1953 FIRST PORTLAND CLASS

Joel S. Goldsmith

38B – Temple Meditation – Part Two 1/4

 

It would have been no surprise to me if three-quarters of all of you here had not come back tonight. I had an idea that you’d get frightened off with that meditation, and it either means that you didn’t succeed with it or that you did—one or the other.

That meditation of the sacrifice of our material good, of our material sense of existence—this must be practiced. This cannot merely be heard from a platform and benefit one. It must be practiced. It must be made a part of individual consciousness. And so tonight I’m going to bring to you a little more of this temple worship, or approaching to the presence of God, since we realize that we cannot come into the presence of God carrying our burdens.

This temple of the Hebrews of old, the courtyard, was shaped just like this room in front of me—and the entrance was here, and one came into the courtyard and found first this burning brazier, this fire into which went the sacrifice. And this sacrifice is materiality—whatever it is that seems of value to us. And strangely enough, the sacrifice that is demanded of us is the sacrifice of our material concepts. It isn’t only that we throw away our money. We never throw that away, but we throw away—we consign to the fire, our belief that money is supply. Unless we discard that belief we cannot come into the realization of our self-completeness in God.

In other words that our supply is already complete within us. From the moment of our beginning to the moment of our so-called ending, and that at no period in between are we ever in lack or in limitation, except in proportion as we accept the materialistic idea that we must have money in order to have supply. No. If we have supply we will have money. Supply is our consciousness of love. Supply is our awareness of this relationship between this branch and the vine and the Godhead. The moment a person has an awareness of their identity as the branch, forever one with the vine, which in turn is forever one with the Godhead, never again will they be out of money, because now they have supply, and supply is the substance of which money is formed.

You do not go out and get a clay figure until you first have the clay. First the clay, then the figure, because the clay is the substance of the figure. So with this. You can’t go out and get money without first getting the substance of money, and the substance of money is Christ, Spirit, Soul, Love. Love entertained in consciousness is the substance of money.

The love about our relationship to God is the substance of money and having that substance it appears as form. It may appear as money, automobiles, houses. It can appear in any form, but first there must be a substance before there can be a form. And so, the knowledge of our relationship to God, the awareness of our oneness with God, through the vine, the understanding of that relationship of the tree, branch, vine, and ground—that understanding is the substance of our supply.

Now we have to give up also, sacrifice if you will, throw into the furnace, our concept of health, even our concept of good health. Why? Our concept of good health says that a heart beating so much, lungs doing this, liver doing that, digestive organs doing this, the eliminative organs doing this—that constitutes health. No, now we sacrifice that. That isn’t true. Healthy organs and functions do not constitute health. Health is the realization of God as the source of all activity and the substance of all form. That awareness becomes visible as the health of our body. Again, there is no such thing as health of body without a foundational substance, and the foundational substance is spiritual wisdom.

And so as you discard your material concepts that if you just had a good heart, liver, or lungs, you’d be healthy, or if you just had a good brain you’d be smart. Sacrifice that concept quickly, and realize that God is the substance of all form. God is the activity of all being. God is the law unto Its own creation, and when you have that spiritual wisdom it will appear as health.

So you give up your mortal and material sense of wealth. You give up your mortal and material sense of health without ever giving up your wealth or your health. In fact you gain more wealth, and you gain more health as you give up your erroneous concepts and go on into the demonstration of the truth of being.

Well, we all have material concepts of family, of friendships, of our neighbors. Oh, there’s an important one. We must give up our concepts of what constitutes neighbors and enemies. Oh, yes. We have a very material concept, because we accept only those of our own families or friendships or communities as friends, and very often the fellow across the road of a different color, race, creed, we accept them as strangers and sometimes as enemies.

And here we give up this materialistic concept of human relationships for the spiritually real understanding of the tree—all branches united in one Christ with all good flowing to all from God. That is our spiritual relationship with each other—one in Christ, all one in Christ. There shall neither be Greek nor Jew, bond nor free, for we are all one in Christ.

And as you give up your human sense of human relationships, your mortal and material concepts of human relationships for the spiritually real relationship as shown forth by the tree, you are sacrificing again that which is worthless to you, and receiving in exchange that which is divinely real.

Well you, yourself, can, in your meditation, go back in your mind and see what you are entertaining that is mortal, material, human, limited, finite and throw it in that furnace, throw it on that brazier, throw it into the fire, give it up, and receive in exchange a spiritual counterpart, a spiritual reality, and that will be the first step of this meditation.

When you are convinced that, at least for this evening, you have dug out all of these material concepts to throw away, there will be more tomorrow night, I can assure you, or the next night. It takes a long while to get down to the bottom of all the erroneous concepts we’ve been entertaining. But if we find one or two or three tonight that we hadn’t thought of last night, and we discard it, throw it away, and accept in exchange the higher spiritual sense of being, we are then prepared for the next step.