If I one soul improve, I have not lived in vain.

Professor James Beattie FRSE (1735 –1803) was a Scottish poet, moralist and philosopher. He was born at Laurencekirk, in the county of Kincardine, Scotland.
His father, a farmer of no considerable rank, is said to have been interested in reading and verifying but died when James was only seven, so he had little influence on his son’s mind.
He was sent to the only school available. His tutor was named Milne, of whom he later wrote

“as a good grammarian, and tolerably skilled in the Latin language, but destitute of taste, as well as some other qualifications essential to a good teacher.”

In 1749 he entered Marischal College, Aberdeen obtaining the first of the bursaries left fro the use of students whose parents are unable to support the entire expenses of academical education. In 1753 he took the degree of master of arts.
He wrote and published his poetry in a volume called the Minstrel. Part I was soon followed by Part II. In 1777 he published the two parts of the Minstrel together.

The Minstrel - Book II-XXXII
“Yet leave me not. I would allay that grief,
Which else might thy young virtue overpower;
And in thy converse I shall find relief,
When the dark shades of melancholy lour;
For solitude has many a dreary hour,
Ev’n when exempt from grief, remorse and pain:
Come often then; for, haply, in my bower, Amusement, knowledge, wisdom thou may’st gain.
If I one soul improve, I have not lived in vain.”

I had another blog about caring for the elderly. It helped one person realize that you're never alone and there is support for you.
That was nice.
Help at least one other person.

'working with nature ~ naturally'

Bio-Ag Consultants & Distributors Inc. is a company devoted to understanding and working with nature. Since our founding in 1982, our mission has been to produce and supply products and services that warrant and support true sustainable agriculture. Through our research, we at Bio-Ag have become a major supplier of natural products and services for livestock and crop production.

Wellesley, Ontario, Canada

http://www.bio-ag.com/

Bio~Ag's 30th Anniversary Show

Murray & Florence Bast recollect 30 years of progress, and look to the future of organic farming with visionary perspective of what's to come.

http://youtu.be/WJTCWpdb7a8

Enzolac is a unique product that combines both the probiotic (a lactobacillus fermentation product) and live plant enzymes (Kreb Cycle) on a GMO free (genetically modified organisms) wheat carrier. It is made on-site in our drying facility at Wellesley. The enzymes enhance the efficiency of the probiotic and create a balance in the digestive system to ensure optimum health and productivity.

HANDEL'S MESSIAH (performance in amongst the cows)

HANDEL'S MESSIAH-MICHAEL SCHMIDT-intro.mpg http://youtu.be/hXycuMH0rhA
First 5 minutes introduction of Handel's Messiah performed by Michael Schmidt and the Saugeen Chamber Choir and Orchestra. An emotionally charged experience of an unforgettably intimate and powerful musical performance in amongst the cows. The music will thrill you to the depths of your soul, among the horses, cows and children, and your spirit will soar with joy in this festive season!

"The LAW"

Thou criest out that thou didst ask
And yet didst not receive,
And now thou sayest in thy heart
There is no law of good.
But hadst thou kept the law of good,
Or didst thou, asking, doubt?
Nay, nay, 'twas not the law that failed
'Twas thou who trustedst not.
Is law for Me alone to keep?
Nay, thou must do thy part.
Thou art to ask for naught but good
And asking, never doubt.
That is the law that thou must keep ---
Seek good, and e'er believe.
When thou hast kept this law of good,
Then ask; thou wilt receive.

A poem by Linda Buntyn Willie (circa 1915)

I like to re-Blog this once a year.

Metaphors of life.

A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea.
Examples:
• "Her eyes were glistening jewels.",
• ” She was a hippo compared to her aunt.”,
• ” The sun opened its sleepy eyes and smiled down on the Earth as a new day began.”

Do you stand on your principles? Beside them? Behind them?
What if someone pulls the rug from under you.

Where do you stand on your health, relationships, family or business?

Jesus taught in parables. A parable is a short tale that illustrates universal truth, one of the simplest of narratives. It sketches a setting, describes an action, and shows the results. It often involves a character facing a moral dilemma, or making a questionable decision and then suffering the consequences. Though the meaning of a parable is often not explicitly stated, the meaning is not usually intended be hidden or secret but on the contrary quite straightforward and obvious. “To what shall we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable can we use for it? It is like a mustard seed...” (Mark 4:30-31).
How do you see God?

Are you disconnected?
Do you need to be reconnected?




Is someone above looking out for you?




What about the “Fall From Grace”?
“Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.”
Sitting on the wall of indecision, giving in to our fears, stops our growth as human and spiritual beings.
It wasn’t just a “great fall.” It was a “GREAT FALL!”
This is the “fall from grace”, the descent into darkness.
The ego must be shattered for us to enter the light of spirituality.





