Chapter 12
HEALTH
Charles Fillmore
Dynamics For Living
MAN, the apex of God’s creation, was created in His image and after His likeness. Man is God’s supreme creation. He may know God and become the vehicle and expression of God, the unlimited fount of life, health, light, and love. God is the health of His people.
The God Imprint
When Elohim God created man in His likeness, He imprinted upon man’s supermind two body pictures: first the picture of a natural body, and second the picture of a spiritual body. In the primal cell He then enclosed the elements necessary to the building of the natural and the spiritual body.
To man was given dominion and authority over these living atoms and cells out of which he must build mind and body into visibility. As God created man, His image and likeness, by the power of His word, so man, God’s image and likeness, projects his body by the same power.
Our physical body is carried in our mind as thought and it obediently reflects every mental attitude. When in the course of our evolution we discern that an all-wise Creator must have designed perfection for all His creation and we begin to affirm that perfection, then the transformation from the natural to the spiritual body begins. It continues until our body is wholly regenerated and appears objectively in its divine perfection.
Object of Existence
The object of man’s existence is to demonstrate the Truth of Being. This demonstration takes place through experience. There are two ways of working out experience. The first is by knowing the law of every process, and the second is by blindly testing the process without understanding the law. All experience develops personal identity–the consciousness of the power of Being in the self. This is the bringing forth of free will, which is inherent in all. In the course of his demonstrations of Being, man arrives at the place where he feels his own ability. He knows that he can exercise it without restraint.
The Human Body
Through man, God is forming or manifesting outwardly that which exists in the ideal. Every idea projects form. The physical body is the projection of man’s consciousness. He carries the body in the mind. The body is the fruit of the tree of life which grows in the midst of the garden of mind. If the body-idea is grounded and rooted in Divine Mind, the body will be filled with a perpetual life flow.
The human organism has a world of latent energies waiting to be brought into manifestation. The human body is undoubtedly the most powerful dynamo in existence for the carrying on of life. By thought, speech, and deed the Christ Mind is brought into manifestation.
The body is made up of cells. The presiding ego of I AM in each organism determines the particular kind of impulse that the cells shall radiate. Some are in a radiant state. Some are in a crystallized form. The field of dynamic energy is limitless.
Crystallizing of these radiant thought forms is the result of affirmations in man’s mind that his body is material instead of spiritual. The affirmative state of mind is a binding, holding process. It involves all thoughts and all thought manifestations that come within its scope. If man affirms his unity with the life, substance, and intelligence of God, he lays hold of these spiritual qualities. If he affirms the reality of matter and of the physical body he forms a material picture that works itself out in flesh.
Thought Builds
Thought is the builder of the body. The body is moved by thought. Thought not only moves the external members of the body, but it controls the fluids flowing within the body. Man’s body has power to replace worn parts. When it is in harmony it never wears out. The harmony referred to is self-adjustment to the law of Being, to the law of divine nature, to the law of God. It does not matter what you call this fundamental principle underlying all life. The important thing is to understand it, and to put yourself in harmony with it. Nature is not a blind force working in darkness and ignorance. All her works indicate intelligence–mind in action.
Jesus is the outstanding pioneer in the realm where the health-producing processes of cells are released and imbued with supermind vitality. He spent years in becoming acquainted with His body, freeing its cells from the material bondage to which the race thought had bound them.
Birthright
Health is fundamental in Being and is man’s divine birthright. To be healthy is natural. Health is the normal condition of man and of all creation. It is the orderly state of existence. It is a state of being sound or whole in mind, body, and soul. God’s man is hale, whole, hearty.
Health, real health, is from within and does not have to be manufactured in the without. Health is the very essence of Being. It is as universal and enduring as God.
There is in man a capacity for knowing God consciously and communing with Him. Man must learn to use the knowledge of Truth to sustain his consciousness of health. This alone insures health, joy, and satisfaction.
To heal is to bring forth the perfect Christ man that exists within each of us. Christ in us is the little seed through which is brought forth the strong, healthy Christ man.
To know God as health one must take up the study of the healthy mind. When he lays hold of the principle of wholeness, he finds that he is automatically working with God and that much new power is added. He perceives principle working out his health problems for him.
By realizing a healing prayer man lays hold of the principle of health itself and the whole consciousness is illumined. When man becomes so much at one with God-Mind that he abides in the consciousness of health, he enters eternal peace in which he knows that “it is finished.”
