Nicol C. Campbell
My Path of Truth
The School of Truth
Johannesburg, 2nd ed., 1954.
[52] I am often asked by people in deep trouble whether it is possible for them to find the consciousness of God, not after a lapse of time, but at once in such a way that the discord which is crushing them can be immediately removed.
My reply is that this can and will be done if they succeed in banishing from their minds and their emotions all thought of the condition so completely that they really feel that God now has the matter in hand and is dealing with it successfully.
To reach this standpoint in spite of appearances, they must, of course, believe in Him.
As I have often pointed out there is a wide difference between belief and faith; faith is knowledge based on personal experience, and, if they had that, they would not have the condition since the one precludes the other, but belief is an attitude of mind that we can obtain before a Truth has been established, it is a preliminary to faith, it is a blind instinct that feels that some outside influence represented by a person or a power is able and willing to act on behalf of the individual relying on it.
If, when one is in acute pain, worried to death, or abysmally unhappy, he can put his misery entirely out of mind believing that God will release him from it, then [53] it is already done; but this is not easy, and fortunately it is not the only approach that man can make to his Creator.
There are as many paths leading to the Father as there are human beings treading them, but I have always found that the quickest and most direct way to any solution is through heartfelt gratitude.
But gratitude for what? Must you be thankful that you are sick, that you cannot pay your debts, that you find yourself living amid strife and stress, or that you must rate yourself a failure?
Can you thank God for something which you do not possess, that you have certainly not received? Can you rejoice over health that is absent, or affluence that is lacking, or over peace and harmony when discord and misery are rife within you; will you, perhaps, by giving thanks for your poverty, be enabled to discharge your debts and meet your obligations?
The idea seems absurd, does it not? But what, then, is the idea? An idea is a thought, and, when you think about your particular disability, you are at least subconsciously wishing for its opposite, and every single wish that you can ever entertain, is not--as you suppose--some unfulfillable longing that has arisen in your heart, it is a message directed to you from God, an assurance that the thing you want is already yours and that it is actually God-within-you Who is desiring for you its outward expression through you.
Can you perhaps be thankful for that?
Think what it means. You feel that you are sick, but what is the opposite of sickness--health--so God is now telling you that you have health because He is at [54] this present moment within you as your health; if you are poverty-stricken, God is all the wealth, the abundance, the prosperity there is, and He is declaring, "All that I have is yours." If you are a failure God is saying, "Look unto me! I am your success; claim Me as the Spirit within you, the intelligence that knows through you, and I will surmount every obstacle for you. I will triumph over all difficulties; in Me shall you be victorious over all things."
Is not that good enough for you?
The moment that you listen with acceptance to the still small voice of your desire murmuring within you, you have risen above conditions, you have arrived at your point of freedom, you have qualified for the greater good, because that desire is the desire of God dwelling in you, Who is unopposed upon earth as He is in heaven.
By thus taking that which God so freely offers to all in need, you have set in motion a spiritual law which replaces every kind of evil with perfection--the Perfection that is God--therefore you can, without any hesitation, begin to thank Him, despite all appearance, for the good that is yours, which you have already received!
You realise that you have never been separated from Him and all that He IS. You recognise that fulfilment is now established for you, that there is no question of its going to be brought forth, and here is the crucial issue. Students frequently do not demonstrate because they cannot attain this state of mind, they cannot accept the fact that all is already finished and done. They limit God by introducing a time factor and looking to the future for [55] their good instead of appropriating it in the divine present, the EVER-NOW.
"I shall have", "I shall be free", "Tomorrow it will happen", these are all too recurrent qualifications associated in thought and speech with what is being prayed for. "Sometime I shall receive." Whose time is this? Yours, or God's?
If it is yours, it will always be in the future, the consummation will ever evade you, it will be just ahead of you, just outside your grasp. But God's time? What manner of time is that? Spiritually, the present, the past, and the future are one. All is completed, established, finished and done.
It is a tremendous step to take, this acceptance of the NOW. It means that you can--and must--give thanks to a seemingly outside power for having manifested itself through you when obviously, according to the conditions prevailing at the moment, it has done nothing of the kind.
You must, however, realise at once that there is no separation at all, there is no such duality as you and God, there is no such thing as disease and health in God, there is no such fact as lack and plenty in Him and, if you live and move and exist in this Presence, then you must at this time be living in all the good, the health, the harmony, happiness and supply that you could ever desire.
Is it too much to ask that deep within you, you feel gratitude for this state of things divinely organised and instituted? And gratitude--you will remember--is only another name for love, which is 'the fulfilment of the Law'.
