The Power of Oneself. Charles Fillmore

just as true among metaphysicians as among orthodox Christians. Spirit will find a way to lead you when you have freely and fully dedicated yourself to God, and you will be led in a path just a little different from that of anyone else. Your teaching has been in generalities, so when Spirit in its office as an individual guide shows you Truth different from that which you have been taught, you may object. If, for instance, you have been taught to ignore the body with all its passions and appetites, and Spirit in its instruction shows you that you are to recognize these appetites and passions as your misdirected powers, what are you going to do about it?

      There can be but one course for the obedient devotee. If you have surrendered all to omnipresent wisdom, you must take as final what it tells you. You will find that its guidance is that right course for you and, in the end, that it was the only course that you could possibly have taken.

      All things are manifestations of the good. Man in his spiritual identity is the very essence of good, and he can do no wrong. He can in his experience misuse the powers placed at his disposal by the Father, but he can do no permanent evil. He always has recourse to Spirit, which forgives all his transgressions and places him on the right road, a new man, when he willingly gives up his own way and as a little child asks to be led. Then comes the redemption of the appetites and passions, which the ignorant intellect has pronounced evil and has attempted to kill out by starvation and repression. This does not mean that the indulgence of appetites and passions is to be allowed in the old, demoralizing way, but it means that they are to be trained anew under the direction of Spirit.

      John the Baptist represents the attitude of spiritual receptivity that awaits the higher way as a little child awaits the helping hand of a parent. It is not the arbitrary disciplinarian, but the loving, tender kindergarten teacher, that illustrates in visible life the intricate problems that perplex the mind. When man is receptive and obedient, giving himself unreservedly up to Spirit and to receiving its guidance without antagonism, he is delighted with the possibilities that are disclosed to him in the cleansing of mind and body. He then begins to realize what Jesus meant when He said: "If any man would come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me."

      The cross is not a burden, as commonly understood, but is a symbol of the forces in man adjusted in their right relation. The body of Jesus was lifted up and nailed to the cross, which indicates that the physical man must be lifted into the harmony of Spirit and adjusted to its four-dimensional plane, represented by the four branches of the crosstree.

      Man thinks in the fourth dimension, but his body, in its present fleshly consciousness, can express in three dimensions only. Hence we must cleanse our thoughts by denying materiality. Then the flesh will become radiant ether with power to penetrate all so-called material substance. But before this can be done the mind of the man must become John the Baptist--it must be cleansed by the waters of denial, and the old material ideas must be put away forever.

      If you are clinging to any idea that in any way prevents your eyes from seeing the millennium here and now, you are a Pharisee; you are crying, "Beelzebub," whenever you say "crank" of the one who has caught sight of the spiritual mountaintops now glistening in the sun of the new age.

      John the Baptist is now moving swiftly among the children of men. His cry is heard in many hearts today, and they are following him in the wilderness of sense. But the bright light of the Christ still shines in Galilee, and they who are earnest and faithful shall see it and be glad.

      Those who attempt to heal the body by injecting into it a new life stream from without are attempting to do in a material way what Jesus attained spiritually. The vitality of the race was at a low ebb at His advent; He saw the necessity of a larger consciousness of life, and He knew how to inoculate the mind of everyone who would accept His method. In John 5:26 it is written, "For as the Father hath life in himself, even so gave he to the Son also to have life in himself." Life is spiritual, as everyone admits who has tried to find it in a physical laboratory. No one has even seen life in food or drink, but it is there in small degree, and it is through eating and drinking that the body absorbs the invisible life elements that physical science has named vitamins. The vitamin is the essential life within all forms and, being spiritual in character, must be spiritually discerned. We feel life's thrill in our body; by raising this consciousness of life to Christ enthusiasm, we may come to such fullness of energy that the whole life stream will be quickened and the congestions in arteries and glands swept away. "I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly."

      All spiritual metaphysicians know that the body and the blood of Jesus were purified and that each cell was energized with original spiritual substance and life, until all materiality was purged away and only the pure essence remained. This vitamin, or essence of life and substance, was sown as seed in the whole race consciousness, and whoever through faith in Christ draws to himself one of these life germs becomes inoculated to that degree with Jesus Christ quality, and not only the mind but also the body is cleansed.

      "He that soweth the good seed is the Son of man; and the field is the world." Like a seed planted in soil, the word or thought germ will multiply and bring forth after its kind. "He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same beareth much fruit: for apart from me ye can do nothing."

      The apostle Thaddaeus, called also Lebbaeus, carries forward the work of elimination of error thoughts from the mind and of waste food from the body.

      The nerve center from which the eliminative function directs the emptying of the intestines is located deep in the lower bowels.

      This center is very sensitive to thoughts about substance and all materiality. A gripping mental hold on material things will cause constipation. A relaxation of the mind and a loosening of the grip on material possessions will bring about freedom in bowel action.

      The prevailing ills of the abdominal region, constipation, tumors, and the like, are caused by constriction of the whole body energy.

      The faculties centering in the head are responsible for this slowing down of the life forces. The will, operating through the front brain, controls the circulation of the life force in the whole organism. A tense will, set to accomplish some personal end, keys everything to that end and puts a limitation on the activity of every other function.

      The set determination to succeed in some chosen field of action, study, profession, business, or personal ambition calls most of the body energy to the head and starves the other centers.

      In our schools the minds of our children are crammed with worldly wisdom, and they are spurred on to make their grades, thus constantly forcing the blood to the head and depleting its flow to the abdomen.

      This overflow to the will center causes enlarged adenoids, inflamed tonsils, sinus trouble, and other ills of the head, while the abdominal region suffers with constipation and general lack of vital action.

      Some persons relax in sleep and thus give the body an opportunity to recoup its depleted energy. But if the eager pace is kept up night and day, the end is nervous prostration. The remedy is relaxation of will, the letting go of personal objectives.

      The strife to get on in the world is responsible for most of the ills of the flesh. Worry or anxiety about temporal needs disturbs in the body the even flow of nature's all-providing elements. Jesus warned against the tension of anxiety when He said, "Be not anxious for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than the food, and the body than the raiment?"

      A divine law has been provided for man that will meet every need when it is observed. "Seek ye first his kingdom, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you."

      So we find that relaxation of the tense abdomen depends on relaxation of the tense will.

      Give up your willfulness and ask that the divine will be done in you and in all your affairs. Jesus set aside His will that God's will might be done in Him. "Not my will, but thine, be done."