Do you go against the flow?
Row, row, row your boat,
Gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is but a dream.
The song has been used extensively in popular culture, often to reflect existential questions about reality, reflecting issues about the need for self discovery.





How do you view the Christ within?




"The Metaphysics of Separation and Forgiveness" is an edited recording of the one-day workshop conducted by Kenneth Wapnick at the Foundation's Institute and Retreat Center in February 1992. This presentation summarizes the Course's teachings, specifically addressing how the metaphysical principle that the thought of separation and the physical world are illusory becomes the foundation for true forgiveness. http://facim.org/excerpts/mpseries.htm

Stand on, beside or behind your principles and values. Whatever best works for you.

You can also stand on, beside or behind health, family, business, social or personal. What ever works best for you.

But stand on Faith.

I keep an American penny. On one side it is stamped
“In God We Trust”.

Meditation and the inward quest.

Paul Brunton (1898-1981) was a British philosopher, mystic, and traveler. He left a successful journalistic career to live among yogis, mystics, and holy men, and studied a wide variety of Eastern and Western esoteric teachings. With his entire life dedicated to an inward and spiritual quest, Brunton felt charged with the task of communicating his experiences to others and, as the first person to write accounts of what he learned in the East from a Western perspective, his works had a major influence on the spread of Eastern mysticism to the West. Taking pains to express his thoughts in layperson's terms, Brunton was able to present what he learned from the Orient and from ancient tradition as a living wisdom. Paul Brunton's writings sum up his view that meditation and the inward quest are not exclusively for monks and hermits, but will also support those living normal, active lives in the Western world. Brunton was probably born as Hermann Hirsch of German Jewish origin. Later he changed his name to Raphael Hurst, and then Brunton Paul and finally Paul Brunton.

"There has been so much friction and clash between the different religions because of this idea: whether God is personal or impersonal—so much persecution, even hatred, so unnecessarily. I say unnecessarily because the difference between the two conceptions is only an apparent one. Mind is the source of all; this is Mind inactive. Mind as World-Mind-in-manifestation is the personal God. Between essence and manifestation the only difference is that essence is hidden and manifestation is known. World-Mind is personal (in the sense of being what the Hindus call "Îshvara"); Mind is totally impersonal. Basically, the two are one."

Paul Brunton Philosophical Foundation

God's businessman.

Robert Gilmour LeTourneau (1888–1969), born in Richford, Vermont, was a prolific inventor of earthmoving machinery. As the father of the modern earthmoving industry, he was responsible for 299 inventions. These inventions included the bulldozer, scrapers of all sorts, dredgers, portable cranes, rollers, dump wagons, bridge spans, logging equipment, mobile sea platforms for oil exploration, the electric wheel and many others. He introduced into the earthmoving and material handling industry the rubber tire, which today is almost universally accepted. He invented and developed the Electric Wheel.

With the help of his wife, the late Evelyn Peterson (1900-1987), he founded what became a private, Christian university, LeTourneau University, in Longview, Texas, and was known as a devoted Christian and generous philanthropist to Christian causes, including to a camp and conference grounds that carry his name, "LeTourneau Christian Center." He was sometimes called, "God's businessman.”
In 1902, at the age of fourteen, he left school, with the blessing of his Christian parents. He moved from Vermont to Duluth, Minnesota, then to Portland, Oregon, where he began to work as an apprentice ironmonger at the East Portland Iron Works. While learning the foundry and machinist trades, he studied mechanics from an International Correspondence Schools course that had been given to him, though he never completed any course assignments. He later moved to San Francisco, where he worked at the Yerba Buena Power Plant and learned welding, and became familiar with the application of electricity. In 1909, he moved to Stockton, California. During this time, LeTourneau worked at a number of jobs including wood cutter, farm hand, miner and carpenter’s laborer, acquiring knowledge of the manual trades that proved valuable in later life.
In 1911, LeTourneau was employed at the Superior Garage, in Stockton, where he learned about vehicle mechanics and later became half-owner of the business. In 1917, he married. Refused military service because of permanent neck injury, LeTourneau worked during WWI as a maintenance assistant at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard, in Vallejo, California, where he was trained as an electrical machinist and improved his welding skills. After the war, LeTourneau returned to Stockton and discovered the Superior Garage business had failed. To repay his portion of the debts, he took a job repairing a Holt Manufacturing Company crawler-tractor and was then employed by the tractor owner to level 40 acres using the tractor and a towed scraper.
This type of work appealed to LeTourneau, and in January 1920 he purchased a used Holt tractor and, with a hired scraper, began business as a regrading contractor. In May 1921, he purchased a plot of land in Stockton and established an engineering workshop, where he designed and built several types of scrapers. Combining contracting and earthmoving equipment manufacturing, his business expanded and in 1929 incorporated in California as "R.G. LeTourneau, Inc."
The LeTourneau name became synonymous with earthmoving worldwide. LeTourneau was largely responsible for the invention and development of many types of earthmoving machines now widely used. He designed and built machines using technology that was years, sometimes decades, ahead of its time and became recognized worldwide as a leader in the development and manufacture of heavy equipment. The use of rubber tires in earthmoving;[4] numerous improvements relating to scrapers; the development of low-pressure, heavy-duty rubber tires; the two-wheeled tractor unit ("Tournapull"); electric wheel drive, and mobile offshore drilling platforms, are all attributed to LeTourneau’s ingenuity. During his lifetime, he held hundreds of patents on inventions relating to earthmoving equipment, manufacturing processes and machine tools. His factories supplied 70 percent of all heavy earthmoving equipment used by the Allied forces during WWarII.
In 1965, I.C.S. awarded LeTourneau his diploma in engineering, 50 years after he studied the course. LeTourneau was 76 at the time.
Being a man of great Christian commitment and dedication, for 30 years he flew thousands of miles each week to maintain Christian speaking engagements around the United States and overseas.
As a multi-millionaire, LeTourneau gave 90% of his profit to God's work and kept only 10% for himself. A special friend of Billy Graham, in his early days, LeTourneau designed a portable dome building intended for Graham crusades. He also founded a university that is thriving to this day.
LeTourneau said that the money came in faster than he could give it away. LeTourneau was convinced that he could not out-give God.

