An interesting and much appreciated e-mail I decided to respond to here:

To: imagicworldview@aol.com
Sent: Sun, May 31, 2020 1:52 pm
Subject: Neville Goddard

Hi Dan,

I have read your profile and blog. I find them interesting.

I am struggling with understanding and believing Neville Goddard.

I do believe to a certain degree but as u stated in your profile the bible has been been edited, misinterpreted, etc.

How can we really believe Neville's own interpretations are accurate? This whole manifesting makes my head spin as LOA might be real to a certain extent, but what about God's universal laws which are also part of the laws?

Is Neville's teaching demonic, as one of your reader said, no, but in one of Neville's lectures he talks about a woman who change a friend by just imagining her in a better place. That's great but people could also use this to change the state of a persons life for the worst..Just think if we really had the power to really do this.

This is luciferian belief..The occult of hidden knowledge and like you said not a red heifer devil but believing we have the power to do this as humans.

While I would love to believe in manifesting I seriously think it might have its limits.

Thanks, L.
______________________________

Dear L.,

Thank you for reading my blog with interest and an open mind, and for writing to express your feelings and concerns. These show a lot of maturity. I think a lot of people struggle with Neville's teachings because they see them as something to try to do. I, I think like he, observe them as the way things simply are. That is, we can observe that if we think in certain ways, certain things happen. Neville has simply pointed these ways out and suggested that we can control them. I am not sure this is luciferianism. There seems to be a lot of conditions which suggest what practice, opinion, or attitude is good or bad. Love and unity appear to be good and facilitating of improvement; self-serving and independence appear to be impediments to progress. This is just the way the world we observe is.

That the Bible has been corrupted, edited, and misinterpreted is its own witness. For hundreds of years the Jews kept track of the changes they made in the margins of their scrolls. We (modern scholars) still have the lists of the changes made, which incidentally were not included in our modern Bible translations. We also have evidence of when certain ideas came into Christianity and Judaism and from where they came and why. These things are not hidden, we just have to know where to look.

The Bible itself, though, expresses only one very narrow focus: we are Its (the Ineffable's) becoming. This is expressed in so many different ways and on so many different levels that it has been virtually impossible for all the errors and editings to mask the Truth: kind of like trying to hide the earth with a paintbrush--you can always still see it.

Yes, certainly there are limits. We are God because we are of God, but the limit is the God we are of. This is Its becoming into Its manifestation: it is Its nature in the formative channel. If It is beneficent, our beneficence works, and our "evil" (which by the way means immaturity, counter-current) doesn't. I think that is why witchcraft is rebellion and comes back upon the evil doer.

I promote, as it were, Neville's teachings because they greatly reflect the truth of the way the world truly is, and that is a PERSON. New Thought and LOA people always categorize Neville as being in their camp, but he hardly was. They all believe in an impersonal force we can control. Neville believed in a Person we are the manifestation of, and of whole-hearted submission to that Person. "There is NO 'New Thought'!" he insisted. "There is only the fulfillment of the Word. THAT is our destiny." For the Word (Aramaic: Milta) is the Divine Person we are becoming as we learn to submit to Him. We are to be pockets of Him, channels of His spiritual power into these spheres. That is not taking things upon ourselves, but un-ing ourselves unto Him for His objectives to flow through us, because we are One. That's my philosophy, anyway.

One last thing before I go: Seeing God and what He is doing, we must teach. How can we face Him when we pass if we do not?

Thanks for writing, L.

Dan Steele

I Am Not A Hindu, Or Am I?

No, I am not of the Hindu religion. The philosophy expressed in the video links below, though, is perhaps the universal religion: Nothing But God. All the rest of it - religions, that is - is nothing but contrived piousness to make ourselves feel better. God is untouched by it except for our change by it. Piety merits nothing, except genuine love. Candles and fruits, chiffon and saffron, dirt and rags are absurdities man has come up with to make himself feel better by piousness SHORT of seriousness about God. God is untouched by all of it except for the seriousness.

Learn This Lesson Now or Pain Will Teach It to You Later! (Most Useful 8 Minutes of Your Life)

You Will Not take any False Step in Your Life if You Do This! (How to Self-surrender Completely?)

How to Seek God with all your Heart? Why you must love God more than anything else in the world?

How to keep Your Mind Fixed on GOD ? | Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa

Feeling Frustrated and Hopeless on the Spiritual Path? Then Try This and See What Happens

Sri Ramakrishna explains How To Meditate on God? (Importance of Remembrance of God)

Swami Vivekananda on How To Think Of God - Practice Or Abhyasa In Bhakti Yoga

"Pray For Others": Frank C. Laubach, 1947

Gems from Pray for Others by Frank Laubach (written in 1947 for The Upper Room)

(Note that this was written at a time when general use of masculine terms applied to men and women. Time-sensitive references to the atomic bomb, to experifments in telepathy, and to resources now out of print have been omitted.)

Page 3 (Foreword). The reader probably believes in the value of prayer for himself. Many wonderful books have proven its value. It is common knowledge that prayer helps those who pray. No new books are needed to prove it.

But millions who employ prayer to help themselves, stop short at using prayer to help others. They have surrendered to a widespread assumption that prayer has only a “subjective value.” In this they are mistaken. It is more than a mistake; it is a tragedy, for thus Christians fail to employ the greatest force for good in the universe—the only power that can remake this age. That is what this booklet is setting out to prove so that the Christian Church can recapture the power of intercessory prayer. …

Page 5-6 (Atomic Age). …Nobody has improved on the Bible explanation that the tragedy of man is that he has closed himself to God; broken God’s will. This is the cause of our troubles with one another. Our conflicts with one another will stop when we stop our conflicts with God’s will.

We have only one door for opening our minds to God’s will. That is prayer. There are, it must be admitted, many definitions of prayer which do not mean opening our minds to find God’s will. Most people pray, one fears, in order to change God’s will, not to find it. In all religions men think they can court the favor of their gods through prayer or magic rites. But the prayer discussed in this booklet means opening the mind to the mind of God so that God can have His way. We are here discussing the prayer that consents to God’s will, and does not try to plead for His consent to our will. It is our minds that need changing, not His. God is all right; man is very largely wrong.

Yet it is not to be implied that all men’s thoughts are bad. There is much good, but it is being cancelled out by the bad. In recent years, hate, prejudice, greed, vengeance and fear have outweighed good thoughts, and so have dragged the world down into a tailspin toward destruction. The direction in which the world is going at any moment is the sum total of thought forces, good or bad. Only prayer can change the balance, and send our world upward again. …

Page 11. …the lie that God does not need our prayers is the lie of a little mind that does not want to assume large responsibility.

Page 11-12 (God needs us). “But,” says someone, “how do I know what to ask of God?” “How do I know what God wants me to do?” One does not know. But one can pray, “Father, help my friend to feel a great need of Thee. Help him to pray. Help him to hear Thee and to do Thy will.” The Christian knows that God wants all this because he has seen God in Christ.

