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 5/5
1959 Maui Advanced Work
Joel S. Goldsmith
Tape 245A

Do not be surprised if you meet with trials and temptations on the spiritual way. Do not be surprised if you fall down and fail quite a few times. Everyone who has been this way before you has done the same. There are no great spiritual lights who have not come up through trial and tribulation of one sort or another. And probably those who have the greatest love in their heart, those who have the greatest spiritual gifts of all are those who have most deeply experienced failure and, therefore, know what it means to walk with us in our failures. And it is from those that rise high and can still look down to where they were that help us the most on the way. Those who do not understand forgiveness do not understand love. Those who do not understand love do not understand the spirit of the Lord God Almighty. And, therefore, our work must always be filled with compassion, understanding, forgiveness, and yet firmness, and yet firmness, because the Master also says to some vipers, “generation of vipers,” those who are not hypocrites, those who are not actually living this life of self-renunciation, and of sharing, forgiving.

The spiritual life is an individual life. There are ways of receiving help from a teacher. There are ways of receiving help from each other, but the final battle and victory is an entirely individual one that must be fought out in the consciousness of you as an individual, just as Jesus probably could have gotten a little support from his disciples in the garden of Gethsemane. He didn’t get very much. He expected more, showing that it is possible, but even if he had, he still had Golgotha. He still had the crucifix, and he still had the tomb. And he couldn’t work that out with disciples. That had to be worked out in his own consciousness. Moses was alone on the Mount when he received his Light, and it must have been a tremendous struggle before it broke through. Only those who have received the Light can know what a terrible struggle it is before it comes. And he had to be alone. He had to be alone to struggle out of his humanhood into the realization of his Divine Nature and mission. Remember how he even refused the mission, how he even felt himself so unworthy and ill prepared. And he had to fight that out with himself, until he could come to the realization, “This isn’t my message or my mission. It’s God’s. And I will let God use my body. And so, I’ll go out into Egypt and meet those Hebrews, but God will have to talk for me, through me.”

So it is, everyone who attains, attains for themselves, within themselves, and, of course, they are fortunate if they find a teacher to be a help to them for a time. They are fortunate if they find companions on the way with whom they can share many hours, and many experiences, and many helps back and forth to each other. But always remember this that the final demonstration you make alone, just as Jesus made it without mother, without father, without sister, without brother. Oh, yes, in the end, they all came back to him.

Now, so it is that as your trials and your tribulations come through, you’re wise and you’re fortunate if you have a teacher to whom you can go and receive your help. And you are wise if you have companions on the way with whom you can walk, with whom you can share, and whom you can help and from whom you can receive help. But never forget this, that you can’t enter the kingdom of God two by two. Just all alone, you take that last mile. All alone, you receive your illumination. All alone, you receive your particular temptation in the form of disease, or accident, or sin, or death, or poverty, or lonesomeness, or loss. All alone, you struggle that out inside your own being, just like a mother has to struggle out her life with her child or her children. Nobody can do that for a mother. Nobody can relieve her of the responsibility. Nobody can perform the function of a mother for her. Every mother has to break her own heart with her own children. And even a husband has to stand by and watch. He can’t do it. No husband can be a mother.

And so it is on the spiritual path. No one can take your temptation from you but you. And no one can surmount the temptations. No one can spend the hours of meditation for you. No one can put in the hours of study for you, and no one can be alone with you in your inner sanctuary in those hours preceding your illumination. And that’s why this path is a difficult one. You have to take Scripture and pray for guidance on every passage that has a message, a principle, a law, spiritual law.

Now, the first thing you will discover, if you take tonight’s lesson to heart, would be that you will have to struggle every single day to remind yourself that every quality that you possess is only yours by the grace of God. And everything and every thought that you possess is yours by the grace of God, and that you can share liberally by the grace of God. You have to bring this consciously to your remembrance. No one can do this for you. You do it, and one day—and it may be weeks; it may be months later, if it’s faithfully performed—one day all of a sudden, “Oh, whereas before I was blind, now I see. Now I understand. It’s really true. All that I am, I am by grace of God. All that I have is mine by the grace of God.” And your whole nature changes, your whole being, your whole mode of life changes, the look in your face changes. But, you yourself have made your demonstration, even though you’ve had the help of someone pointing it out to you, and guiding you, and standing by with you, and praying with you. Nevertheless, it’s you who makes the demonstration.

So, each point that comes up in spiritual living, you have help up to a certain point. Then, you must go out that door and put it into practice, until it becomes an established state of consciousness within you; and you find yourself automatically neither hating, or fearing, or loving the external world so much. Oh, you love all of its beauty, just as you love all of its people. And you understand them better but never quite to the same extent, since now you have God, and God really takes up so much space that all things are just, well, they’re external beauties. You ponder them, and contemplate them, and enjoy them, but they drop from your mind.