IN THE WORDS OF JESUS–Part 201

Love is the Fulfilling of the Law

The Miracles of Jesus (continued; part xiii)

We ended yesterday with some comments on the Apostle Paul’s shipwreck en route to Rome and we noted the intercession of the angel who brought Paul news that the ship would be lost but all the people would be saved. Our understanding on this event is linked to our premise that in this Great Plan of God, all things must work out and that things are done and people put in place to ensure that all that was destined to be will come to pass. We noted too that while Paul had the KNOWING by degree to heal the sick, cure the afflicted and raise the dead, it is likely that he did not have enough of the KNOWING to “not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith” (Mark 11:23) which would have been the requirement that would allow him to quell the storm.

For us this episode in the Life of Paul should add to our understanding of the Master’s words and much like we have learned from, and have seen ourselves in, the stories of Peter and on Paul, on how they were able to come to the Lord and, once there, grow in their ability to believe and doubt not….to KNOW. We must remember that the ideas presented here are valid only in the sense that we follow in the words of the Master and here we repeat again our four points so that we can maintain that clarity that we need to move forward.

1. “For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith” (Mark 11:23).
2. “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do ; because I go unto my Father” (John 14:12).
3. “All things are delivered unto me of my Father: and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him” (Matthew 11:27).
4. “…for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove ; and nothing shall be impossible unto you” (Matthew 17:20).

Again, let us look then at the validity of what we surmise from the Master’s words. The second point above is the point from which one’s journey begins. We noted that the disciples of the Master, the twelve and the seventy, had come to Jesus already at that point of discipleship and this because they are Souls of a more advanced nature, Souls who had previously built up enough treasure in heaven, to be able to come into Life at this time and work as a part of the Great Plan that brought the Christ to our presence and through whom His lasting mark would be  promoted. For the rest of us, the man of today and likely for most of the men since the time of Christ, the journey is not quite so easy. As men in form operating as the conscious personalities that we are, we do not know the status of our Souls on the great scale of discipleship but since this is a forward journey we can assume that at whatever level of discipleship we can see in ourselves here and now, it is likely that we were close to this point in a previous incarnation. Much like there are laws of the natural world in which we live, there are laws in the spiritual realms as well and regardless of what we may see or think, they are at play in our lives. Through the eons of evolution, the Soul which is pure and unblemished, is able to build better and more suitable bodies of expression and we can posit here that in each successive Life the threefold personality to which the Soul gives Life is constructed of, or can raise itself to, the higher levels of available energies. This means that the mental, the emotional and the physical bodies of energy are built of a successively higher purity and this, like all else in Life, is not stagnant. An analogy here could be a plant that we buy and bring home; this plant is of a fixed health or, as we say here, purity. If we place this plant in the dark and do not allow to have access to the sun or if we do not give it water and fertilizer, the plant will wilt and perhaps die, it will lose in its purity. Conversely, if we put the plant in  the sunny window and give it ample water and food the plant will flourish and even flower, its purity will increase.

Much the same then for the body of the threefold personality. If we take our fixed health or purity and we place it in the Light of the Soul from which flows the Good, the Beautiful and the True, if we nourish it with these same Soul aspects in right thinking and right attitude then the threefold personality will continue to be raised in its health, its purity. Conversely, if we leave this threefold personality in the world of carnal living and allow our thoughts and emotions and even our physical natures to live in the world only, then there is not nourishment from the Soul and the personality sinks down lower than its original fixed point of beginning.

We must remember that it is not all so simple as this but it is a complex affair with each aspect of the personality living out its existence separately and as a unity. For one the mind is higher and for another their emotions rule and for yet another the physical appetites take precedence and the degree of interaction between these varies as well. Can we see here the infinite range of possibilities and can we see also what makes each person a unique individual in time and space? So we come into incarnation with personalities that are somewhat fixed around the point where we left off and which are capable by degree of contact by the Soul, Here we need to understand the final part in this great puzzle called Life on Earth and that is the free will of the personality consciousness which causes and reaps from the type of nourishment that we have noted above. By the action of the free will of man we can move quickly forward, toward greater communion with one’s Soul, or we can move seemingly backward and remain in the darkness of the world. To this we add then the idea of the advanced Soul that is able to build the ‘more pure’ body, one with sufficient purity to enable the response to Soul to be rather sure so that when the Lord calls, as with Peter and the other disciples, that the form nature can more readily respond. It is unfortunate that in esoteric matters such as these there are not words sufficient to express the ideas in a straightforward and cogent way and one can only hope that these ideas are relatively clear.