Someone else will say, “Intercessory prayer does no good because God is trying His best all the time. To ask Him to try harder would be to insult Him. I pray for myself because that opens me to God’s will. I do not pray for others unless they are listening; for it would do them no good.” That, too, can be the excuse of selfishness. It needs to be given an answer so that selfishness will have no legs to stand on.

Page 12-13 (Prayer Reaches Everywhere). In the first place, prayer does help others. All of us who have prayed much for others know this to be true. It is not always easy to find an illustration which nobody dares contradict. Hundreds could be reported, but somebody would always be ready to call it coincidence or misrepresentation. …

[But] All who have spent much time in intercessory prayer will verify the statement that … miraculous answers do occur. Why? Not because God waits to do His best until such time as we beg Him to do it. There must, therefore, be another reason. We might call it contrary to reason, and leave it there. But it is not necessary to do that. There is an explanation which fits the facts of our experience which also satisfies reason. This explanation is that when we pray for people we help God reach them. He is always doing His best, but He cannot reach some people without us.

We help God reach people when we talk to them about Christ, or when we give them a Bible, or some other splendid book, or when we write them a letter. These are ways in which we help God speak to other men. We become God’s spokesmen. …

Page 19-22 (Prayer Opens Your Own Mind). …People often say, “Prayer alone is not enough.” Precisely, but prayer that seeks to do God’s will is not alone. It will be accompanied by any other approach that God may suggest. It will be accompanied by service, by considerations, by kindnesses of every kind. These will open hearts to the prayer messages; and on the other hand, prayer opens the minds of the people to every other kind of approach. Prayer and service reinforce each other.

If you pray for a man before you try to see him, you find that the prayer has prepared his mind, and that he is hospitable to your suggestions. Prayer plus service plus witness (through letters or by word of mouth) belong together. All them together are more powerful than is any of them alone.

When we pray and are pressed with an urge to do something for another, we must act at once on that heavenly voice. If it is impossible to carry out the idea then and there, we ought to write it down. One needs pencil and paper within reach all the time. The voice from heaven can come through anytime, yet to us only when we are in perfect tune.

“Oh take the dimness of my soul away!” is the prayer of those who for a few glorious minutes have seen the heavens open and have heard Him speak. After tasting the sweetness of that divine invasion, no person can again be wholly satisfied with his customary spiritual stupidity and illiteracy. Most people most of the time react only feebly when the still small voice whispers in their souls. When we pray for them, we help make God’s voice louder and stimulate more pronounced reactions in those persons. …Prayer, then, is not a poor substitute which we use as a last resort. It is the most powerful way of persuading other people to do God’s will. …

We all know that when we are praying together, we are cognizant of a sense of tremendous and rising power. This is rarely experienced when one is alone.

Page 22-23 (Harmony in a Prayer Group). This spiritual power is not evident in a group unless there is perfect harmony and mutual confidence. …It is likely that praying against the sins of people get no better results than scolding with our tongues. …That is why one should pray for what he hopes another person will become, and not against what one dislikes in him. Helping a person by praying for what one hopes for him is constructive. Praying against things is negative.

All of us ought to stop judging others, and begin praying for others. Judging is looking at the past of a man and putting a label on him for that past. “If he did that,” we say, “he is bad.” This is a terrible sin against another; it chains him to his past and stops his growth. Every person is constantly changing for better or for worse. I do not wish to be judged today by what I did ten years ago or by what I did even yesterday. “Judge not,” said Jesus, “that ye be not judged.” Prayer, if it is constructive, looks ahead and sees the man as he will be. Prayer is creative, while judging stops a man in his tracks and starts to kill him. It is the difference between law and grace. The letter of the law kills; the spirit makes alive.

When our complaint against somebody begins to form itself on our lips, we shall convert that complaint into a prayer for the man as he ought to be. Since every prayer begins to create a better world, we shall be making history by that prayer.

Page 24-25 (Each One Is Important Now). To be Christlike, we must convert every thought into a prayer. We shall then read our newspapers in order to find somebody to  pause and pray for. We shall pause as we see the names of men of great responsibility, and pray for them. We shall think about the people who have been victims of disaster, and pray for them. We shall consider criminals, both incarcerated and those who are at large, and pray for them.

We are not helpless! Not one of us is weak. All of us, famous and unknown alike, are creating the future for ourselves and for our children. All of us are making hell or heaven by whether we criticize or pray. We are all immensely powerful for good or for evil. If we knew that only, we would pray without ceasing.

The complete break with our old habits will not be easy. It is always tedious and distasteful to break with a bad habit. It is like a drunkard trying to keep sober. Besides, other people are not doing this, and there is always a drag toward the average person’s ways. So we shall have to persist against our own inclinations for a while until we pass the “critical point.” Then we shall enjoy prayer as something more than passing on criticism or gossip.

We have a false humility about our importance to God. We underestimate the importance of every thought, not knowing that by every thought we are creating history, blessing or damning the whole world. If we saw the importance of the stream of thought which we pour across invisible channels to the whole world every moment, we would all purify that stream of thought. It is a terrifying realization.

The news that we are powerful when we pray is good news for the old people and the invalids who are shut in and who can find little to do that they really consider of any value to the world. They can keep a prayer list, and spend their leisure waking hours working by means of prayer. Every mind is as powerful as every other in the democracy of prayer. What matters is our sincerity and our perseverance. Some of the world’s loveliest benefactors are probably lying helpless; for they are pouring their prayers in endless benediction to help others.

Page 25-28 (Astonishing Unselfishness). The kind of prayer we are urging in this booklet is not asking God for the things we want. The center of gravity is shifted from self to God and to other people. It is helping God achieve the thing He longs to do. It is saying, “Cihu, God.”

The word Cihu pronounced kyhoo, is becoming part of the English language. It stands for four words: “C-can, I-I, H-help, U-you.” A completely “Can I Help You” attitude toward God and men would be complete Christlikeness; for that was what Christ was doing every moment during His life in the flesh and is doing, in Spirit, now. When we really put our minds to that type of prayer, there is something miraculous about the way it works. A little of it does not work because we cancel that little out with the other things we do. We are like the frog, which slid down every time he tried to climb out of the well. But enough “Cihu, God; Cihu man” brings incredible returns.

Ordinary kindness is expected and taken for granted; but astonishing kindness, that exceeds all expectations, is the most irresistible power in the world. The Cihu prayer, accompanied by the Cihu deed, sweeps all before it. Anyone who tries this “all-out, long-range, astonishing unselfishness” is himself astounded at its power. Difficulties melt away before enough love—love in action and in prayer. “Love never faileth,” if it is in gear with prayer and action, and if there is enough of it.

We who are sincerely trying to find out and do God’s will are constantly astonished to find how easy it is. Many of us have given both ways of living a fair trial. We all find the same results. When we try to help God and Man, we find people wonderfully tender. Walls of difficulty melt away. Supposedly impossible things happen. Why is it? This is in part because people know our efforts for them are sincere and unselfish. They seem to realize by their sixth sense when we are really interested in them. They work with us when we are working “all-out” with them; they work against us when they sense that we are working against them. When we seek their welfare, they take us to their hearts and we live in a sense of loving everybody and being loved by everybody.

