1952 New Washington Series

Joel S. Goldsmith

7A:A – Treatment 4/4

God is my grace. God is the health of my countenance; God is my fortress, my sanctuary, my temple. I live, and move in God under divine grace. I live under the law of forgiveness. I forgive all those who have trespassed against me, and in turn that forgiveness that I give comes back to me. The forgiveness that I express becomes the forgiveness that I receive, because there’s only one forgiveness, and it’s going out and coming in all of the time. And you watch as we maintain that; we make our progress.

It is just as when I explained these things two years ago, and so far as any outward evidence is concerned, it would seem that it had not made too deep an impression. And yet each time that I came back and repeated these things, brought forth these principles, and each time that you came and reached out for the touch of the Christ, something did happen, because all of a sudden the entire picture changed, and we find now many, many, many who understand this principle and in some measure are demonstrating this principle. So it didn’t happen overnight and all at once; it has been a gradual process of building up over the past two years. And I can assure you that if this same effort should be continued for two more years, you would find drastic changes in your own experience, and in the experience of those who are daily putting this principle to work.

Well, suppose for a closing that we have a meditation, and in this meditation let us realize that the voice of God is revealing Its truth within us because for the balance of this week we have these afternoon sessions, and then we have the night classes, and we have a big program of conclusion on Sunday at eleven a.m., two p.m., and eight p.m., and the measure of good that we get out of this remaining work hasn’t so much to do with what I say as with our ability to receive in consciousness what God imparts. And so let our meditation today be that God is revealing within us, uttering within us, speaking within us, revealing within us, Its truth. That must be our theme all week.

[An additional message to the class added to the end of the tape]

Now, in this fourth dimension, I speak to you in new tongues. I speak to you of spiritual freedom. You have heretofore been concerned with human freedom, with freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom of spiritual worship, freedom to worship, even paganistically. You have been concerned with economic freedom, the freedom to earn a living, to be financially secure. Economic freedom and religious freedom—two names for slavery, bondage to dollars and to manmade rules.

What is freedom? Freedom is being. The man whose being is in Christ is free. Freedom is life living itself. Freedom is joy and peace. Freedom is not obedience to manmade laws. Freedom has nothing to do with someone else’s consent that we earn a livelihood or that we live in peace. Freedom is the joy of life. Freedom is the song of the soul. Freedom is the dream of the dreamer. I am free and you are free, but not while we are attached to the wheel of human thought, not while we are in obedience to man-made government of the soul. What difference does it make to which flag you give allegiance. Freedom is not a condition of government; freedom is a condition of the soul.

There have been free men under dictators, men who knew that their bodies could be imprisoned, but not they themselves. Men have prospered in hard times. Men have survived panic and war, flood, and famine. When the soul of man is free it carries him through Red Seas and desert experiences to the Promised Land of spiritual peace. As we seek peace within, we find harmony without. As we turn to the kingdom of our inner self, we find the reign of divine Power in the outer world. Let us find the freedom of the soul within, and we will experience the freedom of grace without. What prevents us from enjoying all the good that may be found on earth, from living in the highest realm of harmony, health, and wealth? Is there any power decreeing and enforcing poverty, disease, death? Are there positive laws of lack and limitation: laws outside us, binding us to the wheel of slavery, of hard labor, of trials? And if so, from whence do they emanate?

Wherever we look we may see evidences of the fact that the world has ever sought for freedom, peace, joy, and plenty, but this search has been chiefly in the feverish activity of the human mind, and the tiring energy of brain racked thoughts as in human thoughts. As in human thoughts, there is always the anguish of passion, greed, lust, false ambition, fear, and domination, so in the human mind alone is run the race for all possessions and glutinous acquisition, and the result is not freedom, but enslavement to the senses. Therefore, is it not true that the human mind, falsely educated through the centuries, contains within itself all the fears and failures of the human race, but if one suddenly decided to stop worrying, to stop fearing, and to withdraw from this struggle for freedom through mortal thinking, would not some unseen, unknown power reveal Itself to human thought and unfold without strife or woe the infinite abundance and presence of that bread which cometh down from heaven, satisfying all mental, physical, and financial needs?

With the limitation of mortal thought removed, may we not find in the enlarged vision of fearless, fetterless beings, the freedom of the race? Where but in the realm of this greater understanding may one find the infinity of his good? Where but in the broad consciousness of his immortal being can the individual find his birth slaked with the water of the river of life? The water sipped in fearless rest that will forever end the thirst for water that does not satisfy.

Where but in the realm of this newer consciousness can be found the meat that ends the heart hunger of unsatisfied desires, or the wine of true inspiration that does not make drunk, but frees the mind from the busying influence of the senses?

Freedom is a quality of thought and condition experienced only when attachment to the manifest realm is broken. Above and beyond the lure of mortal sense is the life divine, the life where one enters into his heritage of freedom. What does this freedom mean? To live in the world and yet to be free from the bondage of its attraction; to enjoy friendships, and yet not to be dependent upon them; to welcome money for the things it will buy, but not to be avaricious. These things lead to the true freedom.

To work, not merely to earn a living, but to find even in the most humble work, a means of making someone more comfortable, to seek to raise the standard of our work even one degree, or to find a better way of doing the work at hand, this brings freedom from drudgery and eventually freedom from lack and limitation,

To love our family and not to be disturbed by their failings or too proud of their achievements; this too is freedom. To stand in back of the world, and watch its comings and goings, its successes and its failures, its loves and its hates, and not to be overcome or involved—this is freedom.