"I shovel it out,”

he would say,

“and God shovels it back, but God has a bigger shovel."

His life's verse was Matthew 6:33:

"Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you."

When will we cease running after Truth, and learn to "be still, and know that I am God"?

Constant reading, discussions, interchange of opinions are all external ways of reaching the Truth from the intellectual side. These are a way, but "I am the way, and the truth, and the life," spake the voice of the Father through the Nazarene. "The anointing which ye received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that anyone teach you." "The Spirit of truth . . . shall guide you into all the truth and he shall declare unto you the things that are to come.

When will we cease running after Truth, and learn to "be still, and know that I am God"?
~ Emilie Cady's How I Used The Truth

Another fact that lies at the root of the world's major religions, as they were originally conceived, is the allness of God. Indeed, the allness, hence oneness of God was the heart and soul of original Christianity before mankind began to interpret it for himself—before the 'separate mind' rearranged things to continue a place for itself.

The fact is that God (Principle) is all that is. God is the only reality. God is the only power and presence. Beside God there is nothing else at all. God is total and alone. God is one. There is not God and 'me'. There is not God and the world, universe, heaven, hell, devil, or anything else. There is God alone!

Mankind is willing to agree that God's sphere of influence includes the universe entire. He will even concede intellectually that God is everywhere, but he is not so ready to admit that God, Fact, Reality, Principle is all of all—that God is the being of existence itself—that Divine Principle itself is being all there is to this universe—that people and things, as objects of perception, are nothing in and of themselves, but God is being all there is to people and things—that the value and importance is not in the object perceived but is in God, the reality, the fact which is being all there is to the object and to the perception of it.

The reason for mankind's hesitancy is obvious. “If I give God ALL the power and the glory, there is none left for ME,” he says. “If God is everything, I am NOTHING. This is self-destruction. It eliminates ME.”
~ 2+2=Reality By William Samuel

When will we learn to "be still, and know that I am God"?

Are your beliefs painting you into a corner?

Memetics is a controversial theory of mental content based on an analogy with Darwinian evolution, originating from Richard Dawkins' 1976 book The Selfish Gene. It purports to be an approach to evolutionary models of cultural information transfer. A meme, analogous to a gene, The word meme is a shortening (modeled on gene) of mimeme (from Ancient Greek "something imitated", "to imitate", "mime").

Give yourself, if you wish to get others.

Increasingly the fields of psychology and religion are being seen as intimately related. Unfortunately it is still true, as Dr. Seabury complains, that

Four Fold Gospel

Albert Benjamin "A.B." Simpson (1843 –1919) was a Canadian preacher, theologian, author, and founder of the Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA), an evangelical Protestant denomination with an emphasis on global evangelism. Simpson was born in Cavendish, Prince Edward Island, Canada.