The disciples then were called and were ready to be disciples from the beginning; we are called by our Souls, our Christ Within and when we are listening we have that choice to make, to follow Him and keep His words or not and we should see here that this is black and white, it is yes or no. This is why we use the idea of aspiring disciples which simply means that we have decided to move in the direction of the Soul’s prompting but we have not made that final choice that we will follow Him and keep His words consistently and constantly. When we reach this point of constant and consistent, we are then His disciples and can stand then with Peter and Paul and the twelve and the seventy and with those that come after like Stephen and Philip. This is our journey to the Path, the Path that leads us to His Kingdom and it this part that is found in the Master’s words from the second point above that: “He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do” that puts us there. Again here we have the repetition of just what this means; to believe on the Master is to accept and adopt His precepts and example as binding upon the life⁴, which we define by our own simple understanding which tells us that to believe on Him is to follow Him and to keep His words This is where discipleship begins.

It is from here that the ideas in the first statement above really come into play; as disciples, dedicated and devoted to the Master and to the precepts of the Christ Within, we can begin to greatly enhance the purity of our conscious personality aspects as we discussed above. We can turn our heretofore selfish and lustful selves into the man of God; we can transmute the self centered attitude where one’s thoughts are most always on what’s best for me or what’s in it for me, into what we can call simply self-forgetfulness and which we can define here as simply the opposite. Lust is a powerful word and should not be understood in its English context which is generally of a sexual nature; Lust is ardent desire and in the context of one’s spiritual advancement we should see this as transmuting worldly lusts for things and temporal pleasures into universal Love and brotherhood and GoodWill. The same for the physical appetites, bodily cravings, laziness and the like must be transmuted by making ones body the vehicle of expression for the Soul, the Christ Within. As a disciple the struggle continues as we saw in this series of essays regarding the trials and the doubts and the falling back into worldly thought by the Apostle Peter; he is a disciple and yet has doubt, he is a disciple and yet falls into his own way of doing. Peter endured, and with the help  and the support of the Master, he made it through to become the leader of the group of disciples and through all his trials his power to believe and to doubt not grew to the point where he could heal merely by his proximity.

All this is to say that when a man is fixed in his role as a disciple of the Lord from the perspective that he follows the Master and keeps His words, all of them, then he is ready for growth in that role; growth in the purity of the personality aspects, growth in ability to come to single mindedness of thought and purpose, growth in the understanding of Love and GoodWill. And, it is with this growth in purity of mind and emotions and even the energies of the physical form that we come to the ability for these aspects of the personality to believe and to not doubt; to not be in opposition to the Light of the Soul. By degree then we can come to a point where we can heal with predictability and ultimately, that we can come to that point where we can move the mountain. A test of one’s ability to believe these things is simple; can we see ourselves in the role of a healer and reliably healing by our word? We can likely see the possibility here that we could shed the personality antagonisms and KNOW we can do this thing. Compare this then by trying to see ourselves telling the mountain to move and KNOWING that it will; can we even imagine this?

Can we see here the reality of the twofold approach as seen in the second point being first and then the first point  then being possible. It cannot be reversed and attempts at this reversal are likely what is seen as the ‘dark powers’  which are somewhat practiced by all who believe on and focus on the world as their reality and see it as providing for all that they need and want. Thanks to the infinite range of possibilities in this and in most all aspects of Life there is no such a thing as one being either good or evil; this is not black or white but many, many shades of grey. We spent our post today on trying to show the validity of what have become our interpretations of the Master’s words; tomorrow we will continue with the miracles of the Master.

Note on the Quote of the Day