Illness
There is but one body-idea. The conditions in body express the character of thought. The spiritual body of man is the conception of Divine Mind, the creation of Spirit for us. Our work is to make this spiritual body manifest.
A majority of the ills that afflict the body have their origin in erroneous thoughts about life. Man thinks his body into disease. Instead of basing his thought on what is true in the absolute of Being, he bases it on conditions as they appear in the formed realm about him. The result is bodily discord in multitudinous shapes. Pervading all nature is a universal thought substance. Thought substance transcribes the slightest vibration of thought. The message is transcribed and carried into action.
Sin
Jesus always connected sin and sickness as cause and effect. All the ills of humanity are the effect of broken law, of sin. That word sin covers more ground than we have usually granted it. There are sins of omission and commission. If we fail to cultivate the consciousness of the indwelling spiritual life, we commit a sin of omission that eventually devitalizes the organism. To be continuously healthy we must draw on the one and only source of life, God. God is Spirit. Spirit pours its quickening life into mind and body when we turn our attention to it and make ourself receptive by trusting Spirit to restore us to harmony and health. The more enlightened man becomes, the greater his desire for health.
Sin is a missing the mark, a falling short of divine perfection. Sin is man’s failure to express the attributes of Being. Sin (error) is first in mind and is redeemed by a mental process, or by going into the silence. Error is brought into the light of Spirit and then transformed into a constructive force.
Through the Christ Mind, our sins (wrong thinking) are forgiven or pardoned (erased from consciousness). When we have cast all sin (error thought) out of our mind, our body will be so pure that it cannot come under any supposed law of death or corruption.
Indulgence
Like a child who refuses to take the advice of one who knows, man falls into indulgence of the sense of pleasure and excess. The reaction of sense indulgence is pain. Through these experiences man comes into a consciousness of an opposite to the good. The dual mentality naturally sets up positive and negative forces in his mind. These opposing forces are reflected into the body.
Sin is the result of desire manifesting itself in erroneous ways. When the error is discovered and there is a willingness to correct it, under the law of forgiveness man erases it easily.
In spiritual understanding, the I AM of man forgives or “gives” Truth “for” error; then the mind is set in order and the body is healed.
Do not hold anyone in bondage to the thought of sin. If you do, it will pile up and increase in power according to the laws of mental action.
Right images become active through the power of thought. Man has unlimited power through thought. He can give his power to things or withhold it. If he thinks about the power of sin, he builds up and gives force to that belief until it engulfs him in its whirlpool of thought substance. He forgets his spiritual origin and sees only the human. Thus he thinks of himself as a sinner.
The way out of this maze of ignorance, sin, and sickness is through man’s understanding of his real being, and then the forgiving or the giving up of all thoughts of the reality of sin and its effects in the body.
If anyone tries to free himself while holding others in the thought of sin, he will not demonstrate his freedom. You must build upon faith in the reality of the spiritual. Put your selfishness away. There cannot be two in this kingdom. It is the kingdom of God, and man must give up. The kingdom is for the larger man. The personal man must be eliminated.
Forgiveness
Forgiveness really means the giving up of something. When you forgive yourself, you cease doing the thing that you ought not to do. Man has power to forgive sin. Sin is a falling short of the divine law. Repentance and forgiveness are the only means that man has of getting out of sin and its effect and coming into harmony with the law. All sin is first in the mind; the forgiveness is a change of mind or repentance. We forgive sin in ourself every time we resolve to think and act according to the divine law. The mind must change from a material to a spiritual base. Change must all be on the part of man and within him. The moment man changes his thoughts of sickness to thoughts of health the divine law rushes in and begins the healing work.
The law is Truth. The Truth is that all is good. There is no power and no reality in sin. If sin were real and enduring (like goodness and Truth), it could not be forgiven but would hold its victim forever.
Duty
Lack of health is not prevalent in God’s universe. If such lack appears anywhere it is the work of man. It is our duty to do away with it. There is something wrong in a world where suffering and sorrow prevail. We would not create such a world. We all want to see these things blotted out in this world. This is the index pointing the way to the possibility of doing so. Just accept the promises of Scripture. Proceed to carry them out in faith. Act as if they were true. Trust God in all things. Whatever we see as wrong is for us to right. The new Christianity elevates man to a realm in which seeming miracles of healing become possible to those who train their mind to think spiritually.
