THE SCHOOL OF TRUTH LECTURE "THOU PREPAREST A TABLE"

When I think upon the words, "My strength is sufficient unto you," there wells up

within me, mentally, emotionally and physically a conscious recognition that God's

strength is indeed my strength and that in any infirmity of my own, irrespective of

its nature, I can call upon Him, not in the mere hope that His dynamic Force will

become fulfilled in me through my human weakness, but with the complete

assurance that it will be so.

I believe implicitly, as the result of many years of practical experience of the

working of Truth, that it is a literal fact that a thousand can fall on one side and ten

thousand on the other, but that he who dwells in the secret place of his spiritual

understanding, abides, in safety, under the shadow – not of some limited

anthropomorphic being – but of Almighty God, and if I could infuse into you just a

tenth part of my enthusiasm in respect of Him as Power, Beauty, Love and

Protection, I should feel that I had accomplished my mission for I should be

satisfied that you no longer needed the support of any individual or organization

whatever.

I cannot describe to you the thrill one experiences when one possesses the inner

certainty that, since you and God are a majority, no personality, no outside

appearance, no seeming cause can interpose between you and your spiritual

desires.

All your material requirements will flow into your lives in a measure to share and

to spare when you give up the pursuit of things and seek instead the spiritual

awareness that understands that when you are weak, God within you is strong: that

recognizes that, when you are tested, He will become through you the Power you

need in order to withstand the ordeal; and that realizes that when obstacles are put

in your way, you have no cause to worry for His Presence will dissolve all

obstructions for you.

Unfortunately, most of us depend on people for our sustenance and maintenance,

or for the wherewithal to purchase only luxuries, but the bare necessities of life,

when by the attainment of this consciousness, by spiritual meditation, and the

opening of our hands and hearts, our mouths and ears and minds to the Presence of

Love, we can be completely self-sufficient, with every need – spoken in silence –

fulfilled for our physical bodies and in our material affairs.

At one time I was very much afraid of, and upset by, criticism. I used to feel that

perhaps those dispensing it could hurt or harm me until I realized that if that were

true my faith was of no value, for what benefit could it be to me to believe that my

body (and those of everyone else) was the temple of the living God, Who is

Omnipotence, Omniscience, and Omnipresence, if any individual, or a group of

people, could in any way affect my spiritual aims which are His spiritual ideas,

thought through me!

I am trying to build up my life according to the pattern laid down by Christ and I

am not interested in anything that is negative; my only concern is to forgive all

evil, to release it and to let it go, for as long as my heart is with my God and I think

and feel, act and speak in terms of love, kindness, tolerance and compassion, then I

too can say, "What have these things to do with me? Follow Christ."

He is my exemplar, and I want to find the consciousness, in an ever-increasing

degree, of what He would say, what he would do, and how He would react. I want

to know, morning, noon and night that His Spirit of Love is my strength, and that if

I can contact It, It will bring forth for me my happiness, peace and all-good.

No one has room for fear if he is in tune with God and I know that if we listen to

things of evil report we become a part of them, so I do not allow outer occurrences

to affect me, for if they did, all I stand for and all I teach would be worthless

nonsense. I have learned that Love is the fulfilment of the Law, and that the

Presence of God, as Power, extends throughout the whole universe and beyond it

and Love, Omnipotence and Omnipresence, That are happiness, peace, health,

protection and prosperity, are focused upon all people and flood them in a way to

share and to spare.

I contend that it is no less than intelligent to practice what Christ taught. People

who are labouring under some particular difficulty or struggling with an unsolved

problem and who rant and rave at God, declaring that they do not believe in Him,

invoke only pity and compassion from me because I know that there is nothing

wrong with Him, with the Christ, or with the teachings disseminated through Him.

They have to look within themselves to find where the fault lies and to correct it,

for the Law by Which the whole of God's universe is governed, cannot work for

one and not another, because it is an impersonal and mathematically precise code

which is the upholder and sustainer of Its Own Being.