That is doubtless part of the reason all we undertake seems easy. But there is another, a larger reason. God helps because He desires what we desire. Our purposes and His are in line, and each helps the other; we help Him and He helps us. If we say all day, “God, I ask for nothing excepting what I can do for You,” we never need to ask for anything for ourselves. We seek first “the Kingdom of God and His right way” and everything is added to us. He opens doors for us. There is real joy in working with God and for God. He will not allow His vital issues to fail.

There are troubles, too. We have sufficient of them to keep us from becoming stupid. As Paul wrote from Ephesus, “a wide door for effective work has opened for me, and there are many adversaries”—enough adversaries to keep Paul’s fervor hot! Paul needed them. There is danger in finding God working so astonishingly on our side.

There is peril in this experience. We are likely to imagine that the doors are opening because of our superior ability. Woe to us if we imagine that our ability or wisdom is the reason for our success.

People tickle our vanity when things are succeeding. Then the only thing God can do is to allow us to fall or face some humiliation and so deflate our ego. In order to keep us from becoming conceited is perhaps the best explanation we are at times allowed to suffer. This will not happen if we give God all the credit, and realize that our only merit lies in choosing to walk with God.

And if we became surprised and joyful, as often happens when we try to do God’s will and pray, it is the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. The joy we feel is part of God’s joy because His desires are being fulfilled. As we see God’s plans materializing far beyond our own little powers, as we often do on mission fields, we feel a deep joy that words cannot express. We exhaust the English language saying, “Wonderful! Hallelujah!” This is the echo of God’s own joy. He rejoices over one sinner who has the good sense to come home to Him. The fruition of the travail of the universe is in one man who becomes a son of God. Only when a son is interested in his Father’s business is he truly a son. I think the future life will consist in being fellow workers with God and His Christ, in doing glorious deeds of creative mercy. Perhaps all our tasks in that spiritual work will be accomplished through intercessory prayer!

Page 28-29 (Intercessory Prayer Is Real Work). The greatest obstacle to intercessory prayer is that it is real work, too hard for most lazy minds. Many people would rather do anything in the world than think hard, and prayer demands thought, and thought requires concentration. Genius has been called the capacity for timeless attention. So is effective intercessory prayer. For this reason all of us need help.

Since one ought to send flash prayers for hundreds of people, a prayer list carried about in one’s pocket is good. It should include those who ask to be prayed for and, more particularly, those who do not ask.

Whenever we are alone, we should train ourselves to go at once to prayer. When we fall asleep at night and awaken in the morning, we should be praying for others. The Laymen’s Movement for a Christian World asked people to take the list of the leaders of the United Nations with them on retiring, read the list over and pray before going to sleep, put the list under their pillows, read it over and pray the first thing on awakening, and carry it with them all day beside their notebook so that they could send flash prayers every time they touched the list. This we can do with any prayer list, and the results will be miraculous for many on the lists.

No strong spiritual leader tries to get along alone. He seeks prayer groups, and creates them wherever he can. Two people are enough for such a prayer cell. They can carefully choose a third, a fourth, and so on to the end of the cell. Nobody will want to be there who is not spiritually in tune. To be of one mind is a condition, a prerequisite, to make possible the coming of the Holy Spirit.

Page 30-31 (Praying Churches). One person alone whose heart is burning with spiritual passion can set an entire church on fire. It is hard and it takes time. Two can do better than one, and fifty can do better than two.

It is very easy for a prayerful person to mobilize most of, or all, the people in a church for prayer for the pastor while he is speaking. …It is wise for a minister to request the people to hold him up in prayer. They always defeat him when they merely sit in judgment while he preaches. If they pray while he preaches, they help him so that his soul burns and ideas flow out of heaven. Every spiritual leader has been held up by a large group of friends in constant prayer.

Page 31 (We Can Have a Pentecost Now). All that has been said before shows that we can have a new pentecost as soon as we want it. At the first Pentecost about which we are told in that wonderful second chapter of Acts, the disciples were all together day after day “with one accord in prayer,” expecting the coming event; for He had told them to wait for the promise of the Holy Spirit. That is what we need to do to bring another pentecost—have our minds full of Jesus, be of one mind, pray without ceasing, expect the Holy Spirit to come.

God is not capricious. He is always pressing down for His opportunity to send the Holy Spirit. It is we who are fickle. We have failed Him, and our world has therefore suffered as a result of our failure.

We are now facing the alternative either of opening ourselves to God for an outpouring of His divine Spirit, or of killing one another in unthinkable tragedy. Pray for others or perish—that appears to be our choice. Don’t just read about it. Don’t just approve it.

DO IT! PRAY FOR OTHERS!

Transcribed by Gary W. Fick, November 8, 2016

-Thank you, Gary and CFO United Prayer Tower!!

March 9, 1930, the Missing Day from "Letters By A Modern Mystic," Dr. Frank C. Laubach, Fleming H. Revell Version, 1955/58

I may have referred you to Dr. Frank C. Laubach's book Letters By A Modern Mystic. I discovered Dr. Laubach in 1976. Getting ready for a retreat with Melodyland School of Theology, I stopped by the Melodyland Bookstore to find some small book to take with me. I chanced upon Open Windows, Swinging Doors: Personal Diary of Dr. Frank C. Laubach, which is G/L (Regal) Publications' version of Letters By A Modern Mystic.

Not many things have touched me as deeply and continuously as Laubachs' diary entry for March 9, 1930. I thought to read it again last night and grabbed Fleming H. Revell's version of the book (I’ve got them all--the one linked to above I think is the best). March 9 wasn't there. I checked throughout the book: March 9, 1930, is the only diary entry missing in the whole book. So if you purchased Letters By A Modern Mystic on my recommendation and incidentally wound up with Revell's version, here is the day you missed:

March 9, 1930 – Boundless joy broken loose
For the first time in my life I know what I must do off in lonesome Lanao. I know why God left this aching void, for himself to fill. Off on this mountain I must do three things:
1. I must pursue this voyage of discovery in quest of God's will. I must because the world needs me to do it.
2. I must plunge into mighty experiments in intercessory prayer, to test my hypothesis that God needs my help to do his will for others, and that my prayer releases his power. I must be his channel, for the world needs me.
3. I must confront these Moros with a divine love which will speak Christ to them though I never use his name. They must see God in me, and I must see God in them. Not to change the name of their religion, but to take their hand and say, "Come, let us look for God."

A few days ago as we came on the priests, they were praying, in one boat with thirty-five Moros, many of whom called to me to join. So I held out my hands and prayed with them, and as earnestly as any of them. One of them said "He is Islam," and I replied, "A friend of Islam."

My teacher, Dato Pambaya, told me this week that a good Muslim ought to utter the sacred word for God, every time he begins to do anything, to sleep, or walk, or work, or even turn around. A good Muslim would fill his life with God. I fear there are few good Muslims.

