a movement or a cause, and that it is not a teaching or method set apart from other teachings. It would have no value to us or to the world if it were something separate from actual and practical living. It is another revelation of the great truth that a conscious awareness of God will meet our every need. In other words, it is simply a re-statement of the fact that the only successful life is the life lived in and through prayer. And so we say to you, regardless of your church affiliations or beliefs, and to those who as yet have not found their conscious one-ness with God, that right where you are is the opportunity for successful living if you will find the right way to pray.

          Rightful prayer is silence. Every measure of success that has come to us and to our students has come directly through our periods of silence. It is not the words that we utter in prayer, nor the words that we read or hear in our studies: it is the degree of understanding of these words. This understanding does not come through the intellect—it comes through an inner Soul faculty, spiritual consciousness or Christ consciousness, and it is an avenue of awareness within which makes it possible for us to rightfully receive, interpret and respond to the silence.

          The world’s concept of prayer is a combination of words and thoughts. This may sometimes be a preparation for prayer, but it is never prayer. When people pray for peace, for prosperity or success, for health or happiness they are missing the mark, because there is no one listening—no one a bit interested in hearing what we want in life. Prayer is the Word of God, and the Word of God is not something we utter: the Word of God is something we hear. While it is right, normal and natural to either think thoughts or speak words as a preliminary to prayer, let us be very sure that we do not confuse thinking and speaking, asking and affirming, with prayer itself, for that is not true prayer.

          Prayer begins when we reach an attitude of consciousness in which we are alert and listening for the still, small Voice: when we have come to a place in our attunement where we have established within us the idea that “I and my Father are one.” In this attitude we are thinking of God as Father, or God as friend, of God as the Presence, and in that atmosphere we listen, and are receptive to the divine beauties and harmonies that are to flow from the Father within. Right here is where we catch our first glimpse of how to pray and what to pray for.

          In our human experience we lack the consciousness of the mind that was in Christ Jesus. Through our human mind we cannot be receptive to spiritual truths, nor can we be receptive to spiritual blessings, because it takes a developed spiritual sense to pray, to be responsive to the Word of God. It takes a degree of silencing of the human mind and thought, and coming to that place where we become a sort of a listening post—a state of awareness and receptivity.

          However, we may legitimately pray for one thing and that is: “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.” Let the divine universal mind be consciously my mind; let God, the one universal consciousness, be my consciousness; let the Soul, which is God, open and speak that I may hear that mind which was in Christ Jesus.