Let us not emulate those foolish people who attempt to pack new furniture into a

room still filled with old rubbish, let us rather clear out our consciousness, get rid

of all that is worthless, and begin to work with God. Omnipotence, Omniscience

and Omnipresence – Three in One – is my Love, my good and yours as well, you

and every human being appears to be persecuting you and frustrating you is but

spurring you on to make a closer contact with a higher form of life that more and

more of what you desire may be fulfilled in you and your daily living. If you elect

merely to exist, to mill around amid ritual, ceremony and dogma, no one will

constrain you, I can but tell you out of my own experience that the only approach

that I know to God is that of love. Christ says, "Follow thou Me." You are all

temples of God, Who is Love, and it matters not what others say and do, but for

you, what you say and do is vitally important because out of the fullness of your

hearts you speak, either negatively – in which case you will separate yourselves

from the consciousness of Good – or positively, in which event you will see more

and more of His Bounty flowing into your lives.

Christ is ever waiting to come to the aid of every human being but their own

negative natures (their unbelief, their hardness of heart) divide them from their

good and prevent them from setting the Law, That will bring it to pass, into

constructive operation for themselves, and until they release the power of

Omnipotence, that is their own strength within them; and set free the knowledge of

Omniscience which will become their wisdom, thinking, speaking and acting

through them in accordance with Its spiritual Ideas That will fill all their needs

without robbing anyone else; until they themselves liberate this Power of Love, not

even the Christ can help them, or bring forth for them that which they desire.

"Give me my own," is the prayer of the Truth student, or, as he advances in

understanding, "Become, Father through me my own, not for me alone but that I

may share it freely". He, like the Christ, recognizes no enemies; he sees in those

who seek to impose themselves upon him as rivals only the temples of God; he

closes his ears to all pettiness and looks upon all adversaries as manifestations of

the body of God, of which his own body – spiritual, mental, emotional and

physical – is an integral part. He knows that they are but experiences that expand

his consciousness of good.

When another tries to hurt you it is a wonderful spiritual sensation to be able to get

into your inner chamber and pray sincerely for his happiness and wellbeing, and

while he is busy attacking you publicly to know that you can, from your heart, ask

for his success, saying: "Father, speak to him, become his power, bless him, guide

him, prosper him, FOR HE IS ME." That is spiritual awareness, that is the inner

understanding of the Omnipresence of Good, of Light and Love and Beauty that

can help and succour those who abuse you and despitefully use you; that can give

its cloak to the man with his tongue in his cheek and can pray for him who would

see you overthrown and destroyed, poverty stricken and diseased. If such a one

crashes to his ruin do not fall into the error of thinking that God is punishing him,

for God can punish you and me as much as light can produce darkness, as Love

can bring forth disease in our bodies, and as health can manifest as sickness.

Omniscience can only express its All-knowledge as the spiritual ideas of prosperity

bombarding every single individual in the world but only those who listen, who

become still emotionally, whose hearts are filled with love and whose minds and

intellects are attuned to the spiritual Self, Whose Wisdom is greater than all of

man's mental attainments lumped together, CAN HEAR. Only he who, knowing

that man's wisdom is foolishness with God, listens to Love, will find Love,

together with Power and Knowledge and all the physical manifestations of the

material things that the human being desires.

Yes, verily, "My Strength is made perfect in your weakness. In your impotence

you shall realize My Omnipotence; in your poverty you shall appreciate My

Prosperity; in your emptiness you shall feel the consciousness of My Love; in your

sickness, I will not heal you, but I will become in you the spiritual Strength that is

made perfect as your physical strength."

Love has no other desire than to awaken you, than to bestow upon you its free gifts

from God, Whose Hand is always open, giving, forgiving and giving; from where,

otherwise, do you think that your desire for happiness, for health, self-sufficiency,

protection and the mundane thing you call 'money' comes? From you! Never! It

comes from Love, from the inside of the temple where God dwells, Who is nearer

than hands and feet, closer than breathing, Who has heard you before you call and

Who, while you are yet speaking, has answered.

What more assurance do you want of the ever-presence of your highest good?

What greater beneficence can you expect in your lives than Everlasting Love

eternally upholding you and sustaining you and filling your entire being with Its

Bounty, to share and to spare? Surely and truly the Lord is your Shepherd, you

shall not want!