Nicol C. Campbell
My Path of Truth
The School of Truth
Johannesburg, 2nd ed., 1954.
[192] I think most of you have heard the expressions many times, "Let not your heart be troubled" and "God works in a mysterious way His wonders to perform."
To us poor mortals these sayings do not give very much encouragement when all around we find either discord or failure, lack or unhappiness. It is cold comfort for me to know that somewhere, somehow, God is working out a particular problem when I can perceive nothing of what is being done, and it is not easy in such circumstances to attain peace within, so that my heart is 'not troubled'.
If you were human entities without the Spirit of God within you and God was some anthropomorphic being up above, I could understand your praying to this being and hoping that he would work out your specific problems for you, but it seems difficult--I know you find it so--to believe in some abstract, unseeable, and apparently unknowable Intelligence working in and through you. I know that I felt that something tremendous had gone out of my life when I first discovered a long time ago, that God is not a Father up in heaven, and that I could not go down on my knees and pray for favours from Him. I felt as though a very dear and [193] precious friend had suddenly let me down, and, like you, I did not know where to turn. But today, after all these years of not only my own experiences but yours also, I realise that we have something infinitely greater than that. We have not some being--a father--outside of ourselves, we have instead a Paternal Presence within us, Whose sole desire is to express in and through our bodies and affairs only that which is good, which brings us peace and happiness, opulence, fulfilment and success, and the only difficulty lies in our seeming inability to contact Him.
If He is inside me, if it is true that He is nearer to me than hands and feet and closer to me than breathing, why do I--and you also--find it so difficult to feel Him, or to know Him? Surely if, like my shadow, I cannot get away from Him, it should be the simplest thing in the world for me to contact this beneficent Presence of Which I am the body temple?--and IT IS SO. We make of it uphill work! Certain rules have been laid down for us by the Master and the other great teachers of all time, that show us that way and lead us into a consciousness of this Presence, but we are not prepared to fulfil the requirements or to accept the simple Truths which will bring freedom to our minds, happiness to our hearts and fulfilment in our affairs. We are always haggling over terms.
You will find certain students of Truth running from one teacher to another, and from one book to another, hoping--always hoping--that they will find an easy way out. They will accept what they feel to be right in one teaching and then they will rush to another, and [194] so it goes on, year after year. I have seen some that have been seeking for thirty, forty, and fifty years and still have found nothing but a tremendous amount of information relating to this spiritual Being, Whom we call God, but, as far as their inner consciousness is concerned, or having lives filled with peace or happiness and all other good which the human heart desires, they know nothing of this. And what do they say? They say, 'This is my particular problem which I have chosen either by ignorance or intent, and I have to work it out on this plane so that, when I come back in my next life, I shall have deserved something better, and good will then manifest for me.'
I cannot see it thus. If God is Omnipresence, that means He is everywhere evenly present in everything at the same time on all planes of consciousness, and if I am the vehicle or body of God, and if He is All-knowledge and All-power, why must I go to different planes of awareness to find His Presence or continually come back to seek Him here?
All the theory in the world will produce no single atom of good in your lives unless you can, and do, apply it.
I know it takes a terrific amount of effort, is at times an immense strain on you, mentally, physically, and emotionally because it is so on me, who am just as human as you are, with the self-same faults and feelings.
This present is, however, the only time you will ever know. Whatever may have happened in the past you cannot remember, you cannot recall as far back as perhaps your second year of age, how then can you [195] possibly know of something that occurred in a previous existence? You can never live in the future. This moment which we now inhabit is the future, and the future determines our present actions, and our current actions guarantee our future. Let me put it very simply, I desire either happiness, or health, or supply--that is something that is in the future (as far as my human understanding goes) for it is not yet a physical part of me, but actually it is here in the present for it is already of me spiritually, because anything I can ever desire is now in manifestation in the spiritual, unseen Presence that we call God, the Good.
My present actions in relation to the thing I want, which appears to be in the distant future, will bring that future to the now and I shall see it, know it, and become it, manifest in this physical body.
How many people make the effort? How many consciously consecrate their minds and hearts to the Presence that we call God? They look to Him merely because they want things. They want to enjoy their life-spans here, they want all the material things that will bring them happiness, and that, though they do not know it, is God's will for them as well. In their ignorance, however, as soon as some specific problem, that they apparently cannot overcome, presents itself to them, their faith begins to break down. They do not seem to understand that we are working with All-intelligence and that It wants us to be happy.
With your limited knowledge you cannot know what true happiness is, you relate names and places to it, of course, and you wonder why stress and turmoil come [196] into your lives when you have been praying for some particular happiness, peace, or understanding.