But so would a real Christlike Christian speak to God every time he did anything - and I fear there are few good Christians.

What right then have I or any other person to come here and change the name of these people from Muslim to Christian, unless I lead them to a life fuller of God than they have now? Clearly, clearly, my job here is not to go to the town plaza and make proselytes, it is to live wrapped in God, trembling to his thoughts, burning with his passion. And, my loved one, that is the best gift you can give to your own town.

I look up at this page and it is not red hot as my soul is now. It is black ink. It ought to be written with the red ribbon. You will not see the tears that are falling on this typewriter, tears of a boundless joy broken loose.

The most wonderful discovery that has ever come to me is that I do not have to wait until some future time for the glorious hour. I need not sing, “Oh that will be glory for me -” and wait for any grave. This hour can be heaven. Any hour for any body can be as rich as God! For do you not see that God is trying experiments with human lives. That is why there are so many of them. He has one billion seven hundred million experiments going on around the world at this moment. And His question is, “How far will this man and that woman allow allow me to carry this hour?” This Sunday afternoon at three o'clock He was asking it of us all. I do not know what the rest of you said, but as for me, I asked, “God, how wonderful dost Thou wish this hour alone with Thee to be?”

“It can be as wonderful as any hour that any human being has ever lived. For I who pushed life up through the protozon and the tiny grass, and the fish and the bird and the dog and the gorilla and the man, and who am reaching out toward divine sons, I have not become satisfied yet. I am not only willing to make this hour marvelous. I am in travail to set you akindle with the Christ-thing which has no name. How fully can you surrender and not be afraid?”

And I answered: “Fill my mind with Thy mind to the last crevice. Catch me up in Thine arms and make this hour as terribly glorious as any human being ever lived, if Thou wilt.

“And God, I scarce see how one could live if his heart held more than mine has had from Thee this past two hours.”

Will they last? Ah, that is the question I must not ask. I shall just live this hour on until it is full, then step into the next hour. Neither tomorrow matters, nor yesterday. Every now is an eternity if it is full of God.

But how “practical” is this for the average man? It seems to me now that yonder plowman could be like Calixto Sanidad, when he was a lonesome and mistreated plowboy, “with my eyes on the furrow, and my hands on the lines, but my thoughts on God.” The carpenter could be as full of God as was Christ when he drove nails. The millions at looms and lathes could make the hours glorious. Some hour spent by some night watchman might be the most glorious ever lived on earth. God is not through yet. He is breaking through and I think the poor have less callousness for Him to overcome as a rule than have the rich.

On the other hand the rich man has the wonderful opportunity of paying a sacrifice which will cut his heart almost out. If he seeks the place where his wealth is needed most, then throws all he has into that cause and then throws himself into the cause with his money, as Jesus asked the rich young ruler to do, his money will at that moment be transmuted into the golden threads of heaven. Maybe there is another way, but to me there seems only a blank wall for wealthy men save through the doorway I have entered, a sacrifice that hurts and hurts and - behind Calvary, God!

Outside the sky is alight with golden sunset. To me that is God, working on the sky, as he has worked so wonderfully this afternoon within me.

A Continued Continued Response to an Anonymous Inquiry About Neville's Techniques and Selling Your Soul By Doing the "Dark Arts"

Anonymous 4:29/8:34 was concerned that praying the way Neville Goddard taught could be construed as practicing the dark arts unawares. That is an astute question, as the technique is eerily similar to what Christians believe is witchcraft: the forcing of one's will upon God and/or others by spiritual means.

Neville never tried to force things to go his way. "Rebellion as witchcraft" is forcing things to go your way; it's "I am in control." That is basic Satanism: "You think you are in control, but you are actually being controlled by me." This is the concept of separation--the ignorance that is in man.

Satanism is not the worship of some dark lord or evil aspect of God. It is thinking that you, separately, control anything. We are all under the will of God: "Thy will must be being done by me and by everything that is in heaven and in the earth below, for Thou, O YHWH, art All!"

Neville never entertained the notion that he was separate from God. He never thought of forcing his will upon others. He prayed making his petitions known to God in faith by assuming them to be true, and then waited for God's will, not his, to be done:

From The Secret of Prayer, Neville Goddard, 10-06-1967:

"If you are still desiring, stop it right now! Ask yourself what it would be like, were your desire a reality. How would you feel if you were already the one you would like to be? The moment you catch that mood, you are thinking from it. And the great secret of prayer is thinking from, rather than thinking of. Anchored here, you know where you live, your bank balance, job, creditors, friends, and loved ones - as you are thinking from this state. But you can move to another state and give it the same sense of reality, when you find and practice the great secret of prayer.

"Take my message to heart and live by it. Practice the art of prayer daily, and then one day you will find the most effective prayer is: "Thank you Father." You will feel this being within you as your very self. You can speak of it as "thou" yet know it is "I." You will then have a thou/I relationship, and say to yourself: "Thank you, Father". If I want something, I know the desire comes from the Father, because all thought springs from Him. Having given me the urge, I thank Him for fulfilling it. Then I walk by faith, in confidence that he who gave it to me through the medium of desire will clothe it in bodily form for me to encounter in the flesh.

"Don't get in the habit of judging and criticizing, seeing only unlovely things. You have a life - live it nobly. It is so much easier to be noble, generous, loving, and kind, than to be judgmental. If others want to do so, let them. They are an aspect of yourself that you haven't overcome yet, but don't fall into that habit. Simply thank your heavenly Father over and over and over again, because in the end, when the curtain comes down on this wonderful drama, the supreme actor will rise from it all and you will know that you are He."

Your turn: "Lord, I am grateful for .... Thank you for it."

Finding God -- A Book Toward That End for Maria

I have written some posts regarding "finding God" and have suggested books and videos toward that end. Well, finding God really isn't an end, it is the beginning. I remember Maria asked for a list of books which have framed my view. I think one I overlooked was Freedom From A Self-Centered Life / Dying To Self: Selections From The Writings Of William Law, edited by Andrew Murray (1977; Minneapolis, MN: Dimension Books, Bethany Fellowship, Inc.).

Those "writings" of William Law are his book Spirit of Love. Law lived in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, so his writing is bit difficult to read. Dying To Self is worth the effort of wrestling through the archaic phrasing, grammar, and syntax. Law presents the search for God in Spirit of Love as pupilage between a spiritually mature teacher and his students. Murray focuses on the practical end of this "seeking after a life in which the Spirit of Love really fills and rules the soul." This would be the fruit of one's baptism in the Holy Spirit.

Some excerpts:

"...as he expounds the truth, and shows how in the humility of the Lamb of God lay the secret of the work He did, and the salvation He gives, and how the sinking down before God in humility, meekness, patience, and resignation to God is the very perfection of faith in Christ, and the one only condition of God’s doing His work in us, we are compelled to acknowledge that here is indeed the place of blessing." (Note the phrase, “sinking down before God in humility, meekness, patience, and resignation to God." That is the lesson being driven home.)

