THE SCHOOL OF TRUTH
LECTURE

BE STILL

Nicole C. Campbell
© The School of Truth
Source p. 205, Aug. / Sep 2005 - The Path of Truth

Be still and know; be still and trust, be still and expect. Know that God is, that God is Omnipresence, now manifest. He is the solution of all your problems.

Yet many followers of Truth will tell you that they find it easier to tell others how to have faith than to apply it themselves. Everyone of us becomes frightened, and our minds tend to become chaotic. When some difficulty appears that we have never before encountered, fear pounds at the door of our consciousness.

I know the reaction "It is all very well for others to say 'be still'. How can I be still with these conditions shrieking at me?" "How can I believe in God when this pain tears at my body?" or "How can I be still when I have no food for my children?" or "when the bank is demanding payment?" or "when discord has shattered my home life?" How is it humanly possible to be still at such times?

I know very well just how difficult it is to take your mind off such appearances; to believe that you have received when there is no relief in sight; to know that you are now living in the very Presence of all good, surrounded and permeated by the Solution to all your problems. I know how the mind reacts: "It is all very well believing these things but what use are they to me in spiritual form? I cannot pay accounts with spiritual substance. I cannot feel health as I lie here disabled. I cannot see and touch the substance of God. How can I be still?"

It is near impossible for any human being to be still at times like these, to remove the fear in the pit of your stomach, to lift up your heart and mind into God's good. It is near impossible, but it can be done. There is available to us all the timeless, immutable Law of God. I did not make it, nor did the Master Jesus make it, or any other master. If you will but take that irrational and courageous step of becoming still, you will open the way for the spiritual ideas of health and harmony and abundance to express through you and out into your lives. Full grown faith cannot be established in a few minutes but God opens His arms wide to receive every traveler on the path of Truth.

Almost inevitably, when in peace you face-down a particular problem, you find it has assumed false proportions and has no reality of its own, that most of the consequences you are imagining never happen. Your fear has been giving it importance and power it does not possess.

I want to tell you a story about a very intelligent man I still know who had been diagnosed with a grave illness. He said to me "How can I believe these things? How can I possibly believe that God cares about me? I have never considered Him before, and now that I am in great difficulty what standing do I have to turn to Him?" "Do you believe God is law and that God is good alone?" I asked. "Yes" he replied "of course I do." "Do you believe He is All-power and that your body is His expression?" "Yes" he nodded. I went on "If you have been sitting in a dark room for years not knowing that there is electricity, and someone tells you to put on the switch, will you say 'I cannot put on the switch because I have not used electricity all these years'? The electricity is quite unconcerned with your presence and that you have not made contact with it for a long time. It will fulfill itself when you release it through the switch."

He said "This seems reasonable but I do not know what faith is. Paul's words that 'Faith is the substance of things hoped for, evidence of things not seen' is meaningless to me. I have no grasp of faith. I simply cannot believe that it will work for me. I cannot imagine or accept the Presence of God." "Now is your opportunity to prove it" I said. "Well" he declared “the only way is to try to force myself to have faith. I'll say something like this to God 'I want to trust. I want to believe that You have my interests at heart. I do not understand the meaning of faith or how to apply it, but I am going to believe that You will help me to have faith in health, so that manifestation can begin'."

I tell you with joy that God unfolded in him. Every time he thought of his condition he would say "I know that I have not got faith, but I am trying to be still, and I know You are giving me the faith to be still, and I know You will not be late in bringing forth your solution." To his surprise it worked. I say surprise because the change in his condition came before he realised it had happened. He said to me "I never knew it was so simple."

Out of that wonderful experience my acquaintance thought he had found all there is to know about faith, but he had not. He was like the lawyer who had just won his first case. But his career will expose him to many new problems and always he will find he does not know enough and not every solution comes as easily as ones before. Sometimes problems seem to come out of the air and before we can meet them with firm faith we find ourselves completely swamped.