Presence of Health
God is never absent from His creations. His creations are never absent from their habiliments. Wherever you see the evidences of life, there you may know that God is.
Health has a source that is perpetually giving itself forth. A perpetual giving forth implies a perpetual presence.
There is no absence or separation in God. His omnipresence is your omnipresence. There can be no absence in Mind. If God were for one instant separated from His creations, they would immediately fall into dissolution. In spirit and in truth you can never for one instant be separated from the life activity of God.
God lives in you. You depend on Him for every breath you draw. You could not think a thought or speak a word or make a movement were He not in it. Your body is the soil in which God’s life is planted. Your mind is the light for which He supplies the oil.
Draw upon the omnipresent God for every need.
A good healing drill is to deny the mental cause first. Then deny the physical appearance. The mental condition should first be healed. Then the secondary state, which it has produced in the body, must be wiped out and the perfect state affirmed.
Nature and Health
We have been so persistently taught that nature heals that we do not as a rule give the question of the origin of her healing power any serious thought. If we center our attention on nature as the healing principle, we stir up natural activities that are secondary to the one cause of all action, that is, infinite Mind. It is our privilege as creations of supreme Mind to bring into action all its forces, primary and secondary. By our thought and the mighty mind energy back of thought we can stir to action all the power of Being and get the results of their concentrated healing currents instead of the weakened, segregated seepage from one.
Spiritual Healing
Nearly everyone needs both mind and body healing. Those who give faithful attention to the law as it operates in man are rewarded by demonstrations of healing.
Man and the universe are under the creative direction of a supreme being. Man needs but to conform to the laws of creative Mind in order to be healthy, happy, and wise. All healing methods consist in establishing the unity of the individual and the universal consciousness. No man heals himself or another. The supreme Mind does the work.
The first step in all spiritual healing is to believe. The next step is openness and receptivity to the stream of healing life. Through the exercise of faith and our words, our spiritual quality is fused into unity with the power of Christ and the work is marvelously accomplished.
All healing is based on mental cleansing. When the mind is free from error thoughts, harmony in the body ensues. Permanent healing is never accomplished until the mental cause of the disease, the error thought, is removed. The true way to heal is to find the mental cause and destroy it forever.
Consciousness and Health
Man’s consciousness is formed of mind and its ideas. These determine whether he is healthy or sick. Mind is the common meeting ground of God and man. Only through its study and the observation of all the conditions and factors that enter into its operation can we come into the realization of God as abiding health and sustenance.
You are mind. Your consciousness is formed of thoughts. Thoughts form barriers about the thinker. You are compassed about with thought barriers, your heredity, your education, your own thinking. Your degree of health is determined by your thoughts, past and present. These thoughts may be true or false, depending on your understanding and use of divine law.
God created man in His image, in the image of perfect health. We make living cells through the imaging power of thought. We nourish a good thing by thinking how good it is. Suppose we take the negative side, shall we then get results also? Yes, absolutely! We get just what we think about. The thought of nourishing is a very good thought, because it shows us just what we do. Either we tear down our bodies or we build them up. Withdraw the error; then build in the good.
Processes of Mind
There is a definite relation between the thoughts of man and the conditions in his body. The body is moved by the mind. All the conditions of the body are brought about by the mind.
Jesus was the great teacher and example of obedience to the law of constructive thinking. The reform of Jesus is an inner transformation. If we follow Him we shall give our strength and substance and thought force to constructive activity. The movement of every mind in bringing forth the simplest thought is a key to the great creative process of universal Mind. In every act is involved mind, idea, and manifestation. The mind is neither seen nor felt; the idea is not seen, but it is felt; and the manifestation appears.
The mind functions in ways that are strange and unbelievable. In order to understand God-Mind we need to study our own mind. The more we analyze the processes of the mind the more plainly the mind with its mental “compounds” appears as the source of health and of all other things. If we want to know the secrets of health and how right thinking forms the perfect body, we must go to the mind and trace step by step the movements that transform ideas of health into light, electrons, atoms, molecules, cells, tissues, and finally into the perfect physical organism.