The young Albert was raised in a strict Calvinistic Scottish Presbyterian and Puritan tradition. His conversion of faith began under the ministry of Henry Grattan Guinness, a visiting evangelist from Ireland during the revival of 1859. Simpson spent some time in the Chatham, Ontario area, and received his theological training in Toronto at Knox College, University of Toronto. After graduating in 1865, Simpson was subsequently ordained in the Canada Presbyterian Church, the largest of the Presbyterian groups in Canada that merged after his departure for the United States. At age 21, he accepted a call to the large Knox Presbyterian Church (closed in 1971) in nearby Hamilton, Ontario.
In December 1873, at age 30, Simpson left Canada and assumed the pulpit of the largest Presbyterian church in Louisville, Kentucky, the Chestnut Street Presbyterian Church. It was in Louisville that he first conceived of preaching the gospel to the common man by building a simple tabernacle structure for that purpose. Despite his success at the Chestnut Street Church, Simpson was frustrated by their reluctance to embrace this burden for wider evangelistic endeavor.
In 1880, Simpson was called to the Thirteenth Street Presbyterian Church in New York City where he immediately began reaching out to the world with the gospel. Beside active evangelistic work in the church, he published a missionary journal, The Gospel in All Lands, the first missionary journal with pictures. Simpson also founded and began publishing an illustrated magazine entitled The Word, Work, and World. By 1911, this magazine became known as The Alliance Weekly, then Alliance Life, and is now called a.life. It is the official publication of The Christian and Missionary Alliance, in the USA and Canada.

By 1881, after only two fruitful years at Thirteenth Presbyterian, he resigned in order to begin an independent gospel ministry to the many new immigrants and the neglected masses of New York City. Simpson began informal training classes in 1882 in order to reach "the neglected peoples of the world with the neglected resources of the church". By 1883, a formal program was in place and ministers and missionaries were being trained in a multi-cultural context (This school was the beginning of Nyack College and Alliance Theological Seminary). In 1889, Simpson and his church family moved into their new home at the corner of 44th St. and 8th Av. called the New York Tabernacle. This became the base not only of his ministry of evangelism in the city but also of his growing work of worldwide missions.
Simpson's disciplined upbringing and his natural genius made him a most effective communicator of the Word of God. His preaching brought great blessing and converts wherever he preached and his unique gospel of Jesus became known as the Four Fold Gospel: "Jesus our Savior, Sanctifier, Healer, and Coming King". The Four Fold Gospel is symbolized in the logo of the C&MA : the Cross, the Laver, the Pitcher and the Crown. He came to his special emphasis in ministry through his absolute Christ-centeredness in doctrine and experience.
Plagued by illness for much of his life since childhood, Simpson experienced divine healing after understanding it to be part of the blessing of abiding in Christ as Life and healing. He emphasized healing in his Four Fold Gospel and usually devoted one meeting a week for teaching, testimonies and prayer on these lines. Although such teaching isolated him (and the C&MA) from the mainline churches that either did not emphasize or outright rejected healing, Simpson's uncompromising trust in the Word and power of God kept him steadily forging ahead of his times without criticism or rancor with those who disagreed.
Simpson’s heart for evangelism was to become the driving force behind the creation of the C&MA. Initially, the Christian and Missionary Alliance was not founded as a denomination, but as an organized movement of world evangelism. Today, the C&MA plays a leadership role in global evangelism.
In his 1890 book, A Larger Christian Life, Simpson discussed his vision for the church:
“A plan for a Christian church that is much more than an association of congenial friends to listen once a week to an intellectual discourse and musical entertainment and carry on by proxy a mechanism of Christian work; but rather a church that can be at once the mother and home of every form of help and blessing which Jesus came to give to lost and suffering men, the birthplace and the home of souls, the fountain of healing and cleansing, the sheltering home for the orphan and distressed, the school for the culture and training of God's children, the armory where they are equipped for the battle of the Lord and the army which fights those battles in His name. Such a center of population in this sad and sinful world!”

A number of C&MA churches bear Simpson's name, as does
Simpson University in Redding, California,
the Albert B. Simpson school in Lima, Peru and
the A. B. Simpson Alliance School in Zamboanga City, Philippines.

A.B. Simpson and his wife, Margaret, are buried on the Rockland County Campus of Nyack College in Nyack, New York.

“A SOLEMN COVENANT: The Dedication of Myself to God.” By Albert Benjamin Simpson. Saturday, January 19, 1861.

“A SOLEMN COVENANT: The Dedication of Myself to God.” By ...

Self-enquiry

Sri Ramana Maharshi (1879 – 1950), born Venkataraman Iyer, was a Hindu spiritual master ("jnani"). He was born to a Tamil-speaking Brahmin family in Tiruchuzhi, Tamil Nadu. After experiencing at age 16 what he later described as liberation (moksha), he left home for Arunachala, a mountain considered sacred by Hindus. He lived at the mountain for the rest of his life. Although born a Brahmin, he declared himself an "Atiasrami", a Sastraic state of non-attachment to anything in life and beyond all caste restrictions. The ashram that grew around him, Sri Ramana Ashram, is situated at the foothill of Arunchala, to the west to the pilgrimage town of Tiruvannamalai.
Sri Ramana Maharshi maintained that the purest form of his teachings was the powerful silence which radiated from his presence and quieted the minds of those attuned to it. He gave verbal teachings only for the benefit of those who could not understand his silence (or, perhaps, could not understand how to attain the silent state). His verbal teachings were said to flow from his direct experience of Atman as the only existing reality. When asked for advice, he recommended self-enquiry as the fastest path to moksha. Though his primary teaching is associated with Non-dualism, Advaita Vedanta, and Jnana yoga, he recommended Bhakt[1]i to those he saw were fit for it, and gave his approval to a variety of paths and practices.
[1]In Hinduism Bhakti is religious devotion in the form of active involvement of a devotee in worship of the divine. Within monotheistic Hinduism, it is the love felt by the worshipper towards the personal God, a concept expressed in Hindu theology as Svayam Bhagavan.

