('When we are weak, then we are strong')
Nicol C. Campbell
My Path of Truth
The School of Truth
Johannesburg, 2nd ed., 1954.
[104] We have been told that, 'when we are weak, then we are strong', and I think, though this appears to be self-contradictory, most of us understand that it means that, when the human part of us has become submissive (weak), then the spiritual part is, in consequence, enabled to take over (has become strong).
My whole effort in doing this work is to teach you one thing only, to try to infuse into you, as it were, my own quality of faith, no matter how small that may be. I strive to make you realise that, although there appear to be two of you, the Spirit and the body, there is but one. There is only one thinking, feeling, dynamic Presence constituting every human being.
You hear us talk very glibly of what God will do for you, of what God can do for you. We teach you that He is All-knowledge and therefore knows the solution to every one of your problems, that He is the Spirit of all Good, so that spiritually there is no evil, and that, since He is All-power, there is none outside of Him trying to combat the spiritual power within yourselves, [105] so preventing you from having the very good which is the heritage of every single human being in the world of whatever race, colour or creed.
I repeat that you hear us talk very glibly of what God will do for you, but what we are really trying to show you is what the Spirit, your own Spirit, the inner man, will do for the outer man if the latter will permit this. You find it difficult to believe what we say because you cannot see this spiritual being, cannot see it in me as I cannot see it in you.
You often read advertisements in the press, "Think, and the world is yours; concentrate and tremendous success will come into your life"--do this or do that and you can achieve anything that your heart desires--and you buy these various lessons, or teachings, and find, after having done a great deal of thinking, a lot of concentrating and after having fulfilled every condition required of you, that you have accumulated a vast amount of information relating to the power we call God, or Creative Force, but you have not found any solution to your problems.
The world has not become yours, and the objective that you had set yourselves, is just as far away as ever.
You will discover that you are just as empty inside as you were before you began your quest and you will become disillusioned. You will feel that wool has been pulled over your eyes, but it is not quite like that.
It is actually a fact that you can think, and concentrate, and can by such means, if you have developed the quality of confidence necessary, bring anything you like, of a physical nature, into your lives.
[106] You can have all the money and all the success you wish for, and not just for days, weeks, or months but for years at a time; you can slowly build up and obtain whatever you wish to attain, you can become whatever you want to become but it is a hard way, as most of you have found.
Let us think back. 'When I am weak, then I am strong.' When I have reached the point where this physical body no longer continues trying to bring into consciousness, or into its visible affairs, the good it is seeking, when, finding itself completely impotent to achieve this, it gives up, no longer concerned one way or another, at that moment Spirit takes control and the happiness, the success, the wealth, or the substance of all that the mortal self desires becomes manifest.
I have often told you before that it is my business to try to work on every single angle of Truth, so, if a man tells me that I can concentrate and through concentration bring into my life a particular object, I like to test this out, I like to prove it for myself, because I never scoff at anything that I have not investigated.
I never debate anything about which I know nothing and I never argue with anyone if he can show me facts following on his particular approach to God; instead, I test it. If I find, after having adopted his method, that the thing desired does come to me, but brings with it no happiness, leaving me at the same time depleted, I feel that the effort has not been worthwhile since I have actually gained nothing of any value to myself.
This, however, is not what results when the teaching [107] of Truth has been correctly applied. We are showing you how to have faith in something that is a reality within you, that is a power so omnipotent and omniscient, so loving, that, even before you call for any kind of good, it is already present, in moulded form.
It is a simple, easy method, and you may ask how we know that it is as we say. How do we know that our way is simple and easy? May it not perhaps be due to our trained minds that the good is manifesting itself in our lives? I would answer 'Yes' if I were concentrating or working for a particular thing, if I set myself to try to demonstrate--as you call it--health, happiness, or abundance. I could ask myself, after these things had become manifest, whether I had not brought them forth myself? Is it not through the process of one-pointedness, of holding entirely to the single idea of these qualities of good that I have produced them in my life?
Since you have no notion of how it has been done, doubt can quite easily enter your minds and hearts regarding the Presence of God, and when I, a limited, finite human being, knowing nothing about God and His Laws, say to Him, "Let Your will be done in my life," how can I know what the Infinite desires to see expressed in and through my mind and body, and into my affairs? For this reason I do not begin to work for specific things, I forget all about them; I accept God's will of good as a child would accept it, and, if this Presence of God, that is expressing Itself through me into livingness, is Love, as I imagine It to be, and, if [108] His will is that I become like Him and express Him, then He surely cannot express disease, unhappiness, poverty, or failure in my life.