We exist right in the midst of forces that would yield us power to do all our work if we knew how to utilize properly their energies. This is not only true of our use of the many elements in the natural world all about us but especially of our utilization of the energy generated by our mind. With every thought there is a radiation of energy. If a person is untrained in thinking and lets his mind express all kinds of thoughts without control, he not only used up thought stuff but fails also to accomplish any helpful result. Right thinking is using the mind to bring about right ends idealized by the thinker. Through concentration and conservation of thought force man regains consciousness of health in his mind, and health then becomes manifest in his body. Concentration, one pointed attention, forms a mental magnet in the mind to which thought substance rushes. Then follows confidence or faith in one’s ability to accomplish the desired end. This is the law by which the universe was brought into manifestation.
To think is to express.
There is a chain of mind action connecting cause and effect in all the activities of life. This chain is forged by man, and its links are thoughts and words.
If I can conceive a truth, it follows that there is a way by which I can make it manifest. If I can conceive of omnipresent life as existing in the omnipresent substance, there is a way by which I can make that life appear in my body. No one ever fully sees the steps he is to take in reaching a goal. He may see in a general way that he is to go on from one point to another. The details are not definitely clear to him unless he has gone over the ground before. In demonstration of the spiritual powers that are ready to find expression through man he must be willing to follow the directions of one who has proved his efficiency by demonstration.
Faith
The blessing of health comes through the exercise of faith on the part of the man who seeks it. Faith opens the mind to the influx of power from on high. The power of the Highest heals all diseases both of soul and of body. When faith is sufficiently strong to dissolve all adverse conditions and to open the mind fully to the power of God, healing is instantaneous.
Through faith in the reality of things spiritual we begin soul evolution. We must have faith in Spirit and through our thinking build it into our consciousness. Then our body will be restored to harmony and health. In order to create as God creates, man must have undoubting faith in God-Mind and the obedience of the creative electrons hidden in the atoms of all substance. Although we all get definite results in body and affairs from the words we utter, those results would be infinitely greater if we understood the power of words and had undoubting faith in their creative power.
Imagination
Through the power of the imagination we impress upon the body the concepts of the mind. A man can imagine that he has some evil condition in body, and through the imaging law build it up until it becomes manifest. On the other hand, he can use the same power to make good appear.
Order
If we desire to demonstrate health when we receive more spiritual life, we must order this life rightly. If it is not so ordered, mental and physical discord will ensue. This applies to all that we think and do. Everything must be brought in order. There must be order in the spiritual life as well as the material life.
How can you order your life by the divine plan? By accepting it as a truth that there is such a plan and by making this plan yours through affirming your oneness with the omnipresent Mind in which this plan exists in its righteousness.
Ask for wisdom; then affirm divine order. Put yourself in unity with Spirit. Then you will come into the consciousness of a new world of thought and act and find yourself doing many things differently because the orderly Mind that directs the universe is working through you. A harmonious relation will be established in all your ways.
Holding some disorganizing thought will produce inharmony and discord in body and affairs. Lack of orderly arrangement of thoughts is responsible for many delayed demonstrations of healing.
The bringing forth of man even in the material sense is an orderly process.
So long as we believe in the slow processes of what we call nature we shall place ourselves under a law of slowness.
Let us begin anew and lay down the law of order in all that we do. If there is a tendency to hurry, let us stop and affirm divine order and rest ourself in its poise. There is no need to hurry. You live in eternity now. This thought of omnipresent eternity will alleviate nervous tension. Put every thought and act under the divine law.
Healing Words
The usual conversation among people creates ill health instead of good health, because of wrong words. If the words speak of disease as a reality, disintegrating forces are set in action. These in the end shatter the strongest organism if not counteracted by constructive forces. The word of one in authority carries weight and produces far-reaching effects. Man has the power to deny and dissolve all disintegrating, discordant, and disease-forming words. Knowledge of this fact is the greatest discovery of all ages. You can make yourself a new creature.
Every word has within it the power to make manifest whatever man decrees. Spiritual words have this power. When one understands the power of words spoken in spiritual consciousness the results are in fulfillment of divine law. The quick and lawful way to attain health is to put your creative words to work and bring into swift action the superman Christ.
To understand the new life in Christ we must give attention to that mystical Word, or Logos. In it are wrapped the principles that, planted in our mind, will spring into new life in mind and body. Next to Spirit the Word of Spirit is the most powerful thing in existence. Man is the incarnate Word of God.
Our words bring forth whatever we put into them. Words are quickened by those who speak them. They pick up and carry the viewpoints of the speaker, weak or strong, ignorant or wise, good or ill.
