THE SCHOOL OF TRUTH LECTURE GOD IS YOUR SUPPLY

We can, all of us, claim without any doubt or fear of challenge from others that we "believe" in God, but there is a vast difference from this claim and the claim that we have "faith" in Him. To believe in Him is to have a mental concept that there is something higher than ourselves, but that will not be enough to free the Force of Life in your bodies and your affairs. Years ago I thought I had faith in God, but it took a lot of experience, of trial and error, and much overcoming, before I had even the first glimpse of faith. And, even when I had the manifestation that stimulated me emotionally, it did not mean that from then on it would pour into my life. I was in the position of the lawyer who had just won his first case. I had taken my first faltering steps on the path of Truth.

Let me try to analyse faith for you, to show you, as well as I am able, its inner workings. It is not, as many people think, an abstraction. It is a definite, glowing quality, one of peace. It is the inner realisation that, come what may of a mental, emotional, physical or material nature, you will remain unperturbed. You will go about your duties not thinking, believing or hoping that the good will manifest, but realising, in spite of appearances to the contrary and regardless of what may be happening, that "it is done", that the solution is already established. It seems rather difficult, does it not, when your bodies are full of pain, when you have bills to pay, when there is strife in your home, when you see your life's work tumbling down about you, to stand poised and at peace, able to say of everything that is happening that it is a lie, and feeling that it does not matter in the least? No-one can give you faith. I can only begin to describe the experience to you. I can sum it up, as the Master does, by saying that if you have found this pearl of great price you are prepared to abandon all other things that previously you regarded as essential to your wellbeing. You have entered into a peace that passes understanding. You will be able to take the most extraordinary steps in the dark, you will not hesitate to cut all your boats adrift, you will with complete abandonment throw yourself into the hands of God. Even if at the time your pockets appear to be empty you will know them to be full with Substance. Faith would be complete in you. It is not enough that we prove God in one direction only. We all have to seek His fullness. Your body might be stricken with an "incurable" disease and you might succeed through faith in opening yourself to an instantaneous demonstration of healing that would thrill you and fill you so full with happiness that you would be convinced you had achieved the faith forevermore that would free you of all the negation that could ever affect you. And then, maybe a week later, some other negative-seeming condition or circumstance might come along and you would experience the same old fear that gripped you before and the same thoughts would bombard you, and you would ask yourself why, after you had felt so sure of your faith, you should again be doubting God. God has chosen you. He has done this that he may have a vehicle through which He can express His perfection.

The fact that you have to demonstrate, say, health shows that you have tuned into this as you might tune into a wireless station and are receiving only what is being broadcast on that particular station. This may seem shocking in the case of the illiterate and underprivileged person who is plunged into the mass hardship of his or her times. Yet it is so, and also becomes a test of faith for all the other person-channels of God in and around the situation. Prosperity may seem different from other aspects of God's fullness. You doubt that it concerns Him and regard it as your own frail longing. But if you analyse worry of any kind you find that it is simply fear of some or other condition or lack and is relative to your perceived need. To some a small amount of money is riches, to others complete destitution. If you desire to be freed from want it is up to you to live in the consciousness of plenty, to give of it knowing that your seemingly empty hands are the hands of God which are forever full. You do not look to "ways and means". If your expenditure exceeds your income you do not start wondering how to stretch your earnings, nor do you weigh up the respective claims of your creditors, for the more you allow such considerations to torment you the more complicated will your problem become and the greater will be the proportions that it will assume in your mind until, out of a small mound, you have made a mountain of negation. What then must you do in the matter? We look to another aspect of our lives where our faith has triumphed. In the case of health, for example, we felt it, lived it and radiated it, convinced that we already had it. Right now we are living immersed in the thought atmosphere of hundreds of millions of people who are suffering material want and all of them are broadcasting stations of messages of lack. We have tuned into this band of experience to learn from it. It teaches us to raise our minds and hearts to God as prosperity.

Remember, of yourself you cannot create that which you need. That is God's work, and it is already done. There is nothing that you can desire that is not already done unto you, but you have to achieve the state of consciousness that will open yourself to it. If I take a job as a lift attendant I will remain in it until the desire for something better becomes greater than my inertia, my acceptance of halfsatisfaction. I have spoken to thousands of people in this country and it is only in the last few years that a small minority have awakened to the fact that God is beneficent Power, is Love, and He has already provided for them in such a manner that they have riches to share and to spare. If it were His will for them to suffer poverty, sickness or unhappiness, how would they oppose it? Of what use would it be for them to try to improve their lot? Neither you nor I, nor anyone on this plane of consciousness, can thwart Almighty God. If you see someone manifesting abundance, it is idle for you to envy him. If God had not wished him to succeed or if he had not been able to accept God's good, he would not be expressing it. No matter how unlikely it may seem to you, that person has fulfilled the law of faith and the only positive reaction you can show is to emulate his success. Make yourself acquainted with his course of action, maybe talk to him about it, make his approach to supply a model for your own approach. You are a unique expression of God, so your success will be differently expressed, but the route of faith is the same for us all. Precepts seldom impress anyone, but example, whether good or bad, invariably attracts followers. The one whom you so look up to becomes your teacher. You affirm "What he can do I can do." You are quite definite about that, there is no question of you accepting less.

You are temples of the same God, His Source of supply is your Source. One Spirit is in manifestation in various ways on all planes of consciousness. When I started out on my path I had many fear thoughts and there was much questioning and mental chaos within me, but I knew I had set myself to prove that Good is all things real, and that it is His will for good to come to me. I did not lose sight of that ideal. If I had to go hungry, if my creditors pressed me, I refused to accept failure, nor would I deviate one iota from my goal. I looked around me for concrete manifestations of the fullness of God. If I saw John Smith, a multimillionaire, I recognised him as an out picturing of the prosperity that is Love, and I identified myself so completely with him that aspects of my own experience ceased to exist for me. I rejoiced in his abundance and reminded myself that he and I and the Father are one. I decided to live in the consciousness of prosperity that was at work in him and simply to believe, in spite of doubts and fears, that I had already received. It was not easy. Many times I felt shut off from God, often I was near to breaking point, but I held on. I live in the consciousness of Substance ever-present, and you must do this too. At times negative thought will crop up and will disturb you just as when your bedside radio strays from the correct wavelength. But you re-adjust until your program is restored. In Truth you have to keep checking your thoughts and feelings to keep them aligned with the end you have in view.

To reach the consciousness of prosperity is as uncomplicated as attaining the awareness of health or achieving the cognition of peace. Love is forever asking each and every one of us "Why do you doubt?" If your parents were millionaires and said to you "Child, here is all we possess, take it" would you hesitate? You would have nothing to do but help yourself. That is exactly what God asks of you, but you can do it only through love. This one Divine, changeless Power is forever telling you that Its sole desire is to pour out Its infinite Good through you. The only thing that is preventing It from doing so is your inverted faith, your fear. Believe that you have received, act as though this were true, and your barns will be made full in a heaped-up, pressed-down, shaken-together and running-over measure, to share and to spare.