From – Beyond Words and Thoughts

by Joel Goldsmith

Chapter 6

Signs of Spiritual Progress

There is a way, however, of measuring the degree of progress you are making on the spiritual path. That way is not by trying to see how much more spiritual you feel, how much better you are behaving, or how much more virtuous you are. These are not the signs.

No, it is in your reactions to what is presented to you as pictures of the world that the signs of spiritual progress can be found. For example, to read of wars, threats of wars, and other horrors, and discover that the fear those things engender in you is lessening because of your realization that temporal power is not power is a definite sign of spiritual progress. The less you react with fear to the sins and the diseases of the world, the greater the degree of spiritual progress you have made and are making.

In proportion as you understand that temporal power is not power in the presence of God, there will be less and less reaction to the pictures of disease or accident presented to you. Newspapers almost daily report the lack of food and other necessities in many countries in the world. If, instead of reacting to these accounts with horror or with pity, you can realize that lack of any kind is a universal belief because supply is spiritual and, therefore, omnipresent, you may help to lift those who are entertaining a material sense of supply out of such hypnotism.

There is an infinity of supply, and this realization on your part is not only an indication of your own spiritual progress, but also a help in removing lack and limitation universally. Through your meditation, somewhere, somebody wakens to the truth that there is in reality no lack of supply. What there is, is a mistaken concept of supply. In other words, those who experience lack are entertaining a physical or material sense of supply.

If only a few persons realized that supply is spiritual, that the grace of God constitutes supply, and that because there cannot be any place where God is not, there cannot be any place where Grace is not, they would then awaken some of the sleeping souls to the apprehension of this truth, and in one way or another, supply would begin to flow. Probably those who are holding on to supply in warehouses and cold-storage plants would in a measure be touched by this spiritual light and release the form or material sense of supply because even materially there is no lack of supply in the world. There is enough in the ground and enough stored away to take care of everybody. There is merely an absence of the realization that the necessities of life do not have to be hoarded in warehouses and barns, because they are the flowing grace of God.

Furthermore, once you begin to perceive that there is no such thing as an evil man or woman because evil is not a man or a woman but an impersonal temptation or tempter, then, when you witness evil men and women, instead of reacting with condemnation, a smile comes inside of you with a “Father, forgive them their ignorance” – not their evil, their ignorance. They could not be evil if they were not ignorant. Therefore, you do not feel horror at the evils or the evil persons of the world, but a compassion, a “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” Such an attitude is a sign of spiritual progress.

Another sign of spiritual progress is the extent to which you pray for your enemies. The longer you see them as human beings, the longer there will be something to be forgiven or to be prayed over. There is only one way to pray for your enemies, and that is to understand that God is individual being. The more you realize that, the fewer mistakes they can make, and the fewer sins they can commit. But the more you look upon them as human beings who are sinning and whom you in your generosity are going to forgive, the more egotistical you are, and the more you bind them.

If you have surrendered yourself to God, so that you have no Self but that Self which is God, and know that whatever of good, emanating from you or through you, is of God whatever of error is just your inability to let God fully function, then you must know that this is the truth about everybody, whether or not he is aware of it.

But if he is not aware of this truth, how is he to become aware of it? And I can tell you that no one can ever become aware of this truth by himself because the human mind that functions in him is not going to give itself up. It is only as you pray aright, that is, as you, in your meditation, realize, “All that Thou art, I am,” that a person can be touched by the Christ which you are loosing in the world. This can change him, and only this. It has been so with me, and it will be so with you.

What actually counts in measuring your spiritual progress is your motive. Is there a drive keeping you on this Path until you attain God-realization? Is there something holding you to your meditation, your study, and to the practice of spiritual principles? If there is something holding you to these spiritual disciplines, you are making progress. But it is not really you making progress: it is a sign that you have been touched by the Spirit, and It is not going to let you go until It breaks through fully.