One who heals by the power of the Word should become familiar with the inner meaning of all words and use those that appeal to him as possessing the greatest healing potency.
Every word we speak goes forth from our mouth charged with atomic energies. Our mind determines the character of our words. What the mind determines the mouth obediently utters. Its words are loaded with constructive or destructive electrons all mathematically arranged to build up or blow up ourself, our aims, and our ideals.
Some persons are overzealous. They consume their vitality by talking and acting without wisdom. They would find a much-coveted and needed poise by linking their minds with the Christ. Such persons are so enthusiastic in externals that they lose contact with the source of things. They destroy the body. However, these are the minority. The great majority lack zeal in doing even the most ordinary things.
When the mind of man is set on high, he never gives up or allows defeat to thwart his righteous ambitions. A failure state of mind throws the whole organism into a panic. Its functions are weakened in their life action. To one in spiritual understanding there is no loss. The going and coming of material and intellectual things are but changes in the panorama of life.
Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving will keep the heart fresh. True thanksgiving may be likened to rain falling upon ready soil, refreshing it and increasing its productiveness.
All things have their cause. Every cause is mental. Whoever comes in daily contact with a higher order of thinking cannot help but take on some of it. Ideas are catching. No man can live where true ideas of wholeness are being without becoming infected with them.
Words which express thanks, gratitude, and praise release energy of mind and soul. Their use is usually followed by effects so pronounced that they are quickly identified with the words that provoke them.
Let your words of praise and thanksgiving be of Spirit. The increase will be even greater than when they are addressed to man. The resources of Spirit are beyond our highest flight of imagination. You can praise a weak body into strength, a fearful heart into peace and trust, shattered nerves into poise and power.
It is an easy matter to give thanks for what we have already received. It is not so easy to give thanks for what we hope to receive. Giving thanks in advance brings to pass a present expectation. Pray believing that you have received, and you shall receive.
Praising and giving thanks liberate the finer essence of soul and body when we center our attention upon Spirit. Spirit is the dynamic force that releases the pent-up energies within man. The energies have been imprisoned in the cells and when released are again restored to action in the body by the chemistry of creative Mind. The perfection of this restoration is in proportion to the understanding and industry of the individual.
Every thought we loose in our mind carries with it a certain substance, life, and intelligence. Whenever praise is bestowed it is carried to every part of the body and through a large area of our soul aura, and our whole consciousness and everything about us is tinctured with praise. Praise and thanksgiving divinely directed tap the mighty reservoirs of infinite Mind.
Joy
Nearly all persons have some pet fear. They give up to it without trying to find its source. There are various methods of erasing fear from the mind and preventing its congestions in the body. One of the most direct and effective shatterers of fear is laughter. Laugh your fears away. See how ridiculous they are when traced to their source.
We should cultivate those mind activities which stimulate naturally the currents of life in the body. Joy is a very important one. There is an intimate relation between happiness and health. When you feel good you sing, either audibly or silently. Singing promotes health because it increases the circulation. A good circulation is a sign and promoter of health. Nearly anyone can sing a little song. It is a marvelous health restorer. Singing restores harmony to tense nerves. Its vibrations stir them to action, thus making it possible for the ever-waiting healing Spirit to get in.
Back of every true song is a thought of joy. It is the thought that counts. It is the thought that invites the healing Spirit. We should sing with the thought that the Lord is right with us and that His joy is giving our words the healing unction.
When men think a great deal about spiritual things and especially about God as an indwelling spiritual presence, both mind and body are thrilled with joy, a feeling of satisfaction, and a tendency to break out in songs of gladness.
Everybody can sing. Cultivate the singing soul. Through the vibrations of the voice joined with high thinking every cell in the body is set into action, and not only in the body but out into the environing thought atmosphere the vibrations go and break up all crystallized conditions. The whole universe is in vibration. Vibration is under law. Each particular thing has its rate of vibration. What causes vibration? We answer: Mind.
Sing in your soul. You can sing ‘way down inside yourself. Soon you will be singing with your voice. Persons everywhere, in every age, have told of an inner glory and happiness when they got into the habit of concentrating the mind on God.
Will
Every organ of the body is affected by the action of the will. Willfulness makes tenseness. A tense mind ties knots in the nerves, muscles, and tendons of the whole organism. Contrariness is another name for perverted will. Persons who are contentious for their personal rights place themselves in bondage to material conditions and stop spiritual growth. The will is not to be broken, but disciplined.