So, in this faith, I continue to go about my daily duties, whatever they may be, sweeping the street, selling fountain-pens, practicing as a lawyer, or peddling odds and ends.
I recognise that I have decided to serve One Master only, the Master That is within me, my own spiritual Life, and that I am not going to concern myself with any outside results whatsoever, because I have to discover His will for me.
I must be so sure of God that in any emergency I can automatically pray, "Thy will be done", and KNOW that it is protection, or "Thy will be done", and KNOW that it is divine health, or again, "Thy will be done", and know that it is happiness without having to go through any set routine in my mind before it can become manifest.
Then the question arises as to whether this good really comes from within, whether there is within me a storehouse of all that we call happiness, health, and substance, the living substance that we know as money, or a home, or a motor-car? Is it conceived within me or outside myself?
If I continually talk to people about what I am trying to do or to demonstrate, then I can never be sure whether it comes from within or without. Supposing I need 50 pounds and I say to you, "You know, I believe implicitly in God, I know that He is a wonderful Power [109] called Love. He never has, and never will let me down, and at this moment I need 50 pounds," you, feeling sorry for me, may out of the goodness of your heart decide to give me that sum; I then say to myself, 'Here is a demonstration of God's love'; but quite possibly it is no such thing.
I can never know whether God gave me that money through you, as His instrument, or whether you, on an impulse of generosity, made me a present of it yourself. If, however, I keep my mind and my mouth closed to all outside conditions and influences and KNOW that my desire for this 50 pounds (which has to be met within a certain time limit) is the desire of the spiritual power within me, I am on the right road, for I am beginning to understand that my inner man wants to express through this physical self, the outer man, as the substance that I need.
I cannot earn this sum at the moment and there are only two ways in which I can obtain it. The first is by going to some other human being and borrowing it, but if I do that, I shall have demonstrated nothing and shall moreover have to borrow again from someone else when it comes to repaying him, and so it will go on ad infinitum. The second way is by discovering for myself that within me is an unlimited source of prosperity, in the form of spiritual ideas, and from there onwards I can know that God is my supply and I can remain still. I try to realise that I must be still, that I AM GOD-SPIRIT (not I, the physical self, that is weak and runs around looking for funds), but the I which is I AM within me, the spiritual self that knows the [110] Truth. I cannot be separated from God if He is Omnipresence; if His Spirit permeates the whole of the universe, then I am a manifestation of that Spirit and NOT a separate entity for there are not two of us. It is this inner self that says to me, the physical being, "Be still, and know that I am God."
What does that signify, "I am God?" If God-Spirit is the substance of the whole universe, then Spirit is saying to me, "Be still and know that I am the substance of that which you call 50 pounds and the spiritual idea representing that concept of yours will manifest for you. My physical self, at the right time, never a moment too late, under grace and in a perfect way. You, you know, are just a suit of clothes, a shell in which I am encased; it is I alone Who am the reality of whatever you may desire, physical things, states of being, conditions and circumstances."
One of our greatest difficulties is to make people realise that the same Life or God, that expresses Himself through every atom of them as perfect health or complete happiness, is the identical Life that will express Itself through me or through you as any particular substance that we, respectively, require.
It is comparable with one vast telephone network. The exchange and my telephone are one, as are the exchange and your telephone. When I pick up my receiver and dial you, the call goes through the main central and we all three are, at that moment, one. This is the nature of our relationship to God, we are a unity, we shall always be one. Until we realise this, until we [111] accept it, and it becomes an integral part of our spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical make-up, we shall not know that God is our spiritual supply, ever within us.
At the instant at which we contact Him, that is when we turn within, every single human being becomes tuned in to us and can manifest for us as the spiritual idea of the substance we desire, or, since God is All-in-all, this may come to us through any other of the millions of channels that are his vehicles.
This being so, you never have to tell a single soul what it is that you require, or what it is that you are trying to demonstrate, because it is all within you.
I cannot stress this sufficiently.
You will never know God as fulfilment, as the fulfilment that always precedes your demands, until you turn within and recognise that it is His Spirit in you that is the very substance of life, love, beauty, power, and money and that you are now a whole storehouse of all that He is.
You are not dependent upon any human being for any good whatsoever; this is a wonderful thing, a most wonderful realisation to have. What does it amount to? Nothing less than 'God in me is a majority, that is, my own inner man and my outer man are a majority, we are all the power in the universe' and you, the man in the street, can discover this if you take the practical steps of practicing constantly the Presence of God and of turning everything over to Him.
