Transcript proofread by Zane Maser, Iwihub.com    Artwork: Inez Marques

pdf-49px  245A Esoteric Meaning Of Easter, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday

Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter: Esoteric Meaning 1/5
1959 Maui Advanced Work
Joel S. Goldsmith
Tape 245A

Good evening.

We will continue where we left off, and we will call this the “Maui Special Work,” as we did before, only this will be the Reel Three, because you remember that we started at our last meeting with going forward into a higher consciousness, with a higher mode of spiritual life, and perhaps a higher way of performing the healing work.

You see spiritual healing is accomplished from many different standpoints and in many different ways. There can’t be one way, because there are states and stages of consciousness; and the beginner would certainly not know how to heal, except by explaining the letter of truth, the principles involved in healing, and then having them work with those, until they developed some measure of healing consciousness. But, by that time, they would not be working with all of the different thoughts or ideas that are embraced in that basic letter of truth. By that time, they would have been ready for healing work from a little higher plane, and so they would keep on unfolding and progressing until eventually they would not be playing a part in the healing work, except as a beholder. They would have learned by then how to be still and let the still small voice do the healing work. And so it is that in our spiritual life we also progress in living spiritually.

Now, this is an ideal opportunity for explaining some of these things that may have been a mystery to you, because we have this week a whole series of holidays—holy days. In the United States, we don’t hear so much of that first one, although it’s quite a holiday in England. Thursday, the holiday of yesterday, which is called in the Protestant church, “Maundy Thursday.” It’s the day before Good Friday. The purpose of that holiday, or holy day, as it originally was, was to exemplify two of the major principles of the spiritual life—humility and benevolence.

Neither of those words are correctly understood in human life. Let us take the word humility by which a person usually belittles themselves or considers themselves less, less than someone else, or beneath someone else, or less worthy than another. But, the true humility of this holy day, applied to spiritual living, has no such significance. Humility means the acknowledgment that I of my own self am nothing. The Father within me is all. It has nothing to do with my being less than you or you being less than me. It has nothing to do with my holding myself in the background and pushing you in the foreground or vice versa. It is purely a relationship between me and God. And humility means that I acknowledge every day in every way that I of my own self am nothing. I of my own self can do nothing. If I speak of myself, I bear witness to a lie. The Father is the life of my being. The Father within me—the divine Presence within me—constitutes my wisdom, or my intelligence, or my strength, or my health, or my beauty, or my sagacity, whatever it is that I may claim as a quality. It isn’t mine at all. It is the activity of a spiritual Presence, which functions me.

It created me as this individual in the beginning. It formed for me this body, this mind, this life, and It functions my health. It functions my intelligence. It functions my relationship with everyone on earth, and I am only humble in the degree that I actually know that this is true. Only in the degree that I realize that there is a Spirit in me, or that I realize that He that is within me is greater than he that is in the world, or He performeth that which is given me to do. This is being humble. This is true humility. This is the only right self-effacement there is. That is, effacing a human sense or a personal sense of virtue and acknowledging that all that I am, God has made me or given me; or all that I am, God is functioning in me and through me.

Now, the function of that holy day of old was that there might be a complete day of rest, of contemplation, of meditation on just two subjects—humility and benevolence. Humility must come first, because without it there can be no correct sense or spiritual sense of benevolence. So, always remember that in your humility you are not putting yourself behind anyone else. You are not making yourself lower than anyone else. You are subjecting yourself unto God. You are surrendering yourself unto God. You are giving to God your mind, your soul, your spirit, your body, and acknowledging, “Thou art the life. Thou art the way, the truth. Thou art my being, my wisdom, my guidance, my direction, my support, my supply, my maintenance, my eternality.”

Then, you see, when you take up the subject of benevolence, you begin to understand it in its true light, and then you will know that you have never given anything of yours to anyone. You have never been charitable, benevolent, nor have you ever given anything to anyone—anything that was yours. For now, you will understand that whatever it is that you have is yours by the grace of God; and whatever you give, share, bestow, you do these things also by the grace of God. And you are but the instrument through which God functions, first to provide you with the twelve baskets full that are left over, so that you may share; and then God gives you His grace in the form of a will, and desire, and an opportunity to share.

There have been people who have been so generous in their giving that they have impoverished themselves, but that is only because they did not understand that they were not giving of their possessions but of God’s. It is, for instance, like presenting someone with these flowers and then believing that they were yours. And they never were; and they never could be. They’re nature’s. They’re formed by nature. They’re created by nature, and they grow in your garden by virtue of nature; and the more you cut them and give them away, the more you have. They’re not your possession. They’re entrusted to you as an idea of beauty, but you know right well that if you leave them in your garden they’ll only rot and fade away and certainly not make room for more to grow. It is in the cutting of them, and the giving of them, and the sharing, and in the pruning that you make room for more to grow. And so with the fruit on the trees.

Yes, but if you carry that one step further, you will begin to understand that whether it’s the cattle on a thousand hills that you’re giving away, or gold out of a gold mine, or bills off of a printing press, you will learn through this holy day of Maundy Thursday that none of these things are yours. “The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof,” and you can be just as generous with it as you want to be, as long as you’re recognizing that this that I have is mine by the grace of God; and it’s mine to share, to use, so forth, and so on.