Peace
The Mind of Spirit is harmonious and peaceful. It must have a like manner of expression in man’s consciousness. If we are not anchored to supreme and immovable reality, we shall be exposed to the storms of mortal thought and shipwrecked on the rocks of materiality. The mind may be compared to the sea, which is calm or stormy according to the wind that moves it. Thought utilizes the substance of the mind and forms that which man ideates. A restful state of mind is greatly to be desired because of its constructive character. When the mind is lashed by a brainstorm the cells of the whole organism are shattered and exhaustion ensues.
When a body of water is choppy with fitful currents of air it cannot reflect objects clearly. Neither can man reflect the steady strong glow of Omnipotence when his mind is disturbed by anxious, fearful, or angry thoughts.
Steadfast affirmations of peace harmonize the whole body structure and open the way to attainment of health conditions in mind and body. Cast out enmity and anger and affirm peace, and your healing will be swift and sure. Be at peace, and your conscious unity with God-Mind will bring you health and happiness.
Love
The word is the mind seed from which springs every condition. It is the most enduring thing in existence. Words make cells, and these cells are adjusted one to the other through associated ideas. When divine love enters into man’s thought process, every cell is poised and balanced. Love overcomes hate, resistance, opposition, obstinacy, anger, jealousy, and all states of consciousness where there is mental or physical friction.
Through the joining of the creative forces of Spirit by souls attuned in love, the new body in Christ is speedily formed. The work can be done through individual effort. There must always be continuous constructive action between the faculties of soul and body. If in quietness and confidence the presence and the power of divine love are affirmed, the law will be fulfilled.
Some of the most terrible ills are brought upon the body by the misuse of love.
Love wins when everything else fails. Nearly all sick people lack vital force, hence the life treatment is good for all. Hate, anger, jealousy, malice, and the like are almost universal in human consciousness, and a treatment for love will prove a healing balm for all.
Old Age
The marks of old age can be erased from the body by one’s mentally seeing the body as youthful. If you want to be healthy, do not imagine so vain a thing as decrepitude. Make your body perfect by seeing perfection in it. The work must be an inner transformation. Actually old age is a false belief deeply embedded in the race mind. It accepts biological law as the ultimate for man instead of the law of God which is eternal life in the body.
Vitalization
We all need vitalizing. How shall we get life? What is the source of life? The life source is spiritual energy. It is composed of ideas. Man can turn on its current by making mental contact with it.
God is life and they who worship Him must worship Him in the life consciousness, that is, in Spirit. When we worship God in this way, we are vitalized all at once. There is no other way to get real, permanent life. We cannot get life from the outer man or from anything external. We must touch the inner current.
We turn on the life current by means of thoughts and words. We can have fullness of life by realizing that we live in a sea of abundant, omnipresent, eternal life, and by refusing to allow any thought to come in that stops the consciousness of the universal life flow. We live and move and have our being in Mind life.
You can think of your life as mental; every faculty will begin to buzz with new life. Your life will never wane if you keep in the consciousness of it as Mind or Spirit; it will increase and attain full expression in your body. If you have faith in the life idea in your consciousness, your body will never be run down but will become more and more alive with spiritual life.
We must think life, talk life, and see ourself filled with the fullness of life. When we are not manifesting life as we desire, it is because our thoughts and our conversation are not in accord with the life idea. Every time we think life, speak life, rejoice in life, we are setting free, and bringing into expression in ourself, more and more of the life idea. Here is the place of abundant life, and we can fill both mind and body, both our surroundings and our affairs, with glad, free, buoyant life by exercising faith in it.
Truth
Many have learned how to hold the truth about health steadily in faith even in the midst of the most adverse appearances. They clearly understand that they are not telling falsehoods when they deny sickness right in the face of the appearance of it. Persons who are quickened spiritually can do very much greater works through the law of faith than those who are still in the material consciousness. Once having discerned the power of Spirit, we should be on our guard and send forth on every occasion exalted ideas of the spiritual.
The one and only reason that we do not always succeed in our demonstrations is that we do not persist in our mental work. We must begin to discipline our mind and raise our thoughts to the point where they abandon the slow inertia of the natural man for the speed and spring of the spiritual man. This is accomplished by prayer, meditation, and the repetition of true words.