It would certainly be impossible for you to retain the consciousness of sickness while you were joyously thanking [56] God for His celestial health now manifesting through you, according to His will.
And if your pockets were empty and debts were piling up, could this alarm you if you knew--really knew--that your desire for freedom from these embarassments had already brought itself into manifestation, fulfilment, and bounteous supply?
By being grateful, by constantly giving thanks for prosperity--which permeates the whole universe, including you and everyone else--you are allowing it to come to pass in you and through you, but, until such time as you can realise that there is no separation whatsoever between yourself and God, you will always have some type of lack in your life.
You may have health unaccompanied by happiness and success, or you may be happy and successful without enjoying health, and this state of affairs is not God breaking Himself up into bits and pieces; He does not express Himself in any one specific form only, but your particular consciousness of Him, your inner realisation of what constitutes Him, governs just how much of Him shall manifest in, through, and for you at any given time.
You do not need to spend hours studying Truth or reading books in order to receive your good. Christ gave us a very simple formula. He said that love (or gratitude) is the fulfilment of the Law.
He admonished us to be grateful in all things, so, when you are faced with circumstances that seem to call for anything but gratitude, say to yourself "I am now learning a valuable lesson as a result of this unhappy condition that has come into my life, by my own invitation," for realise here and now that, where either [57] evil or good overtakes you, the responsibility for this is yours alone. These come at your bidding, and only at your bidding shall they go.
You must exercise the authority that has been given to you, you must use your faculty of choice, and, in order to be rid of discord, you must so raise the vibrations of your emotions that in spite of appearance you can sing so gladly and gratefully to God, the Spirit of Love, Harmony and Peace, that these will flood all of your mind, body, and affairs.
Let us now consider your problem.
Is it one of unhappiness; do you feel that you are fenced in, that there is no way out, that you are so emotionally fettered to this condition of wretchedness that, no matter which way you turn, all you can see is the prevailing state of affairs?
Is it possible to 'get out and from under'? Not by yourself, I grant you that. It is impossible for you to escape from it because of your emotional reactions which continue to bind you to it, but, with the help of God, you can praise yourself out of your plight and bring about a happy solution, under grace and in a perfect way.
But suppose you say to me, "I do not believe in God. I have no conscious faith in Him, I feel separated from Him--Who is far away up--perhaps--in the sky."
Can you not, for it is important to you, make some attempt to find a way? You cannot of yourself effect any change for the better but will you not--in order to work to some extent with Him--decide that, even though you have no faith in God, you will do your utmost to disregard your trouble and to fix your whole attention on the power that you know is within you.
[58] Endeavor to think so persistently about this constructive force that the condition will be banished from your consciousness so completely that it will no longer possess reality as far as you are concerned, then you will find that, like snow in the sunshine, it will dissolve itself and vanish into thin air.
There is after all no Truth in it for it does not derive from God. He is not causing you this unhappiness, this discomfiture. He has never been absent from you. He is not even teaching you a lesson! Forever and again He says to you "I am fulfilment. All that I am, you are. All that I have is yours--come and take it!"
Why do we hesitate to grasp the good that is our birthright?
I know perfectly well, if I went to Cape Town and sent any person in Johannesburg a telegram to the effect that I had a hundred thousand pounds with me waiting for him, he would hurl himself on to a plane, jump on a train, take a car, or even set out on a bicycle in order to reach me. He would not waste time in wondering if it were a leg-pull, he would make every effort to get to the coast with the least possible delay: are you not in much the same case? You, too, do not know what awaits you but you certainly hope to find a solution, to discover a way out of your troubles, so cannot you also take the first practical steps on the off-chance?
Ask yourself how your mind and heart are reacting, and you will not be so much in the dark.
You know that in your extremity you are willing to do anything that will release you, but you are so obsessed by the condition that you probably feel yourself entirely possessed by it. In that case, what else is there left for [59] you to do but to hand it over to an authority greater than yourself?
You can say to God, Who is all compassion, all knowledge, "I do not know how it will work; I have had no practical experience of You; I have doubted for a long, long time, but this thing, which distresses me, has become too much for me to bear and too strong for me to deal with so, as a last resort, I am turning it over to You. The best I can do in the matter of working with You is to will myself to believe in You. I am going to remind myself continuously that You are the solution now manifesting Yourself in, and through, and for me. I am going to take an affirmation of gratitude and use it, and I shall put as much effort into thinking about You as I would have had to put into transporting myself bodily from the Rand to Cape Town, AND I will not cease to give thanks that it is done."
Do you think that would work? Of course it would!
With regard to every problem in my life, in every condition that has been presented to me, when I could see no possible way out, I have always--without exception--reverted to gratitude, simple gratitude. I have kept myself in unison with Divine Love.
