Good Morning Garden

If ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you (Matthew 6:14).

Setting others free means setting yourself free, because resentment is really a form of attachment. It is a cosmic truth that it takes two to make a prisoner; a prisoner and a jailer. There is no such thing as being a prisoner on one’s own account. Moreover, the jailer is as much a prisoner as his charge. When you hold resentment against anyone, you are bound to that person by a mental chain. You are tied by a cosmic tie to the thing that you hate. The one person perhaps in the whole world whom you most dislike is the very one to whom you are attaching yourself by a hook that is stronger than steel. Is this what you wish? Is this the condition in which you desire to go on living? Remember, you belong to the thing with which you are linked in thought, and at some time or other, if that tie endures, the objects of your resentment will be drawn again into your life, perhaps to work further havoc. No one can afford such a thing; and so you must cut all such ties by a clear act of forgiveness. You must loose him and let him go. By forgiveness you set yourself free; you save your soul. And because the law of love works alike for one and all, you help to save his soul too.

We all carry the keys to the prisons of our resentment. Only we can put them in the locks and open the doors. No matter how justified our resentment, it still denies us our freedom. May we all swing open the doors of forgiveness today and ask God’s help to forgive all that have hurt us, and ask forgiveness from those we have hurt.

Come, sweet freedom,
Z gardener

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And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise (Luke 6:31).

The forgiveness of others is the vestibule of Heaven. You have to get rid of all resentment and condemnation of others, and, not least, of self-condemnation and remorse. You have to forgive yourself, but you cannot forgive yourself sincerely until you have forgiven others first.

Of course, nothing in all the world is easier than to forgive people who have not hurt us very much. But what the Law of Being requires of us is that we forgive the very things that are so hard to forgive that at first it seems impossible to do it at all. But the Lord’s Prayer makes our own escape from guilt and limitation dependent upon just this very thing.

If your prayers are not being answered, search your consciousness and see if there is not some old circumstance about which you are still resentful. Search and see if you are not really holding a grudge against some individual, or some group. If so, then you have an act of forgiveness to perform, and when this is done, you will probably make your demonstration. If you cannot forgive at present, you will have to wait for your demonstration until you can, and you will have to postpone finishing your recital of the Lord’s Prayer too.

Brothers and sisters, today let us throw off the chains that bind us to our hurts. Let us each one fully, freely and faithfully release all our negative feelings about those who have; hurt or harmed us; said done or thought things against us; judged condemned or wished ill upon us; and especially let us forgive those we love who have hurt our feelings or disappointed us.

Free at last,
Z gardener

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Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us (Matthew 6:12).

This clause is the turning point of the Prayer. It is the strategic key. Having told us what God is, what man is, how the universe works, how we are to do our own work, what our true nourishment or supply is, and the way in which we can obtain it, he now comes to the forgiveness of sins.

The forgiveness of sins is the central problem of life. Sin is a sense of separation from God, and is the major tragedy of human experience. It is, of course, rooted in selfishness. It is essentially an attempt to gain some supposed good to which we are not entitled in justice. It is a sense of isolated, self-regarding, personal existence; whereas the Truth of Being is that all is One. Our true selves are at one with God, undivided from Him, expressing His ideas, witnessing to His nature. Because we are all one with the great Whole of which we are spiritually a part, it follows that we are one with all men.

Evil, sin, the fall of man, in fact, is essentially the attempt to negate this Truth. We try to live apart from God. We act as though we could have plans and purposes and interests separate from Him. All this, if it were true, would mean that existence is not one and harmonious, but a chaos of competition and strife. But, of course, it is not true, and therein lays the joy of life.

Forgiveness is the gateway to joy. Without forgiveness, both given and received, we deny ourselves access to one of God’s most precious spiritual gifts; joy. Freely given, forgiveness breaks the chains that shackle us to the negative emotions we allow in ourselves. Freely sought, forgiveness releases us from the bondage of guilt for those things we have done or left undone that haunts us.

Z gardener

Author’s Note: A new brother joins us in the garden today bringing us the blessings of a sweet spirit. He dispenses the truth to those with eyes to see and lifts those around him with his humor and kindness. Welcome to the garden brother.

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In speaking of the “bread of life,” Jesus calls it our daily bread. The reason for this is very fundamental; our contact with God must be a living one. It is our momentary attitude that governs our being.

behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation (2 Corinthians 6:2).
The most futile thing in the world is to seek to live upon a past realization. The thing that means spiritual life to you is your realization of God here and now.

Be thankful for yesterday’s experience, knowing that it is with you forever in the change of consciousness that it brought about, but do not lean upon it for a single moment for the need of today. The manna in the desert is the Old Testament prototype of this daily nourishment. The people wandering in the wilderness were told that they would be supplied with manna from heaven every day but they were on no account to try to save it up for the morrow. When, notwithstanding the rule, some of them did try to live upon yesterday’s food, the result was pestilence or death.

So it is with us. The art of life is to live in the present moment, and to make that moment as perfect as we can by the realization that we are the instruments and expression of God Himself.

When we loose the bonds of yesterday and break the shackles of tomorrow, we are then freed to live in the liberty of now. We are released in order to breathe the joy of life, free from past guilt and future foreboding. Our burdens of self-judgement and self-recrimination are lifted as we float unbound in the sublime present. In this state, God feeds us the bread of life and reveals pure joy, peace and grace.

Carpe Diem,
Z gardener

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The common mistake, of course, is to suppose that a formal recognition of God is sufficient, or that talking about divine things is the same as possessing them; but this is exactly on a par with supposing that looking at a tray of food, or discussing the chemical composition of sundry foodstuffs, is the same thing as actually eating a meal. It is this mistake that is responsible for the fact that people sometimes pray for a thing for years without any tangible result. If prayer is a force at all, it cannot be possible to pray without something happening. Pray regularly and quietly; remember that in all mental work, effort or strain defeats itself; then presently, the realization will come.

Another reason why the symbol of bread for the experience of the Presence of God is such a telling one, is that the act of eating food is essentially a thing that must be done for oneself. No one can assimilate food for another. In the same way, the realization of the Presence of God is a thing that no one else can have for us.

For he satisfieth the longing soul, and filleth the hungry soul with goodness (Psalm 107:9).

The relationship between God and mankind is summarized by offer and response. God created and offers mankind a wonderful world that provides for all our needs in a place of beauty and peace. It is our job to respond to that offer by living according to God’s will in harmony and joy.

Claiming the bread,
Z gardener

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Give us this day our daily bread (Matthew 6:11).

Because we are the children of a loving Father, we are entitled to expect that God will provide us with everything we need. If we do so expect, in faith and understanding, we shall never look in vain.

It is the will of God that we should all lead healthy, happy lives, full of joyous experience; that we should develop freely and steadily. To this end we require such things as food, clothing, shelter, means of travel, books, and so on; above all, we require freedom. In the Prayer all these things are included under the heading of bread; that is to say, not merely food in general, but all things required for a healthy, free, and harmonious life. But in order to obtain these things we have to claim them, and we have to recognize God alone as the source and fountainhead of all our good. Lack of any kind is always traceable to the fact that we have been seeking our supply from some secondary source, instead of from God himself, the author and giver of life.

When we look to God for all our needs, our guidance and our strength, all the things we need for our best good will find us. We will not have to struggle to find them, run from pillar to post to gather them or fight to keep them. Just as Eden was given to us as a gift, it will be reopened to us as an invitation from God. Not by our will, but by the Father’s. To live in our Eden all we need to do is ask God for the key and then follow him like an obedient child.

Following the leader,
Z gardener

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