"He (Law) begins with God as the origin of all love, because He is an eternal and immutable will to all goodness. Let the reader hold fast this definition of the nature of God. It is one of Law’s axioms from which he makes two important deductions: that in virtue of His very nature, God delights to give all goodness, happiness, and blessing, and can give nothing else; and that there can be no possible good in any creature but what God gives...a will to all goodness toward others at all times and on all occasions."

"For were there nothing but this divine love alive in you, your befallen flesh and blood would be in danger of being quite burnt up by it. What you have said of yourself, you have spoken in great sincerity, but in a total ignorance of yourself, and the true nature of the Spirit of divine Love. You are as yet only charmed with the sight, or rather the sound, of it; its real birth is as yet unfelt and unfound in you."

"14.The One True and Immediate Way of Dying to Self
"Theophilus.—If you ask what this one, true, simple, plain, immediate, and unerring way is, it is the way of patience, meekness, humility, and resignation to God."

"Commentary
"In the first sentence of the above passage you have a straight answer to the question, What is the true way of dying to self? How can a man be led to understand and desire and find what the death to sin and self in Christ gives him? It is the way of patience, meekness, humility, resignation to God. Dying to self, turning away and ceasing from it, refusing to be led by it, can be effected in no other way but just bowing low before God in the confession of sin and impotence and the patient waiting for His work in us. The whole of the remainder of this dialogue is devoted to the exposition and enforcing of this one lesson. He never wearies of repeating the expression: patience, meekness, humility, and resignation to God; in what remains of the dialogue it occurs some thirty times.

"Here you have the truth and perfection of dying to self; it is in this state of heart alone that it is to be found."

The Objective of Stay At Home Orders

The objective of Covid-19 stay at home orders is to end the spread of the virus by no one new getting it. If no one new gets it, and those who have it get over it, it goes away. Let’s do that. Make every effort to not get any exposure to the virus UNTIL IT GOES AWAY.

A Providential Confirmation Regarding the Kerygma

When you become familiar with God's vocabulary, you will notice that certain providential synchronicities are His way of conversing with you. For example, something you hear or read comes to mind while you shower or are driving somewhere. Later, you search for something on the radio to listen to, and on a station you wouldn't normally listen to they are teaching the very thing you thought about. Wow. Weird. You pick up a book to read (remember those?), and it happens to open to a page about that same thought. Your pastor preaches about it, the movie you watch seems to present an enactment of it.

Say hello to God. He is talking to you through His hands, kind of a divine sign-language.

I bring this up because I just heard Him. My last few posts got me to present my testimony and my understanding of the kerygma. Turning to YouTube for a break, suggested was a post from Supreme Yogi about Sri Paramahansa Yogananda: When You Feel Like Quitting or Giving Up Your Search For God, Remember This Advice! I really like Supreme Yogi's point of view and presentations, so I clicked it. Yogananda preached the kerygma. In his own way, of course. He never mentions Jesus Christ, but then again, neither did God when He proclaimed the kerygma to me. No one goes to the Father except by Jesus Christ, but other people understand Him differently: not as the guy, but as what He is. For my Chinese father-in-law, He was the "Words of Heaven (Tian)." That's what he lived his life by. Would to God I could be like him. He listened.

It may be confusing that there are multiple kerygmas, but upon inspection they all turn out to be the same. It is presented many different ways, because they are all translations of the real thing God is and is doing.

Finding God: the Search with the Whole Heart and the Magic of the Kerygma

C. H. Dodd made it clear in The Apostolic Preaching and Its Developments (New York: Harper and Row, Publishers; 1964) that the kerygma was intentional. It was designed, chosen. It did not come up by happenstance: it pleased God (1 Corinthians 1:21). Why did it please God? Because it got men saved. How did the kerygma get men saved? It made them seek God with their whole heart, which changed their brain chemicals, hence their brains, and then He could deal with them. The kerygma is the way He does it.

That is pretty simple, isn't it? God got salvation ready, then made men want it and able to get it by the kerygma. The kerygma makes you feel terrible. Terrified, actually. It scares you. Stresses you. You want to escape, to change what you are--to cast yourself out of yourself, and the only way you find relief is to repent--to end "you"--and cast yourself upon God's mercy. The stress, anxiety, and flight mode releases hormones in the brain. These sharply up the brain's acuity, the mental hearing, and opens the mind to reception of the Voice and the Holy Spirit. Desperation is a wonderful thing.

The first time I saw the effects of the kerygma was at the House of Praise in Kaimuki, Hawaii. It was a Friday night Bible study, and the teacher asked if anyone wanted to be saved. To tell you the truth, as he preached about how Jesus had given his life for ours, I had been mentally justifying my conclusion that Jesus was and is the son of God and convincing myself to go forward when the altar call came. I wasn't really listening. My mother's best friend was sitting right next to me encouraging me, as she had gone forward about two weeks earlier. I did get up and prayed the sinner's prayer with the teacher, Rod Wilson, but only felt good about having done so.

The House of Praise was a private home on Center Street, right behind the Kress store, and the study was held in the living room. We sat in whatever chairs and sofas were available, or on the floor. To the side of the lectern that night was a young man splayed across a white overstuffed chair. He looked for all the world as disinterestedly distant as one could be. Rod looked straight at him, kind of visually buttonholing him, and said, "What about you? Do you want to be saved (or something to that effect)? The guy's expression changed to overwhelming grief. "Yes," was all he said as he slid out of the chair. He broke down in the saddest, most heartbroken sobs I have ever heard; and then, raising his hands with tears still streaming down his face, tongues! THAT was the kerygma in action. What a remarkable one-eighty I witnessed. I knew my feeling good about going forward was real, but it didn't compare with that guy's experience. What was I to do? I had believed that Jesus Christ was the son of God, that all the Bible was true, and that the world really was the way the Bible says it is. It was still distant to me, though. What had I missed?

A few Sundays later I went with a friend to Grace Bible Church. Their choir performed some Bill Gaither testimony about When I Met Jesus, or something like that. My friend stayed after the service, and with their ministers retired to the fellowship center to pray for the gift of tongues. I waited patiently in the vestibule until one of the ministers asked me if I wanted to ask for the gift, too. Oh, why not? Still wasn't listening.

Kneeling before an aisle of folding chairs with their hands on me, I gave my voice and my lips to Jesus to use to praise God by the Holy Spirit. Nothing. So I gave God more and more of me until I ran out of everything present and future. Nothing. God wouldn't touch me with a ten-foot pole. I was rejected. Desperation rose within me. I believed the Bible. I had been with Holy Spirit filled, tongue speaking saints. That way wasn't the way I was going. I experienced fear and dread. I sobbed like the guy at the House of Praise, searching for a way. I was with these ministers--where else could I go to find out why I was rejected? I was in prayer. I asked God. I was focused like a laser beam on LISTENING TO WHAT HE MIGHT SAY.