It is not the vain repetition of words over and over, parrotlike. It is the quiet realization that there is a listening Mind and a ready host of great ideas at all times waiting for us.
Praying for Others
One who prays for the health of another should understand that it is not the fault of the healing principle that his patient is not instantly restored. The fault may be in his own lack of persistency or understanding; or it may be due to the patient’s dogged clinging to discordant thoughts. In any case the one who prays must persist in this prayer until the walls of resistance are broken down and the healing currents are tuned in. In treating others see patients as perfect.
Miracles
The universe was not created through illogical assumptions of law. Law is its foundation. There are no miracles in science. Jesus did no miracles. All His marvelous works were done under the laws that we may learn and use as He did. As the body is moved by mind, so the mind is moved by ideas. Right here in the mind we find the secret of the universe.
In reality miracles are events that take place as a result of the operation of a higher, unknown law. All true action is governed by law. Nothing just happens. All happenings are the result of cause and can be explained under the law of cause and effect.
Mighty things have been wrought in the past by those who had mere blind faith to guide them. To faith we now add understanding of the law.
Jesus Christ
Quite a few Truth students ask why we emphasize Jesus Christ so strongly in our writings and statements of Truth. Spiritual psychology proves that the name of a great character carries his mind potency. Wherever his name is repeated silently or audibly his attributes become manifest.
We are all, in our personality, wearing the mask that conceals the real, the spiritual, I AM Any declaration man may make in which the name Jesus Christ is used reverently will contact the Christ I AM and will open the mind and body to the inflow of spiritual healing rays. When man thinks or says “I am” he is potentially giving freedom to the seed ideas that contain in their spiritual capacity all of Being. The natural man in his narrowed mental comprehension barely touches the seed ideas that expand in the Christ man to infinite power. The more we dwell upon and expand our I AM the greater looms its originating capacity before us. The Christ substance and the Christ life are accessible at all times and in all places to the one who awakens his I AM to spiritual omnipresence.
Proofs
We find as we study and apply the doctrine of Jesus that our body must be included. Faith in the omnipresent pure substance precipitates the substance in the body and we are transformed.
Proofs may be found in profusion that the divine law of body restoration is in action in a large way right here in our midst. The literature of Unity teems with testimonials of persons who have been healed and are grateful to God for renewed health, strength, prosperity, and happiness. Thus it is not necessary to strengthen your faith by reading about the work of God in ages past; you can personally consult your neighbor, who can doubtless tell you of marvels fully as great as any recorded in the Bible.
The majority of cases that come to us belong to the class of the discouraged woman told of in Luke 8:43 (A.S.V.), “who spent all her living upon physicians, and could not be healed.” Doctors have pronounced them incurable, and as a last resort they turn to God. The hardest part of the work in their healing is to get out of mind the verdict of doctors that their cases are incurable. We have discovered that there are no incurables. Any experienced metaphysical healer will tell you that he has been the instrument through which all the “popular” diseases have been healed.
Personal Testimony
When a boy of ten I was taken with what was at first diagnosed as rheumatism but developed into a very serious case of hip disease. I was in bed over a year, and from that time an invalid in constant pain for twenty-five years, or until I began the application of the divine law.
Two very large tubercular abscesses developed at the head of the hip bone, which the doctors said would finally drain away my life. But I managed to get about on crutches, with a four-inch cork-and-steel extension on the right leg. The hip bone was out of the socket and stiff. The leg shriveled and ceased to grow. The whole right side became involved; my right ear was deaf and my right eye weak. From hip to knee the flesh was a glassy adhesion with but little sensation.
When I began applying the spiritual treatment there was for a long time slight response in the leg, but I felt better, and I found that I began to hear with the right ear. Then gradually I noticed that I had more feeling in the leg. Then as the years went by the ossified joint began to get limber, and the shrunken flesh filled out until the right leg was almost equal to the other.
Then I discarded the cork-and-steel extension and wore an ordinary shoe with a double heel about an inch in height. The leg became almost as large as the other, the muscles were restored.
I am giving minute details of my healing because it would be considered a medical impossibility and a miracle from a religious standpoint. However I have watched the restoration year after year as I applied the power of thought, and I know it is under divine law. So I am satisfied that here is proof of a law that the mind builds the body and can restore it.
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Dynamics For Living by Charles Fillmore
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