The “Calamity”

Uppaluri Gopala Krishnamurti ( 1918 – 2007 ), known as U.G. Krishnamurti, or just U.G., was an Indian thinker who said that there is no "enlightenment".
Although necessary for day to day functioning of the individual, in terms of the Ultimate Reality or Truth he rejected the very basis of thought and in doing so negated all systems of thought and knowledge in reference to It.

"Tell them that there is nothing to understand."

In 1939, at age 21, U.G. met with renowned spiritual teacher Ramana Maharshi. U.G. related that he asked Ramana, "This thing called moksha, can you give it to me?" – to which Ramana Maharshi purportedly replied, "I can give it, but can you take it?". This answer completely altered U.G.'s perceptions of the "spiritual path" and its practitioners, and he never again sought the counsel of "those religious people". Later U.G. would say that Maharshi's answer – which he perceived as "arrogant" – put him "back on track".
From 1947 to 1953, U.G. regularly attended talks given by Jiddu Krishnamurti in Madras, India, eventually beginning a direct dialogue with him in 1953.
In 1967, U.G. was again concerned with the subject of enlightenment, wanting to know what that state was, which sages such as Siddhārtha Gautama purportedly attained. Hearing that Jiddu Krishnamurti was giving a talk in Saanen, U.G. decided to attend. During the talk, Jiddu was describing his own state and U.G. thought that it referred to him (U.G.). He explained it as follows:

“When I Iistened to him, something funny happened to me – a peculiar kind of feeling that he was describing my state and not his state. Why did I want to know his state? He was describing something, some movements, some awareness, some silence – "In that silence there is no mind; there is action" – all kinds of things. So, I am in that state. What the hell have I been doing these thirty or forty years, listening to all these people and struggling, wanting to understand his state or the state of somebody else, Buddha or Jesus? I am in that state. Now I am in that state. So, then I walked out of the tent and never looked back.”

He continues:
“Then – very strange – that question "What is that state?" transformed itself into another question "How do I know that I am in that state, the state of Buddha, the state I very much wanted and demanded from everybody? I am in that state, but how do I know?"”

The next day U.G. was again pondering the question "How do I know I am in that state?" with no answer forthcoming. He later recounted that on suddenly realizing the question had no answer, there was an unexpected physical, as well as psychological, reaction. It seemed to him like "a sudden explosion inside, blasting, as it were, every cell, every nerve and every gland in my body." Afterwards, he started experiencing what he called "the calamity", a series of bizarre physiological transformations that took place over the course of a week, affecting each one of his senses, and finally resulting in a deathlike experience. He described it this way:

“I call it calamity because from the point of view of one who thinks this is something fantastic, blissful and full of beatitude, love, or ecstasy, this is physical torture; this is a calamity from that point of view. Not a calamity to me but a calamity to those who have an image that something marvelous is going to happen.”

Upon the eighth day:

“Then, on the eighth day I was sitting on the sofa and suddenly there was an outburst of tremendous energy – tremendous energy shaking the whole body, and along with the body, the sofa, the chalet and the whole universe, as it were – shaking, vibrating. You can't create that movement at all. It was sudden. Whether it was coming from outside or inside, from below or above, I don't know – I couldn't locate the spot; it was all over. It lasted for hours and hours. I couldn't bear it but there was nothing I could do to stop it; there was a total helplessness. This went on and on, day after day, day after day.”

“The energy that is operating there does not feel the limitations of the body; it is not interested; it has its own momentum. It is a very painful thing. It is not that ecstatic, blissful beatitude and all that rubbish – stuff and nonsense! – it is really a painful thing.”

U.G. could not, and did not, explain the provenance of the calamity experiences. In response to questions, he maintained that it happened "in spite of" his pre-occupation with – and search for – enlightenment. He also maintained that the calamity had nothing to do with his life up to that point, or with his upbringing. Several times he described the calamity happening to him as a matter of chance, and he insisted that he could not possibly, in any way, impart that experience to anybody else.
Describing his post-calamity life, he claimed to be functioning permanently in what he called "the natural state":

A state of spontaneous, purely physical, sensory existence, characterized by discontinuity – though not absence – of thought.

Life a Ministry

Oh, how the human intellect in its ignorance and egotism has twisted and turned and distorted the plain, simple words of the Master in order to make them conform to its darkened understanding!

Truly "the light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness apprehended it not."

