THE SCHOOL OF TRUTH LECTURE WHAT DO YOU WANT?

Until you have built up the acceptance that the spiritual qualities of God constitute

you, you are unable to manifest them outwardly in your body and affairs. Neither

those who tackle the problem from a purely logical, intellectual point of view and

who arrive at a theoretically correct conclusion nor those who have only a blind,

childlike trust will demonstrate, for each lacks an essential factor --one is all head

and the other all heart. Yet surely each has the capacity to contact the Father within

themselves. Just as God's universe is balanced, so do we, in some way or another,

have to achieve balance of head and heart.

It is not easy when your body is racked by pain to believe that health lies within it.

It is very difficult when your creditors are pressing you for money to live

nonchalantly, knowing that you have nothing to fear because your debts are

already paid. And it takes a lot of courage when dissension in your home

absolutely overwhelms you to insist that harmony is expressing there. It is at this

point that the mind must take control and call upon the imagination to support it.

First you argue quite rationally that, as God is Omnipresence, that which you truly

desire must be at the very moment within you. Then you begin to play a part,

which you sustain and make real by the warmth of feeling you put into your role.

You live what most people would call a lie.

If I have any questions of health at all, that can be built up in me to any amount. If

I have the least consciousness --limited perhaps to a few cents-- of prosperity, that

shall increase immeasurably. And if I make any claim to harmony, no matter in

what conditions of stress and strain I may be living at the moment, my

circumstances and environment can be changed completely. This is why I ask you

to pretend, to "live a lie." If you continue to worry, expecting the little good you

have to be taken away, it will be done unto you according to your faith, and your

troubles will increase.

As long as your emotions are shackled to unproductive concepts you will have

wonderful demonstrations of the negative side of life, for nothing attracts nothing.

But you can change your mental attitude, you can begin with a tiny mustard seed,

not of faith or even of trust, but of ordinary belief. Even that vague, abstract belief

is a beginning that can lead to far greater things.

Do not be afraid that you cannot succeed. I have watched many tiny seeds during

the past years being built up, and I know it can be done, but it requires steady

thought coupled with continuous control of our emotional nature. Put down on

paper things you want God to become through you. Represent health by some

picture of soundness --say men and women full of vim and vigour. Depict

prosperity for yourselves say by impressions of people who appear opulent and are

in luxurious surroundings. If it is happiness you wish to portray, choose some

peaceful domestic scene with persons who reflect fulfilment and good cheer. Then,

when you look at these pictures, identify yourself with them, know that these

scenes are the truth about yourself, are God's perfect ideas of you. Do not let

anyone tell you it is absurd. It is like having a photographic negative packed away

for years. There is no image to be seen or appreciated, but you are able whenever

you want to bring forth and print this negative for all to see.

Our eyes are daily producing all sorts of negatives, among them poverty, misery

and disease, all of which will be developed and printed in due time in our bodies

and affairs. But this need not go on forever, for we can change it --we can take the

photographs we truly wish to keep. Remember this: whatever you see, either good

or bad, without editing it, you begin to think about. Then, what you think about,

without editing, you begin to feel, and feeling leads to conception which is

inevitably followed by birth. It is within our power, by controlling our thoughts

and emotions, to produce the offspring of our choice. God offers us nothing but

His good, but we must nurture it into manifestation.

I accept in toto what God has established, not as something that is going-to-be but

as a living reality. On my piece of paper I have my plan, God's plan, which was

finished and done the moment He thought about it, without lapse of time. If ever I

feel fear, if my thoughts become apprehensive about lack of any kind, I

immediately take out my picture and say "This is the Truth, this depicts my true

desires, the rest is a lie."

I recognise that God is already within me. I know that I have all that I truly desire,

albeit undeveloped. It is here. The health I require lies abundant within my sick

body, the affluence I need lies ready to burst forth amid apparent lack. It does not

have to come down to me from a state or place called heaven. It is at this moment

already created for my use in a measure to share and to spare. All the harmony I

crave is part and parcel of me. I cannot affect yours and you cannot affect mine

unless we agree to allow it. Similarly, neither you nor I can experience happiness

unless we allow ourselves to be happy.

You can, in no time, bring about all the good you need, if you will take, develop

and print new photographs. Your feet are already planted on a firm foundation

because you want to do right and to become that which is right. You love God, all

that is Good. So, the more fearful your thoughts are the more unswervingly must

you keep your eyes single to the good. No-one outside can affect you, nothing on

this material plane can interpose itself between you and your heritage. Against

your armour of Truth all that is false will fall back, dismayed. It is only fear that

brings about penury and wretchedness. Your souls have already evolved to the

point where Love has become an integral part of you.

Ask yourselves what you are visioning. Do not make it complicated. All discord is

a lie. Know this and recognise that all of God is within you. It is right and proper

that you be free from care, filled with joy, able to pay your debts. God is the living

Substance that wells up from unknowable depths within you to be expressed here

on earth as all we see about us. God cannot be split up. He is the sum-total of

Perfection, established within each of us. He is the fulfilment of every true human

desire, and we are aspects of His being, all that He is and has.

Ask yourselves, each one of you. "What do I want? How much effort am I willing

to devote to the practise of righteous judgment? And shall I, by holding to this, find

the consciousness and manifestation of the kingdom of God within myself?"

Believe me --it is already there, indelibly printed within your minds but, while you

persist in maintaining thoughts of a negative nature, you bind the resulting

conditions ever closer to yourselves. Let me beg of you to change all

this. Accept the Truth of God's all-presence, begin to see as Jesus-Christ saw, let

the Spirit of Love see through you, visioning only the perfection of your lives filled

with happiness, with prosperity, with protection from all adverse conditions, with

your highest good in all things.

Surely this is worth any effort you can be called upon to make. If you put your

hearts into it, if you discriminate between the lie and the Truth, seeing the radiant

Christ-body in the place of sickness, the Substance of God where lack holds sway,

the joy of Love where disaster tries to tread. If you lift up your eyes to the hills,

away from materiality, you will see simultaneously the inner and the outer and you

will know that you have received. You will be content to say, without any more

praying "For Thine is the Power, Thine is the Glory, forever."