If you center your thought upon love, you can even forget about God--the name 'God'--for, if your heart is attuned to Divine Love, all you have to do is to look around you and see the types of love that are expressed through countless millions of human beings and then tell yourself that these are only a fraction of the Love of God which is being poured out upon you. Whether it is the love of husband for wife, parent for child, or sweetheart for sweetheart, each of these kinds of love is but a part [60] of the one great Love in which you are now putting your trust.
Henceforth you will be so busy thinking about this Love that, each time the condition asserts itself, you will make no attempt to fight it, for you already know that what we fight, fights back, so instead you will turn your face from it, you will look beyond it and away. You will affirm the Presence of God as Love, Health, Happiness, Opulence, Success--as whatever you require and desire--and you will do this, not once a day but all day long. You will 'pray without ceasing'; not about the problem, for, if your mind and your emotions are focused upon that, your thinking will be negative and entirely unproductive of the good you are seeking; on the contrary, you will keep only the solution before you, giving thanks for that, and you can be certain, without any trace of doubt, that it will come forth for you.
It may not arrive in the way that you expect, the channel used may not be the one you have in mind, but the answer will come about under grace, bringing with it only happiness, peace, and fulfilment for you.
It will make you realise and appreciate what it means to be in accord with the seen and the unseen; you will recognise--probably for the first time--that there is no such thing as a problem that God cannot meet, be it one of lack, disease, discord, frustration, or failure.
If there were any chance for such to exist, if there were one case in the whole of life in which God could be defeated, all omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence would be a fallacy and would have to be thrown overboard.
That, however, is outside the realm of possibility.
[61] While God exists He is All-power, All-perfection.
There are times, I know, when you feel downhearted, frustrated and unhappy, you think that God has let you down for you are doing your best and, no matter how feeble that may be, it is still your best, so you wonder why He does not step in and aid you.
If He is All-love, All-knowledge and All-power why, you ask, does He not do something to help you, to put you on your feet?
I too have asked myself such questions hundreds of times, but the real issue is not concerned with what God is doing but with what we are doing ourselves.
I am fully aware that of yourself alone you cannot shift the load that is oppressing you; I recognise that it is bound to you by an unseen chain that appears to be unbreakable, and that the more you try, by force, to rid yourself of your burden, the closer will it stick to you, but, when God comes into the picture, it is different. I have never known Him to fail.
I have never known God to let me down or to do this to any other individual who has tried sincerely to work with Him. Come what may, we can be sure of God. We can give thanks with complete conviction and joyous expectancy before we have received, for gratitude is love and Love--as I have said before--is the fulfilment of the Law.
And as this Love Which is God, That is measured as God measures, heaped up, pressed down and running over, fills our bodies and affairs, it draws out all negation, all sorrow and grieving, and leaves only His good in its place.
"Fear not little flock, for it is the Father's good [62] pleasure to give you the Kingdom." "Fear not", what does this mean but that your problem will be, IS, if you can only accept the fact, already solved?
These things are not easy! It will not, of course, be all plain sailing when you try to fill with peace hearts that are heavy and empty. It will require resolution and effort to believe in God as radiant health when you are racked with pain. You will not so readily find His Presence when all around appears dark and gloomy but, if you begin to 'think on these things' if you persistently entertain these ideas, before long,--even if they are not clearly defined in your mind--you will commence to believe that what they represent does in fact exist. Health and peace, the Divine Presence, will be shadowed forth in you and when that comes about you will find yourself saying: "You--Who You are or What You are--I do not know, but I begin to sense that You are bigger and stronger than I am, so now do unto me that which I cannot do for myself, bring now my good to pass for I am trusting in You." And, having gone so far, you will start, gradually, to identify yourself with the fulfilment and, like the farmer who has prepared his ground, planted his seed, watered it and finally waits patiently on God, you, too, will wait and expect and a voice will whisper, "Be still and know that I am God", and you will surrender to that, letting go of pain and doubt and fear and it will come to pass that your joy is indeed made full.
That is the simple way of God.
It does not require weeks or months or years of study--just trust and gratitude. I have never known it to fail, I would be the first to tell you if it ever did, but that could never be, so make up your mind to rely henceforth [63] upon God, accept this Presence, live in the consciousness of His Immanence; let each one think of his particular problem as merely a symbol of darkness--a void--and let each turn his individual vacuum over to God, knowing that the good he seems to lack is waiting to surge in as peace, love, joy, and happiness, filling every nook and cranny of the empty space.
Let us rejoice and be exceeding glad, as all our needs are met, our fondest hopes all realised.
In us the faith, in Him the fulfilment, always and forever.
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