. . .

Marvelous way, is it not, in which the creature is to be made perfect and known and loved and great: simply letting God's will be done in us and in our circumstances and surroundings? Yet heretofore one's saying, "Thy will be done," has been associated in mind only with death and suffering and failure, and with a forced submission to these un-Godlike conditions, as though God were the author of them. "God is not a God of confusion, but of peace." Oh, how in our ignorance we have mistaken and misunderstood God, in consequence of which we are today pygmies when He wanted to make us giants in love and health and power by manifesting more of Himself through us! We would not let Him, because we have been afraid to say, "Have Thy way in me; manifest Thyself through me as Thou wilt"

. . .

Health is more life. Drugs will not give life. Travel and change of scene, so often resorted to in illness of mind and body, will not give life except in so far as they tend to relax the tense, rigid mind and body of man and permit God — who is always in process of outgoing as life toward us His children — to flow in to fill the lack. We do not have to beseech God. Life more abundant rushes into the souls and bodies of men, as air does into a vacuum, the moment they learn how consciously to relax and, turning toward God, let it.
People who are persistently ill or unsuccessful in any way say they are tired of it all and want to die. They know not what they say. They do not understand. It is not death they want but more life. This breath of the Almighty is to us the only health and strength, the only power and success of either mind or body.

. . .

What then are we to do?

Change our minds. Turn around. If through ignorance of the only and unfailing source of all life we have turned our backs upon God and our faces toward human helps, like drugs, change of environment, and the like, let us halt, face about!

. . .

The inner light comes to “every man, coming into the world"; but we may close ourselves to this light either through ignorance or willfullness — the result is the same — and live in darkness. The light within every man goes right on shining just the same, whether he accepts it or rejects it. 'The light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness apprehended it not." In this case the light is shut off through ignorance. "'And this is the judgment, that the light is come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their works were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, and cometh not to the light [free will], lest his works should be reproved [or detected}." Thus is the light voluntarily or willfully shut out, again as a matter of man's choice. Both conditions are dependent on the mental attitude of man. In the first instance he is not conscious that there is light within himself: "the darkness apprehended it not." In the second instance he stubbornly refuses to come to the light because he "hateth the light."

. . .

Life a Ministry

LOOKED AT from a purely commercial standpoint, the life of Jesus Christ was a failure. His place in the world was obscure, His occupation a humble one. The work of His hands commanded only the usual recompense. From the world's point of view His contribution was merely that of an average man.

Even after His public life began He seemingly failed just as signally as before. He made Himself of no reputation among men. In the field where His greatest visible success lay, the delivering of men from sorrow and trouble, He sometimes failed. "He saved others; himself he cannot save," they cried when deriding Him. All the way to His ignominious death He stood before self-satisfied men, chief priests and Pharisees, as a failure. Why? Because He and these men were living from entirely different standpoints. Men were living largely from the external; Jesus was living from within. Men were reckoning success then as the world reckons success today, largely in terms of numbers and figures and the possession of external things.

After two thousand years we can see that the life of Jesus Christ, lived so obscurely, so unostentatiously, really was not the failure that it seemed; that He was living a life that in the long run was the only successful one. For today, when His contemporaries have passed away and are forgotten. His life stands forth among men and within men as the inspiration of all love and all goodness, the inspiration of all success.

. . .

God gives without thought or hope of return. So do we as soon as we become conscious of an indwelling Christ; we cease any longer to expect or desire to be ministered unto.

If we would live the life of real success, real joy, real Christlikeness, we must keep the current turned to flow from within outward instead of in the opposite direction.

. . .

Christ is the light of the world. Christ is within us. This light is ever fed from the great fountain of all light, the Father in Him: "I in them, and thou in me." God made each one of US to be a radiating center, constantly shining outward toward others in a spirit of ministry and giving. If you draw out your soul to satisfy the afflicted, then your light will break forth as the morning and your darkness will be as the noonday (See Isa. 58:8-10); for I, very Christ, who have come to abide within you, I am the light of the world, and when anyone draws out his soul he draws Me out.

But if you put a bushel over your light by harboring the thought of not letting your neighbor receive from you anything for which he makes no return, you will simply find yourself walking in the darkness. 'If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is the darkness." As Christian Gellert said,

“whoever in the darkness lighteth another with this lamp [Christ] lighteth himself also; and the light is not of ourselves, it is of Him who appointeth the suns in their courses."

God a Present Help
by H. Emilie Cady
was first published in 1938.

Live as you will have wished to have lived when you are dying.

Christian Fürchtegott Gellert (1715 –1769) was a German poet, one of the forerunners of the golden age of German literature.
He entered Leipzig University in 1734 as a student of theology, and completed his studies in 1739. He established himself in 1745 as Privatdozent* in philosophy at the university of Leipzig, lectured on poetry, rhetoric and literary style with much success.