There are many who believe sincerely in God and that they are trying to the best of their ability to trust Him for the manifestation of some good in their lives or the lives of their loved ones. Yet it seems the more they hold on to Truth, exercising their faith, the worse the condition appears to become, until they cry out "Will it work for me? Is there really a power called God who desires good for me?" I have found in every instance where there is this impasse, regardless of the person's love of God or the faith they think they have, the blockage is always in the person, never in God. To "be still" means to be at peace, to be so convinced of the Presence of God that the problem has no power whatsoever in your life.

This is only the first step - to be still, to still the emotional panic and fear. We are then told not only to be still and know, but to be still and trust. And the trust must be in God alone, in His good, love, peace and happiness, and cannot include any trust in the problem or in any other power. So, after I have stilled my fears I have to trust. I have to go about my daily duties doing the things I have to do, rendering service, but unconcerned about the problem. That is not for me to solve, not for me to work out. I have to be still and know that there is only one Presence. It is apparently not yet manifest but is now coming into expression from invisible Substance for my particular benefit.

When you trust God you are happy. Not for one moment do you allow negation to color your attitude. You refuse to see it or accept it because you know that it can intrude only if you give it credence, if you have "faith" in it.

Be still and expect. Many people pray to God for abundance but expect poverty, for health and expect disease, for happiness and expect misery. You do not get what you pray for with your lips but what you expect in your heart, because expectation is the substance of your faith. "Tomorrow it may happen, or a month from now" but it never happens because you are always pushing it away into the future.

If I am still in heart, and know that God is All-power, what is there for me to fear? If I know He is All-presence and therefore fills the nothingness we call evil, and if I know He is All-knowledge and that I am the temple of Him, what possibly can shake me? The knowledge is stored up within me, waiting to press itself into my consciousness at the right time - never late. I am enthusiastic in expectancy. I live in the consciousness that it is done, already there in being, and I have consented to Its finding expression through me.

When your mind is holding on to a negative condition you are in effect holding on to it with both hands, afraid to let go. Your hands are clenched and, although you are asking God to be the good you need, you cannot accept it because your hands are closed. You must literally let go, not of the Presence of God, but of the presence of the condition. God cannot do your part, nor can you do His. I have seen people who strongly believe in God but cling to their problem and at the same time cry out "God, if I could only get rid of this..." Then they talk to us and, after we show them what they are doing and assure them, they let go with a tremendous feeling of relief. We ask them to leave their problem with us and they declare "I feel better since telling you. I know things will be all right." It is not we who have given them this peace. Their letting go has dissolved the power of the problem.

If with mind and heart you give away the phantom of disease, or unhappiness, or fear, you are set free, and Good, Which is the only Reality, moves in and takes the place you were reserving by your anxiety. There is nothing supernatural about spiritual law. Another way of looking at it is that you are the channels through which the Substance of Life is flowing. You are either damming it up with thoughts of distrust, or letting it flow naturally through you. You are not trying to change the mind of God. You are not trying to change universal Law. You are trying to get in tune with Him. Just as a father takes care of his children, so is it God’s pleasure to love and bless you.

When you close your mind to the power of the condition you will be suffused by a wonderful feeling of calmness. To face up to a problem, face up to it with poise instead of with a terrible fear in the pit of your stomach, is the most important confirmation that you are on the path of Truth: "I know God is in being now. and now is the accepted time. My whole being sings a song of gladness."

He is waiting this very minute to free you. When you have "the mind that is in Christ," the mind that ignores conditions, the mind that sees straight through all problems, the mind that knows there is only one Power in the universe, all else vaporises into the nothingness of delusion from which it arose.

When I look downwards and see and believe in the appearance of negation, I merely give it more substance within me. When I lift up my eyes from temporal things which have no power of their own, my whole being is lifted up into the reality of the kingdom of God.

Will you, those who have major problems and who feel perhaps that you have been let down, not only by man but also by God, will you take my word for it that He is saying in and through you: "Be still and know that I am your good. Be still and know; be still and trust; be still and expect."

(Ref POT 0682)

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