1954 Chicago Practitioner Class

Joel S. Goldsmith

60B – Contemplation, Meditation 4/4

Someone here asked the question, “What about grace? What is grace?” Here you have it. Grace is God, giving Itself to us as our very being. The very fact that God is the father and God is the son is an act of grace, and the very fact that all of this good has been planted in the earth, even before we came here to claim it, that’s God’s grace. Thy grace is my sufficiency in all things. Having Thy grace, I have all. Thy grace, Thy gift, Thy love—that’s what grace means, it means the gift of God, the love of God, it means the very fact that God is incarnate in our very being as our very being, “closer than breathing, nearer than hands and feet.” That’s God’s grace, God’s gift to us.

Ye need not fight; stand still; the battle is the Lord’s, Not by might, nor by power, but my spirit… But by my spirit, God’s spirit, not by your efforts, not by your struggles, by God’s effort, divine grace. Yes, I behold God in all things, and particularly I behold God in God’s law and in God’s love.

Why do we not behold Him in the world? Because of the violation of God’s law and of God’s love, because out in the world, we have 12 powers, 20 powers, 50 powers—everything on earth is a power except God, out in the world—and of course we have no love out in the world. We have personal sense, we have personal ego, we have sensuality and sensuousness, but love? The love that is so universal that it takes in our neighbor, all the way across the seas? Love that takes in our enemies and that would feed our enemies? No, we don’t have that out in the world. We sit with full warehouses of food and refuse it to some nations on earth because we don’t like their political makeup. We refuse rice to India and to China because we don’t like their political makeup—human beings, like ourselves, same appetite, same hunger—that isn’t love.

And so we see turmoil and war in the world, but we don’t find it in God’s kingdom where God’s grace rules, where God’s love rules. We don’t find it in your experience or mine, as we learn to love universally, love as God loves. God loves the fish in the sea and provides for their food, provides for their perpetuation. God loves the birds in the air and cares for them. God loves the members of every political party and those who have no political party. God loves all church members and those who have no church, and God has evidenced that love, how? By incarnating His own being, His own life, His own wisdom, His own love in us. We need only obey the law, the law of one power and the law of love and all these things will be added unto us.

God provides the shade of trees, the cooling waters. God’s grace has done that. It’s a gift to us, no price, come without price, come without money, come without price. You’ll find the things of God are yours for the taking, for the accepting, for the acknowledging of God as their source. God. Oh, now it comes again: “He performeth that which is given me to do.”  Why here it is again, here’s another function of God. God performs those tasks that are given me to do. No wonder the Master said, “The Father works and I work hither too.” Why the Father was doing the work, and he was just trotting around, showing it forth. The Father, he doeth the works. He that is within me is greater than he that is in the world.  Oh, come, let us face our daily tasks with the realization that we don’t even have to perform them. He performeth that which is given us to do.      

Filled with this realization of Thy presence, filled with the realization of Thy power, I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me. I live, yet not I, it’s really God living in me. Paul called It the Christ. I live, yet not I, Christ liveth in me.  The Master says, “God, the Father, liveth in me.” I can relax, and let go of these problems of the world, of the family. God is the father and God is the son. God worketh hitherto. God works, and I work hitherto. God works. God leads. God guides. God directs. My function is to contemplate God, contemplate these great truths of God, these great wisdoms of God.

 Scripture is just filled with the wisdom of God’s grace. Moses, crossing the wilderness and finding a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night to protect them, finding manna falling from the sky, finding the red sea open, finding water coming from the rocks. Elijah finding himself fed with ravens, a widow’s cruse of oil never running dry. Elijah being told that God has saved out a remnant of 7,000 for him, of those who have not bowed their knees to Baal. The Master finding gold in the fish’s mouth. The Master multiplying loaves and fishes in order to feed the multitudes. The Master healing the multitudes. Peter and John raising the impotent man at the temple gate Beautiful and saying, “The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob hath done this thing.” The same spirit that raised up Jesus from the dead will quicken also your mortal body. Don’t wonder as if we had done this thing of our own power or of our own understanding. No, no, no. God, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob hath done these things.

 Scripture is filled with testimonies and witnessing to the allness of God, to the omnipotence of God, to the omnipresence of God, to the all-knowledge, wisdom of God. Let us now acknowledge God in all our ways. Let us contemplate these wonderful things of God. God has even provided shepherds for the sheep in the field. Do you see why the psalmist wondered at these great wonders of God, these great beauties of God?

And so I resign myself to Thee, Father; I give myself to Thee. I am Thy son, in Thy keeping. Be ever with me. I will obey Thy commandments. With all the grace of strength Thou givest me, I will acknowledge one power, and I will love my neighbor as myself. Wherever temptation rears its head, to make me believe in a power apart from God or to make me hate or envy or be jealous or malicious or resentful, I will quickly remember, “How can I do that, if God is my being? God is the father and God is the son. God can’t be guilty of such things, whether as the father or as the son;”  and then I watch personal sense drop away from me, personal greed, lust, ambition.

This, you see, is the contemplation of God, contemplating God, contemplating the things of God; and it leads, within a very few weeks, to the next step, which is meditation, because after this contemplation–while for instance today, we might get up and say, “Well, thank you, Father, that was beautiful—a week or two or three weeks from now of doing this every day, we won’t get up so quickly, we’ll remain seated with no thoughts. That means we are in meditation. Now we are not thinking, we are not declaring; we’re just being, being still, being quiet, being peaceful, without even thinking that we’re being still or peaceful or quiet. That’s a meditation, and some day we advance to the next step, which is communion; and in communion, God speaks to us. We don’t speak to God. God speaks to us. Communion is our deepest, deepest sense of contemplation and meditation. Communion is contemplation and meditation taken to the furthest degree, in which all thought is stilled, and God begins to reveal Itself in our innermost being; and then we don’t remind ourselves of God’s goodness. God just tells us about it.

These steps do not come to those who cannot practice the presence of God, who cannot diligently practice realizing that God is the one power, the one presence, realizing that God is the only law, becoming rooted and grounded in God as the only law of this universe, nullifying every belief in the law of heredity, in the law of infection, the law of contagion, the law of material force or power. Then, after that step—oh, this contemplation of God is so simple and so beautiful and comes in so many million different ways, so it’s never stale, never a formula, never duplicated, never repeated, always fresh, always fresh, always vital, always alive, always bringing to us new pictures of beauty, of harmony, of divine grace.

In that final transition, which comes in meditation and communion, we pass from being human beings, we pass from being human beings. The human being lives through the mind. We pass into our spiritual, that point of conception and birth of Christ; and then we live in the soul. We live in the spirit, and the mind is just a function of our being, which we use like we use our bodies, for getting around. We use the body forever and forever; even when we leave this plane, this earth plane, we still carry our body with us. It continually improves in accord with our improved concepts, but we are never without a body; and so we are never without a mind, but the body and the mind now become instruments of the soul. The soul imparts Itself to us; the Spirit imparts Itself to us through the mind, and then the body carries out the orders and functions of being, but now we no longer live by taking thought. Now all life is lived because thought emanates from the deep within, to us; and I think that is the story of grace and I think that is the story of the immaculate conception. I think that is the story of the conception of the Christ in our consciousness and finally the birth of the Christ. This moment of holy communion, such as we are having here, may well be called the immaculate conception of the Christ in us, but the birth of the Christ will come when we pass in transition from that point of living through the mind to living through the soul. Then you are no longer man. You are the Christ of God, your spiritual being.

And so it goes. Thank you, thank you, I’m going over to the studio…..