I asked in stress. All my heart was in it. What had I done? What had I not done? What could I do or undo to make myself acceptable? All my insides were reaching out for relief, for a path to follow. I slid into a trance like the guy at the House of Praise had slid out of that chair. In my mind, I was in a wash, the dry riverbed of a stream or creek. I was following a long path going upstream through the brush. I should mention that I recognized this wash. It was between Avocado Heights and the Puente hills, where I had played and explored during my junior and senior high school years in La Puente, California. As I followed the path upstream, I noticed concrete walls rising along the sides. It became a man-made wash. The path came to a huge, gray block of concrete which blocked a gap in the wall I had to go through. I leapt up trying to catch its edge to pull myself over. I couldn't reach high enough. Unable to scale the block, I searched for a way around. No way. I thought of backtracking down the wash to go around the wall. No, the path didn't go past the wall; it went down, and the block was right over the hole or passage down.

I was stymied and became increasingly desperate about this block. I knew it was the unknown thing blocking me from becoming acceptable to God. I had to surrender it to Him somehow, but I couldn't give what I didn't know what was. I searched all over the block for a name. It must be identified somehow, somewhere. No, it simply was what it was. It blocked me from being acceptable to God, and would simply have to be given whole--whatever it was.

The stress was dizzying. Give up what I don't know what it is? There was a real threat there. I really didn't know what it was, and giving it was a commitment. What if it was something I had to do that I really did not want to do? What if it was an unacceptable loss or embarrassment? I did not want to vow a vow to God--Who was real and present--that I did not want to pay. But the only way for me to find God was to give it. So in utter desperation and surrender I said, "I do not know what it is, Lord, but whatever it is, I give it to you."

Suddenly, in my perspective I was below the block in an underground chamber. Oddly, the surface of the earth stretched out before me to the horizon. The soil was wet, and a scoop of it was lifted up and formed into a man. A mud-man, with all the components and organs of a man, but not living. And then life was given to it. "He" lived, was animated, and looked out across the surface of the earth. I wondered what this freshly created being thought, never having seen or thought anything before. "This is earth," it thought. "That's the sky with its sun, and this is the ground. The sun will set, and it will get cold. I had better find shelter in the hills over there."

I--my perspective, anyway--followed the mud-man, watching from behind. He was all new. "What is he thinking? What he is seeing? What is his response?" I wondered. Then I saw through his eyes. I heard his thoughts as my thoughts. With only the slightest awareness that I was observing, I became as him inside his brain.

To make a long story short, I got caught up in "my"--the mud-man's--personal concerns. Where is a good cave? Is it safe to approach a cave? Can I make a defendable shelter among the trees? How would I do that? I have got to hurry. I will need to make a fire. Should I gather firewood while I search for a cave? I will be hungry. How do I know what I can eat? Should I eat now, or plant seed for food to exist later? My mind was focused on all the things I had to do in life.

It hit me suddenly, with clarity I did not know was possible: I saw that I had got caught up in running a life that wasn't mine. My only concern ever in my life had been for "me." I did what I wanted to do. I dictated my life, but this was God's life. In His grace God had animated me by His spirit. Mistaking my living for being an independent "me," I had taken over and had absconded with God's life. I had robbed Him. I was a thief. I had used God's life as my own and had deprived Him of whatever purpose He created me for. He must have intended some use of me when He formed me and animated me by His spirit. Yet I had gone off doing whatever I thought needed to be done for my purposes. I had never acknowledged God for making me; I had never said, "Thank you." Not once in my life had I stopped to ask Him, "What did you make me for? What do You want me to do?"

Did I mention terror? It washed over me like a tidal wave. I was kneeling before the Judge of the Earth--God Most High--Mano y mano as we gringos say. And it didn't look good for me. For I had counted myself God's peer. I had "given" myself to Him as one gives a loan to an equal. If I did not like what He did with me, I was going to take myself back: "Forget it, God. The deal is off." I counted myself to be independent of God: a separate, free entity. In my ignorance I exercised self-lordship. I directed everything.

I smelled the stench all this must have been in God's nostrils. Repulsion. No wonder He wouldn't touch me: a rebel, a thief, an ingrate--self-controlled and thinking myself independent. I was a God rejector. No honor for God. No love. No appreciation. And I wanted GIFTS? I had to be out of my mind!

In utter panic I felt for a resolve. How do I undo my self-control? Jesus had taken my sin. Cool. All I could do now was to present myself to God again, afresh to fulfill whatever purpose He might still have for me. Sloughing off the fear that I might just fall down on the floor as a blob, I cast self-control out of myself. I did not fall, but felt myself caught. I had found submission of my self to God. Whole submission. My old life was done away with, and with no exercise of control on my part, I simply waited for whatever God might direct me to do. And boy, was I listening.

In my mind, I knelt at a large, felled pine in a high clearing surrounded by mountains. Though my head was bowed, I perceived the sky and the clouds above my head turning a rosy red with the approach of God's Glory. The Big Guy was there. I said, "You are Glorious God. I am a mud-man. Whatever you want me to do, that I will do." Then I shut up, and I waited.

What had been preached to me by God was the kerygma in His own words. I was deeply involved with it this time. It caused me to search for God with my whole heart. Its stresses produced chemicals in my brain which helped my brain to hear Him. It put me in my place; got me to the point where I could fully surrender and submit to Him. A short while after I did, He said in the softest of voices, "Remember this, and it is all right." I was forgiven. Accepted. Ecstatic, my bowel area filled with the sensation of rising, living water. The sensation rose up to my throat area, and my mouth began to move on its own. "Don't try to control it," the minister next to me said. (Good God! He was still there? In must have been the middle of the night.) The kerygma had flowed around from rejection and guilt to surrender, acceptance, and the infilling of the Holy Spirit. Praise and adoration flowed from my lips in a tongue I simply observed. The energy moving my lips and forming the words was not mine, but the emotions were.

So there is a magic in the kerygma. Maybe the closest thing we can commonly come to real magic: a dead, lost soul is quickened to spiritual life again--the best trick in the world. I hope you are listening.

A Spiritual Segue: the Non-departure of the New Testament from the Old Testament

Again, I was rereading for the umpteenth time C. H. Dodd's book, The Apostolic Preaching and Its Developments (New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1964) and finally understanding the use of kerygma. "It pleased God by the foolishness of the Preaching to save them that believe." The Greek word translated as "Preaching" is 'kerygma'. The New Testament is structured AS kerygma. "Wow. I wonder if there is an Old Testament equivalent to the New Testament kerygma?" thought I. I even tried to look it up. What a dolt. What a moron. What a horse's petute: the kerygma of the New Testament IS the Old Testament's kerygma--Greek word or not. I don't know what the Hebrew word might be. Oh yeah, this is the Internet: Strong's Hebrew #7150 - קְרִיאָה, qeriah (ker-ee-aw'), noun feminine, "proclamation, preaching."