The esteem and veneration in which Gellert was held by the students, and indeed by persons in all classes of society, was unbounded, and yet due perhaps less to his unrivalled popularity as a lecturer and writer than to his personal character. He was the noblest and most amiable of men, generous, tender-hearted and of unaffected piety and humility. He wrote in order to raise the religious and moral character of the people, and to this end employed language which, though at times prolix, was always correct and clear.
*Privatdozent (abbreviated PD, P.D. or Priv.-Doz.) or Private lecturer is a title conferred in some European university systems, especially in German-speaking countries, for someone who pursues an academic career and holds all formal qualifications (doctorate and habilitation) to become a tenured university professor.

Happy the man who knows his duties!
- Christian Furchtegott Gellert

SCMP-III ( Pray as if ye had already received.)

I remember reading the “The Isaiah Effect” years ago. At the time I was in awe. But then I discovered true prayer was already spelled out in the New Testament.

As Hopkins wrote in SCMP:

In the Buddhist temples they have been striking sounding rims of great bells for generations, crying, "0 let the good come." There is such a pathetic intimation in this prayer that the good is not already here that it is no wonder the good has never appeared in the way they wish. They ought to name in certainty what good is already here. That will cause the good to appear, for indeed health is already in our midst, so we may say it is well. The good is in our affairs, and if we tell the truth about them, it will exhibit. We make nothing by our words; we only exhibit what is already made. Therefore, "Pray as if ye had already received." Of course we have already received, and why should we not be truthful and say so? Through truth the good is visible. Good waits for truth. Good will not show you good health, good strength, good provisions, good life, except through the glass of truth. Do not expect answers to begging prayers.

Look over all the answered prayers you have ever heard of and see how suddenly the beseeching hearts stopped and said "Thy will be done." The will of God is for health, for life, for prosperity, for peace, for friends, and peace in the home. So, when they ceased begging they were one with the Divine will and it was so their will that their prayer that moment was the kind of which Jesus spoke.

Perhaps we’ve been making contact the wrong way.

Loose Him and Let Him Go

A case was that of a dear young friend who had been placed in my care. He was just entering on a life of drinking and dissipation. There were weeks of awful anxiety, as I saw him drinking day by day, before I reached the place where I could "loose him, and let him go." When I did reach that place and stood there steadfastly (in spite of appearances), it required only a few hours to see him so fully healed that although forty years have passed, he has yet to touch a drop of liquor or indulge in any form of dissipation since that time. The lesson Loose Him and Let Him Go was then written.