A woman once said to me, "Why is God punishing me like this?" I replied, "God is not punishing you--He never does!" to which she answered, "I go regularly to the doctor, three times a week, for treatment, but I am praying to die." I said, "My dear woman, why don't you stop your visits, then you will die. If you sincerely wish to, if you feel that you can no longer stand it on this plane of consciousness, why not just give up the ghost? On the one hand you are asking God to heal you--for the doctor is just as much His instrument as the Truth teacher--and on the other you are denying Him for all you are worth! The doctor is dealing with the effects that you have created in your body, and he is competent to do this, but, if you pray for happiness and anticipate unhappiness, or pray for prosperity and expect poverty, or again pray for health and anticipate disease, what can you expect? One does not get what one prays for but what one HOLDS IN VIEW."
You are the temples of God, the temples of all the good that you could ever desire now in manifest expression in your minds, bodies and affairs. I know how difficult it is to have faith. You have pain in your hearts because of some unhappiness and it is hard to fight it, but in it you have the challenge of God, the Spirit of Love, the Spirit of Good.
The more I allow discord to manifest inside me, the more I nurse it and hug it to myself, the more unhappy I become, but it is not unhappiness that I want, I want freedom and peace, so I turn as often as I can to God. [197] My prayer is something like this: Love is my strength, for my unhappiness is in my heart and all love is of the heart, and I want this expressed in my Being, so, since Love alone produces it, I start to love the thing or person who causes me suffering, giving to these all the love that is in my own soul. Love is not only my strength, it is also power, my sure victory, so I put all my trust in Love knowing that it must, and will, bring it to pass because It is God.
The fulfilment of the Law consists in loving.
It does not matter how the appearances shriek failure, or even if the good seems to be going further and further away, I am working with God the Good, with the Spirit of Love that is inside me and inside you, in Which there is no separation of man from man, or man from God.
Love brings me into tune with God and identifies me with Him and, as I become aware of His Presence within me, the hurt gets less and less, but it is an insistent visitor to both you and me, this negative condition that is so loath to let us go!
It will keep on coming back and knocking, to make you aware of the condition, it will oppose what is to it the so-called lie, of your prayer of faith to God within you. But do you need to heed the interloper? Cannot you trust in God? Is it possible that He should deprive you of any happiness? Is it possible for even you or me, if we love somebody, knowingly to cause him pain? Do we not, on the contrary, do everything in our power to right any discord? And, if we, being human, know how, as the Bible says, to give our children and our [198] friends 'good gifts', how much more does not God, Who is infinite Love, know how to express His good through you and me?
Even in this alleged problem of unhappiness God is working in His mysterious way, not in the noise and din of this material phase, not in the hustle and bustle of this physical world, but in the silence, He is bringing the wonder of His Omnipotence and Omniscience to pass.
I do not blame you, of course, when you begin to doubt, when you feel that you have been let down, when you think that the teaching is insincere and that lies have been told to you, for such are appearances. The important thing is not what you think of me if I have hurt you, or what I think of you if you have injured me, the vital thing is what we both think and feel about Love, because we are dealing with Something that is infinite and the only way we can contact God is by and through this unseen, intangible, unknowable emotion that we call love.
God cannot fail, He will not fail. This is no wishful thinking on my part. It does not matter if it gets darker and darker, blacker and blacker, if you are cut off on all sides, even if you begin to blame yourself for the experience that has come to you, the insistent, small voice of God is still saying to you, "Let not your heart be troubled, nor let it be afraid, for I, All-knowledge and All-love, am working unseen in Spirit, My wonders of peace and happiness to perform."
This is the Truth, and there is no reason why each and every one of you should not prove what hundreds [199] have proved before you. If there is some bitterness in your hearts at this time, which like a little cancer grows and grows until it swamps you, you are consciously separated from the Spirit of God, and you must fill your hearts with thoughts of love about the person, persons, or the condition. It is your mental selves that you have to free because the problem is not outside of you, it is within you. You are entertaining it. You are judging according to facts, to conditions, but they are lies!
How apt we are to misunderstand other people's actions and motives. I know what it is to suffer emotionally, just as you do. I know how cut off we can feel from God, how, at times, we think that, if we had the courage, we would put an end to our lives. But, would that help? The everlasting Arms of God are here, ready to come to your aid.
Fill your hearts with Love and try to act It and just have faith in His All-power. Whatever condition oppresses you, no matter how chronic it is, how unsolvable according to human opinion it seems to be, it is you who have it in your own hands to decide, by your faith, positive or negative, whether God shall deliver you or not. We are not dealing with any limited power but with Something or Someone That is almighty ('The Lord in the midst of thee is mighty to heal') and we must keep our trust 'stayed on Him'.
[200] There is no room for insincerity on our part, we have to feel this consciousness of Love permeating us, it must be something deep and true within ourselves, aligning our thinking with the Mind of God.
God is Love. If we know this, then we know that there is no reason for a troubled heart, because the Spirit of Love, of All-good, of All-knowledge, and All-power is working for us, here and now, His wonders to perform, and all is well with us and with our world.
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