1961 Maui Work

Tape 389 Side 1

Two Steps To Spiritual Freedom (Habakkuk 2:18-20)

By Joel Goldsmith

Part 2 of 4

Now, to begin to set yourself free from the penalties of these universal beliefs you must set God free of all responsibility for the sins, the diseases, the deaths, the droughts, the lacks, and limitations of this world.  You must begin to honor thy Father which is in heaven; you mustbegin to love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and love Him in the realization, “Thou art too pure to behold iniquity, or to cause it.  Thou art the very light of the world, and in thee is no darkness at all.”

Then, when you have a God wholly good, you have yourself wholly good, for I and the Father are one.  Son, thou art ever with me and all that I have is thine.  All of the purity now, and the goodness, and the justice, and the love, and the forgiveness—all that you now have as qualities of God become qualities of man, for God and man is one.

We go back to a former class in which we had a tumbler sitting on the table and the question is asked, “What is the nature of the tumbler?”  And even, “Is there a tumbler?”  Isn’t it true that there is just glass, and that tumbler is merely a name of the form in which the glass is appearing?  There is no such thing as tumbler. Tumbler is a name given to a certain form, but, actually, what is before you in the form of a tumbler is glass.  Glass is its essence; glass is its quality.  How strong is the tumbler?  As strong as the glass of which it’s made.  How beautiful is the tumbler?  As beautiful as the glass of which it is made.

Oneness is our relationship to God.  We are the form or the temple, but God is the essence of our being.  God is the substance of our life, of our mind, of our soul, of our spirit, and even our body is the temple of God.

Now, once you perceive this pure nature of God in whom there is no evil, no propensity for evil, you now have man pure and upright in whom there is no propensity for evil; no capacity for evil; no source of evil, for you have God and man as one.  Thou seest me, thou seest the Father that sent me, for I and the Father are one.  The Father is greater than I, because the Father is the substance and essence and I am the form.

Because glass is greater than the tumbler, you can change the form of the glass— change it from a tumbler to swordfish, or a pepper shaker.  But the glass remains the quality, the essence, the character, the nature of whatever form it is formed into.  And so God becomes the nature, the essence, the activity and the law unto every form, including man, woman, child.

Well, the nature of man, then, is the nature of God expressed individually.  And, therefore, if man is to cease being good and evil and to be wholly good, he must be the image and likeness, the showing forth of God.  Ah, but then in order to be holy, God must be holy.  In order for man to love his enemies, God must have no other feeling than love.  For man to be forgiving, God must have no condemnation, no judgment, no punishment.  You see, then, that the beginning of freedom for you and me—it is when we begin to have a God wholly good.  A God from whom can go forth nothing but spirit, eternality, immortality, justice.

Then, to be able to face every phase of discord, whatever form it may appear in, with the statement, “Be not afraid it is I,” would be immediately to take from evil its sting because it isn’t evil; it is I.  And in Ithere is no evil.  But if there is no evil in I, there is no evil at all, for I am the source.  God is the source of all creation. And on it . . . God looked on this world, on what he had made and behold, He found it very good.  In other words, the goodness that was in God was in the goodness of His creation.

But before you can wipe sin, disease, death, accident, poverty off this earth  . . . injustice, you must first remove it from God as a propensity or capacity.  Then you will have this universe showing forth God’s glory.  And God’s glory will be wholly perfect.

In the second principle which is really an extension of the first, you have to have the realization of oneness as the glass and the tumbler, or as I and the Father are one, for this reason:  that if you say, “God is wholly good,” that still has no power in your life if you are separate and apart from God.  God may be wholly good but not you, unless you can perceive your oneness with God and accept, Son, all that I have is thine.  Heir of God, joint heir to all the heavenly riches.  Unless you can see that oneness, it would be like the Orthodox teaching that tells us that Jesus was wholly good . . . the Son of God, but not you or me.  But what good is Jesus’ perfection if it isn’t our perfection?  It’s of no value to us.  Therefore, of what good would it be . . . what good would come from God being perfect, if you and I were something or somebody separate and apart from God, subject unto other influences?

Ah, but you see there it is—we are not something separate and apart from God;  I and the Father are one.  And, Son all that I have is thine.  And I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.  And, therefore, in that relationship of oneness, the perfection of God is our perfection, and God’s freedom from the capacity of sin, disease, death, lack, limitation is our freedom.

Then you can say, too, “Why calleth thou me good?”  Because whatever goodness there is being made manifest through us is God’s goodness.  Whatever immortality is being made manifest through us is the immortality of God.  Whatever of love, whatever of justice, is the love or the justice of God.  Whatever of intelligence . . . his understanding is infinite.  What good is that to you or me unless he and I are one?  Then his infinite understanding becomes the measure, the capacity of my understanding.  Only in oneness does that happen.

And so the moment you begin to declare the spiritual perfect nature of God, you are declaring the infinite, perfect spiritual nature of your own being in your oneness from God—oneness with God.

This, of course, carries us naturally into a principle of The Infinite Way, which I have said to you before must never be forgotten, and that is that God is not a power over evil.  God is not a power over evil.  And you have no power over evil.  Even as Jesus said to his disciples, “Rejoice not that you have power over the devil; rejoice only that your names are writ in heaven.”  You are one with God.

To believe that God is a power over evil is to believe that evil has an existence. And then you’ve either have to have God the cause and creator of it, or you’ve got to have another cause and creator, and that does away with your omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence.

End part 2