The moment we believe something to be true we begin to try to convert others to our belief. In our eagerness we forget that Truth is kaleidoscopic in its forms. We learn to say, with some degree of realization, "God worketh in me to will and to work for His good pleasure," but we quite forget that the same God is working equally in our brother "to will and to work."
Among the wise sayings of the ancient philosopher, Epictetus, we find these words: "Does any one bathe hastily? Do not say that he does it ill, but hastily. Does any one drink much wine? Do not say that he does ill, but that he drinks a great deal. For unless you perfectly understand his motives, how should you know if he acts ill? Thus you will not risk yielding to any appearances but such as you fully comprehend."
Every person has an inherent right to freedom of choice, a right to live his life in his own way. One of the surest signs that a person is no longer in bondage himself is his willingness to give others their freedom, to allow others the privilege of seeking and finding God as they will.Our great basic statement is "All is good, because all is God." In other words, God Is the only intelligence, the only life at the center of every form of existing life. We say that we believe the highest manifestation of God is in man; that God ever abides at the center of man, of all mankind, and is always in process of manifesting more and more of Himself, pure intelligence, perfect love, through man's consciousness until man comes to be consciously one with the Father in all things.
Do you really believe this fundamental statement? If you do believe it, where is there any cause for the anxiety that you feel about your loved ones who are not, as you say, "in the Truth"? If we truly believed that "all is good," we should not be troubled about those who apparently are going all wrong. They may be going wrong according to our limited conception of right and wrong, but my brother, my sister, you are not your brother's keeper. He that will redeem, aye! He that has already redeemed your brother, lives within Him. The Christ, who ever loves at the center of every soul, "will neither slumber nor sleep." God works, or as the original has it, "God is working effectually to perform" in your brother, to bring him to himself just as much as He is working in you and in me. We have absolutely nothing to fear about the eventual success of this worker. God never fails.
You have perhaps come to the flowering or the fruiting season, in your growth out of the darkness of sense belief into the light of spiritual understanding. It is blessed and beautiful to be where you are, and it is hard to human belief to see those whom you love just barely showing their heads above the earth of sin and mistake, or harder still to see them daily going deeper into the earth of an animal life, farther away from your conception of the good than ever before.
But just here is the place for us to cling faithfully and trustingly to our basic statement. "In hope were we saved; but hope that is seen is not hope," said Paul. Faith is not sight. Is our basic statement, "All is good," founded on Principle or on evidence of the senses? If on Principle, then it is immutable, unchangeable. And God is just as surely abiding at the center of your loved husband or son, working in him, when he is drinking, or going down, as when he is coming up.
God is just as much the life of the seed when it is being planted in the dark earth, where, to the human sense, it is dead and all is lost, as He is the life of the new leaf which a few days later bursts into sight, In fact it is because God is there at the center, working in the stillness, unseen, and not at all because of the fussy, noisy outside work that you and I do, that the seed comes forth into newness of life.
"Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth by itself alone; but if it die, it beareth much fruit."
Thus it would seem that the dying, the failure, the going down of the old is a necessary step in all true salvation. Every man must go down till he strikes his own level, his own self, before there can be any real growth. We may seem to hold another up for a while, but eventually he must walk alone. The time of his walking alone with his own indwelling Christ, his own true self, will depend largely on our letting go of him. No one will seek anything higher than he is today, until he feels the need of something higher. Your dear ones must have the liberty to live out their own lives, and you must let them, or else you are the one who puts off the day of their salvation .
"But," says someone whose heart is aching over the error ways of a loved one, "should you not help anyone? Should you not run after him, and urge him continually to turn into the right way?" Yes and no. I gladly, joyfully help anyone when he wants help, but I could not urge anyone to leave his own light and walk by my light. Nor would I, like an overfond mother, pick up another and try to carry him in my arms by continually "treating" him.
A mother may--and sometimes does, mentally and morally, if not physically--through her false conception of love, carry her child until he is twenty years old, lest he, not knowing how to walk, fall and bump his nose a few times. But if she does this until he is a grown man, what will he do? He will turn and rend her, because she has stolen from him his inherent right to become a strong, self-reliant man. She has interposed herself between him and the power within him that was waiting, from his birth, to be strength and sufficiency for him in all things. She should have placed him on his own feet, made him know that there was something in himself that could stand, encouraged and steadied him, and so helped him to be self-reliant and independent.Hundreds of anxious fathers and mothers, sisters and wives say, "Ah! but I love this one so I cannot stand still and see him rushing on to an inevitable suffering."
Yes, you love him. But I tell you that it takes an infinitely greater, more God-like love to stand still and see your child burn his hand a little, that he may gain self-knowledge, than it does to be a bond-slave to him, ever on the alert to prevent the possibility of his learning through a little suffering. Are you equal to this larger love--to the love that does not hold itself on the qui vive to interpose its nagging bodily presence between the dear ones and their own indwelling Lord who is with them "always"? Having come yourself to a knowledge of the mighty truth that "God is all and in all," have you the moral courage to "be still, and know"; to take off all restrictions and rules from others, and to let the God within them, each one, grow them as He will; and, trusting Him to do it in the right way, keep yourself from all anxiety in the matter?
When Jesus preached of a glorious freedom from suffering, through a "kingdom . . . within," He often interspersed His preaching with the words, "He that hath ears, let him hear." In other words, the Gospel message of deliverance is for all who are ready for it. Let him who has come to where he wants it, take it.
No one has any right to coerce another to accept his ideal. Every person has a right to keep his own ideal until he desires to change it.
God is leading your friend by a way you do not and cannot know. It is a safe and sure way; it is the shortest and only way. It is the Christ way; the within way, "I am the door," says the Christ within every man's own soul. "If any man enter in, [that is, by way of the Christ in himself] he shall be saved."
Now you are trying to have your friend enter in through your door. He must enter in through his own Christ, his own desire, and you must let him alone to the workings of that indwelling One, if you want him to manifest good.
"But," you say, "is there nothing I can do when I see my husband, brother, friend, going down?"
Yes, there is something you can do, and a very effectual something, too.
"The sword of the Spirit . . . is the word of God." You can, whenever you think of your friend, speak the word of freedom to him. You can always and in all ways "Loose him, and let him go," not forgetting that the letting him go is as important as the loosing him. You can tell him mentally that Christ lives within him and makes him free, forever free; tell him that he manifests the Holy One wherever he goes and at all times, for there Is nothing else to manifest. And then you see to it that you do not recognize any other manifestation than the good in him.
It is written, "Whose soever sins ye forgive, they are forgiven unto them; whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained." Will you invariably speak the word of remission or loosing to your erring ones? Or will you bind them closer, tighter in the bondage that is breaking your own heart, by speaking the word of retention to them continually?
If you really want your friends to be free, there is but one way for you: Loose them and let them go. For it is the promise of the Father, through the Son, that "Whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."
Excerpt from HOW I USED TRUTH by H. Emilie Cady [1916]

There was a discussion on Linkedin about cutting chords. We`re spirit (i.e. mind), not bodies so the visualizing of cutting chords is ceremonial and psychological only.