It does not matter how small the problem, that presents itself to you, may appear to be, turn it over to [112] the inner man and you will find that the inner man is the solution, and so you will gradually, step by step, build up a consciousness that God is, literally, your supply and your success. Although you may not receive a single penny from the employer for whom you are now working, you shall receive ten times as much as he is earning when you find this consciousness.
You are God-Spirit, the WHOLE of God-Spirit, not a fragment, not a separate piece, and, if this were not so, then God would not be Omnipresence, nor would He be All-knowledge and All-power.
To me it is a tremendous realisation to know that I live, move, and exist in God, and that God lives, moves, and exists in me, that He is always with me to guide me, to guard me and to help me, to protect me, uplift me, direct me; to become my health, my happiness, my success, and my supply.
It is not I alone who say so. Every great teacher in the world has told you that 'in Him you live, and move, and have your being'. And, if this is true, then you cannot escape Him, then He is nearer to you than hands or feet, closer to you than breathing'.
What more can I say?
God, that is the inner man, the spiritual being within, is the only real part of me; when I die this physique dies, it disintegrates, it goes back to dust, but I, the real I, am still here. Nevertheless, as I stand here, I can put myself over there in a corner, I was here and I am there, but this inner self I can never move. I can see myself, the physical, temporal body--this unimportant [113] suit of clothes--walking across a room, but the real ego, me, the Christ, the God in me, I cannot move, because I am the whole, from the center to the circumference, from the inner to the outer, I am completely integrated with the indivisible Omnipresence that is God.
It is only because of our non-recognition of this spiritual self, of this vast storehouse of all good that is within us, and because we lack the faith to test it, to prove it, to try it and to keep on until we can build up complete faith in it, that we see these unhappy conditions in our bodies and affairs.
We are either too stupid or too apathetic to verify it, or the effort costs too much; but in Truth we can say, in any circumstance, "When I, this body, am too weak to overcome whatever negative conditions may be in my life, either of sickness, unhappiness, failure, or poverty, then I AM STRONG," because then I can hand the whole of myself over to God, I can realise that in my impotence I have Omnipotence with me, and that I do not have to tell Him what it is that I desire, what it is that I must manifest in my life, my body, and my affairs; all I have to do is, like a little child, to trust Him, to pray sincerely from my heart--not my head--"Let Thy will be done through me."
You must pray with feeling, with understanding, even if you have never had a demonstration in your lives; look around you and see the thousands, the tens of thousands who are demonstrating the Presence of God every single moment as perfect health, radiant happiness, unlimited abundance, and complete security.
[114] Pray, 'Let Thy will be done', not to someone outside of yourselves, not to some God, some anthropomorphic being miles away in the sky, not to some separate entity, but to the very Spirit of Life, the very Presence that is within you, that thinks and breathes and feels through the human shell, pray, 'Let Your will be done, Father', and you will find that that will, which was from the beginning the inspiration of your desires, the will of your own Spirit for the flesh, is perfection. It desires with an infinite longing to be free through you, but it is impotent as long as you do not liberate it.
Do not be discouraged, you get disheartened too quickly, you try two or three times and you fail, but that is not enough.
One sometimes hears the saying: "Try, try, try again and, if you don't succeed, stop trying." The man who wrote that was a man who could never be successful, was one who could not face up to the problems of life because trying is a necessary factor in one's spiritual development.
It is only by constant trying that you build up, and retain, the consciousness of God. It is the same as it is with muscles, if you build up tremendous muscles and then stop exercising them, you get a lot of flabby flesh in their place.
Let us go on trying, trying to realise only one thing, that we live and move and exist in LOVE, and Love, Which is divine, lives and moves and exists in and through us.
Then when I, the physical, am weak, I can turn away from the without, the lying conditions that always shout failure, and, throwing myself with complete abandonment and freedom on the Spirit, I can KNOW that I am strong, that I am the fulfilment of every human want, the substance of every need, the faith adequate to remove every problem, the perfection that can resolve every disease, the joy that will replace every sorrow. That is what we want you to KNOW. We want you to realise that you are temples of the living God, a God of Substance Who is living in you, a God of Peace Who is expressing through you, a God of Faith Who is working for you.
Let us now remember, from this day henceforth, that there is only ONE POWER to Whom we have to look, the Presence and Power of God within US, the thinking, feeling, living Presence that we call Father, and let us know that He is Good, All good, and Good alone.
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