"It pleased God by the foolishness of the Preaching (the Proclamation, the Message Preached) to save them that believe." Salvation is to join the spiritual track. Salvation is of the Jews. Kerygma is Old Testament, the recapitulation of the Old Testament. From the Jews comes the translation from flesh to spirit. For from them came the conclusion of the Season of Grace. The prophets said something was going to come. A prophet like Moses, a messiah, God (the "Kingdom").

War? A great apocalypse? Actually? Death. Death to this life. (This "life" is actually a spiritual death, our unawareness of being spirit due to the amnesia caused by coming here.) Anyway, in the conclusion of the Season of Grace, Eashoa Msheekha--the Milta incarnated anointing a Jewish guy--died for man, was buried, and rose from "the House of the Dead" AS A LIFE-GIVING SPIRIT. THAT was the war and the great apocalypse. It pleased God to save the Old Testament Jew by his or her believing this stupid and absurd, utterly ridiculous proposition. By believing, the Jew was and is transferred from Darkness to Light, from Death to Life, from Flesh to Spirit. And here as spirit he or she ABIDES: God accounts them as Spirit; not flesh anymore: all things have become new.

I got the term "Season of Grace" from somewhere in Victor Alexander's writings. I had been looking for whatever the Jews called it. I asked rabbis. They had no name for it, for the period between the destructions of the first and second Temples in Jerusalem, which included the seventy weeks of Daniel 9. The Jewish people were very alert to that time. Their forefathers had returned from the captivity at Babylon, which had started the clock, and they took the scriptures "as serious as a heart attack." They kept very good calendars. THAT's why they were like that: "He's coming!" Many had withdrawn to camps in the Jordan Valley to prepare themselves for His appearance--THAT serious! They knew the time. And then the guy died.

The Season of Grace was and IS a capsule of time in the Old Testament. The guy who died recapitulated the whole of it. His death in the capsule was "the end of the universe." He went into the capsule as flesh, but He came out as spirit. The church preaches that, but they don't understand that when we go in as flesh and believe, we come out as spirit, too. We segue from a flesh track to a spirit track. God doesn't just "account" us as spirit, but secretly know in the back of his mind that we are really just flesh -- He takes "as serious as a heart attack" our being spirit. Would to God we did.

Daniel was told the seventy sevens had a purpose: "Seventy seventies (sic) shall rest upon your nation and upon the town that you revere, so as the obligations may be concluded and the sins may be curtailed, so that the abominations shall be abandoned, and that they may usher in the eternal righteousness, such as the vision and the Prophets may be fulfilled, and to the Anointed One we may commit our blessings" (Daniel 9:24 Alexander, notes incorporated). These were concluded, finalized in Eashoa's life in the Season. There was an end to the bad stuff, a finality to the establishment of the good stuff. Joined in His death, burial, and resurrection, those are concluded and finalized in us, too.

THE AGE TO COME HAS COME!! This, the Gospel, is the message preached to Old Testament Jews in New Testament times. Eashoa Msheekha--the Milta--died in the flesh once for all. Because he did die, all died. He was buried, spent the perfect time of three days (our three days) in the grave, rose from the House of the Dead AS SPIRIT, ascended, and was seated as God in Heaven...as all of us...as spirit. The flesh is done. We are included in Him--spirit--the "foolishness" of the kerygma.

It is my opinion that the Season of Grace included and concluded all history. There isn't any more coming. I know that the church is waiting for Eashoa to return, a Season of Vengeance, but I don't think it works that way. I think He did return in the Season of Grace. He returned for the disciples, for Pentecost, for Paul, for many, and for me and you (I hope). The wars, the apocalypse, the trumpets and hosts, Satan and the frogs--that's how MARVELOUS the overcoming by His Spirit we become is. Believe me, we have to "die" of our old flesh-lives to get there! In the process I went through the opposition, the battles, the judgment, and the death--on my knees in my own mini Season of Grace encounter. Eashoa wins without a sword to our flesh.

But it is spirit, not flesh. I don't think He is going back to flesh in the future. The church has missed it. Even C. H. Dodd missed it. The scriptures seem to say Eashoa will return in the flesh, but I don't think that is what they meant. The real vengeance is against OUR flesh-mind, which resists the pursuit of God in spirit. There is war unto the conclusion HERE because of unbelief, but the final state is assured...if we can just find a way to believe it.

Continued Response to an Anonymous Inquiry About Neville's Techniques and Selling Your Soul By Doing the "Dark Arts"

I apologize, Anonymous 4:29/8:34, for maybe not being able to reply as I promised. Below where I am typing right now are six pages of gobbledygook I am afraid only I could decipher. I have heard and read about Madame Blavatsky and Aleister Crowley for over forty years, but I have never bothered to read a single thing they said or wrote. Why would I? Why would anyone? I have a book going one way; they were going the other way. I am only holding onto one, whatever any other might say.

The one book I hold onto, the Old Testament, barely acknowledges Satan. I take Satan to be the manifestation of the Ineffable's ignorance. It only has a short time here, so I don't put much stock in it. Our development is its elimination. Our development is our going the Book's way. It is my renewed interest in that for which I have lost interest in why you are not losing your soul by praying like Neville Goddard. You are not.

What did Neville teach that might be likened to dark arts? Believe that you have what you desire? Forgive the world that denies it? Trust God to bring it to pass? Be faithful to its being? Submit to God through the passage of time waiting for it? Love your friends and pray for them? These are hardly the dark arts or Devil worship.

I am quite against the perversion of the Gospel by religion. They don't get it. The Season of Grace was a capsule, and at its end it turned spiritual. The incarnation of YHWH into the flesh--Spirit in common with our flesh, lasted until the resurrection--then we in common with Spirit. There was a segue, an oblique turn from the flesh into the Spirit. Christ died once for all in the flesh. We were in that flesh. Then he rose, ascended, and was enthroned in spirit. We are in that spirit. We are in common with that spirit if we believe. Jesus returns to judge the quick and the dead, whether they genuinely believe or not, IN THE SPIRIT. If we pass His judgment, WE BECOME SPIRIT IN GOD'S ACCOUNTING. If we are in the kerygma, all things are become new to us, because we have become spirit.

"Heaven" is the MIND. THAT'S where the clouds are we see Him return in--in the imagination. In imagination we find the Eternal Reality. If we pass muster for faith, we are translated into the Kingdom of God; no longer of the flesh, but are spirit. Daniel 9:24 is COMPLETED and CONCLUDED. It was concluded then, in the Season--the kerygma. The Law, with regard to our lives, is concluded now because we--believers--are now IN the Season of its fulfillment up to and including our judgment.

24. "Seventy seventies shall rest upon your nation and upon the town of your reverence,* so as the obligations may be concluded and the sins may be curtailed, so that the abominations shall be abandoned, and that they may usher in the eternal righteousness, such as the vision and the prophesies* may be fulfilled, and to the Anointed One we may commit our blessings (Alexander).

The end of the Season = the destined end of the universe. We join that spirit in the Season by faith, belief that God has GIVEN us this grace. I.e., in the kerygma, we are IN New Jerusalem. Let's learn to live there.

Let me try this: “It is given man once to die into the flesh, then the judgment into the spirit.” I think Neville would agree.

For more, see C. H. Dodd, The Apostolic Preaching and Its Developments, New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1964. Especially page 45 and the book's concluding sentence. For some reason I do not understand, the church has missed that the Gospel--the kerygma--was WHOLE. Christ did and does return in Glory. We ARE translated into the spirit in the kerygma. We are not supposed to be waiting for it to happen but believing it did--living by the faith of Him who loved us and gave His life for us because we are IN Him.

Preliminary Response to an Anonymous Inquiry About Neville's Techniques and Selling Your Soul Doing the "Dark Arts"

Anonymous (at 8:34 AM) said...
Thank you for the reply. I'll tell you what is behind my question. It has occurred to me, more than once, that practicing what Neville taught might actually be akin to witchcraft, magick, etc.... things generally perceived as bad/evil. And I'm not willing to sell my soul in order to manifest material gains (which would make life easier and more enjoyable).

That could be the religious fear-mongering I was raised in talking. The thing is, how do we ever really know? Yes I could (put?) Neville's thesis to the test as he challenged and prove that Imagination works to manifest things, but that doesn't prove it's not an evil/forbidden practice...

"Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ" 2 Corinthians 10:5 (Would be great if you did a post on this verse).

I always come to you with these questions because I know you know the Bible well. And with all that's going on in the world right now with the virus, and the many "conspiracy" theories (which you may not be aware of) regarding "deep state" and "Illuminati" and "the cabal" and "secret societies" and eugenics and NWO etc etc etc, it makes me wonder if manifestation a la Neville is a dark art.

I do tend to doubt his story about a black rabbi from Ethiopia. His teaching to me seems to be a portion of Kabbalah, but he left some of it out. His teaching seems to align with Blavatsky who declared "Lucifer is the only god of this world" and who also inspired Crowley. Bottom line is I don't want to be unknowingly practicing a dark art. It's not worth my soul.

Thank you and I hope you reply further :)
_________________________________________

Dear 8:34,

I really appreciate your question, because I have been working on the topic about a week already. Wasn't sure how to address it, what was my focus, etc.. Your question gave me that, so thanks.

During this Covid-19 shutdown I have been watching some of the Law of Attraction teachers (and lots of its wannabes) AND videos from Supreme Yogi. The LOA is so repulsive to me. "Look what I've got! Cars, big house, jewelry, Watches!, yacht, a luxurious life--and I owe it all to my frequency! YOU COULD HAVE ALL THIS, TOO!!" Do I smell a rat here?

I smell bricks. Bricks are self-made stones. I smell enslavement - self-enslavement - the construction of prison cities, like the children of Israel in Egypt. They (LOAers) are serving the god of this world--their own ignorance. The LOA tells us, even demonstrates that God is here. Here. But they don't get it--they've got sparkles in their eyes: "I did it." Not good, Nebuchadnezzar. It's called idolatry.

Philosophically, Neville was more like the Hindu masters. What a contrast they provide. I am not pro Hindu religion, but pro the ancient philosophy of ONE. Okay, LOA works. By what, why, and how is it working? By God. What is of worth to pursue, then, your life of sparkles, or God? LOA demonstrates that God is good, is giving, and that Eil Shaddai is the All-providing Breasts. If He--the Divine Mother--is giving, why are you worried about getting? Make your petition KNOWN (like knowing - assuming - that you have it) before God, delight also in Him, and HE will bring it to pass (Psalm 37). That is not selling your soul, nor is it sorcery; it's called OBEDIENCE: expecting in faith the nature of God, the Kingdom, to be true. Neville beat us over the head with, "Do nothing out of the norm to accomplish it yourself. Trust God!!" THEN HE SAT DOWN, AND PURSUED GOD. Modern religious techniques of trusting YOU -- no. Perceiving God, loving God, and trusting God -- yes.

More coming.

How God is Only Good With Negativity in Us Without Duality

An inquiry from Anonymous 9:27:

"I don't understand how the negative could be only in us if there is no duality, no separation from God; if there is only God in the world; if "I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal" ....?"
________________________________

Dear Anonymous,

Thank you for the excellent question. "Exactamundo!" shouts the professor, "That is the question!"

First of all, let me address the concept of "us." Our problem with concepts is our "God" is too small. Our experience is that of the Manifestation of the Ineffable. We humans are not the Manifestation, we are in and of the Manifestation. In "the negative is only in us," "us" isn't just us, it is the Manifestation. The Ineffable's whole Manifestation is lacking something. It is "on the way"--not fully cooked. In the present Manifestation, there is a balance due to what it shall become when it is fully reconciled to the Ineffable ("Eye does not see and ear does not hear, and over the heart does not rise the thing God graced to those who mercy Him" (1 Cor 2:9 Lit. Ar. idiomatic construction, Alexander).

The Manifestation is fully integrated into, but is not fully like, the Ineffable as the Ineffable was before It had a manifestation. In eternity past, the stuff the Ineffable is (whatever that is) morphed from unconscious to conscious, from unaware to aware, from ignorant to knowing. From the Ineffable's beginning till now, consciousness has been Its only manifestation, and that consciousness has gone materialistic. The balance due is the deficit in our likeness to the Ineffable we are the manifestation of.

Let me note that negativity is essential to change. God is both sides. All sides. This is just Him becoming Him, It more like It. The Ineffable's own development to only good is being replicated in the OVERALL by the negativity of our ignorance being OVERCOME.

So we have a God--the Ineffable--Who is only good, Who has EXPANDED into having a part with a deficit, due to the expanded part's ignorance of that goodness. The Ineffable Big Guy is genuinely eternal--he's got a lot of time to kill. He figured it out; he has faith that His manifestation will also figure it out. His becoming the Milta, the Manifestation, was the crucifixion. That's what the recent death of Jesus memorialized. By the way, as the END of the universe's BEGINNING, Christ is the promised END of the wisdom and power of God's becoming--God incarnate in the full effulgence of the Ineffable.

Are you getting it, Anonymous? I am trying to make it as clear as I can. The Big Guy is a big God: There was an infinity-pervading force which became conscious, aware, and self-defined as good. Its consciousness was the whole of Its manifestation. "As above, so below," as now Its consciousness becomes manifest. The Ineffable is still just one thing, but now It is tri-part or tri-modal. The parts are not equal in function and knowledge, but they are still the Ineffable. The Ineffable is only good, but the expanded parts of Him are dumb, ignorant--not up to speed. "I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal"--because we are Him. There is no duality, no separation, but there is negativity--the deficit--isolated in the expansion. If you could imagine an infinite, invisible force, then give it consciousness, and then that consciousness form in dimensions--all as an integrated whole--I think you'd have a pretty good picture of God.

One last illustration: imagine you grew another leg all of a sudden. What do you do with it? How do you walk now, jump, and run? Your leg has got some learning to do. You are still you, but now you've got something dumb. But it will catch on ...