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Archive for December, 2011

Polarity – THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT

Posted in Good Morning, tagged , on December 29, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Polarity
THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT
 
Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee (Exodus 20:12).
 
We should respect our parents just because they are our parents, but that teaching is just the very outer layer of this commandment. Underneath it is instruction in divine metaphysics because your real father and mother is God. When this commandment says, “Honour thy father and thy mother,” it brings in the two poles, the male and the female, and, of course, polarity is the motive power of the universe. In the bible, mother means the feeling nature, and the father is the knowledge nature. Most people have one side or the other more developed. When our prayers fail and we do not demonstrate, we fail because we are not honoring our father and our mother.
 
Thoughts, feelings and knowledge are intangible, yet they define our reality. When we respect each of these aspects of our existence and understand how they shape our world, we have begun real understanding of truth. When we learn to direct and control these activities, then we are on the path to being a true child of God. When these activities are disciplined as directed by God, then we can walk in light and joy each day. Then we honor our earthly and heavenly parents.
 
Thinking and knowing God,
Z gardener
 

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Posted in Good Morning, tagged , on December 21, 2011| Leave a Comment »

A Time to Rest
THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT
Read Exodus 20:8-11.
Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy (Exodus 20:8).
This commandment about the Sabbath Day was given to the people at the time of their leaving Egypt and going into the desert, and on the surface it meant what it said for that age. It was a wonderful thing in Moses’day to insist that everyone set aside one day a week to think about God or at least to oblige him to stop his secular activities. No rule can make a man religious, or give him faith, but it can help.
Like all the other commandments, this one is instruction in seeking the presence of God everywhere, particularly where the trouble seems to be. Where there is fear and doubt He brings faith, where there is lack He brings abundance.
But here in this commandment about the Sabbath Day there is a still deeper meaning. When you are praying every day and recognizing that God is working in you and in all your affairs, there will be a sense in which every day will be a Sabbath, because for you every day will be a holy day. One of the most wonderful things about the Bible teaching is that we get rid of the distinction between the sacred and the secular. That is one of the most important steps in the whole history of the soul.
God is present everywhere. For those who understand Jesus’ teaching, it is always the Sabbath Day, and the place whereon they stand is holy ground.
Just imagine; every day we can be in total communion with God and walk in the garden with God as in the beginning! Our Eden’s await us. How much of our time would each of us like to spend in paradise each day? It is our decision to make.
This writer’s prayer is that each of us walk in the light more every day. Then, just as the winter’s darkness now fades and more light fills our days, so may our lives be filled with the light of God’s love; spent with God in our gardens.
In light,
Stan

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Thoughts Are Things

Posted in Good Morning, tagged , on December 19, 2011| Leave a Comment »

THE THIRD COMMANDMENT
Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain (Exodus 20:7).
Now this law of life really means you cannot take the name of the Lord in vain. If you try to do so you will fail because when you take the name of God unto yourself and implement it, then consequences will follow. It is a pity more of us do not realize that fact because constantly we are trying to take the name of the Lord in vain. The name of God is your conviction concerning God. Your idea of God will determine your whole life. If you believe that God is good, God is love, God has all power, God is intelligence, all the conditions of your life will steadily improve.
If you believe God is intelligent but not good—I know people would not dare to say that, but people who think that God sends sickness and trouble really believe in a God who is not good—if you believe in a God who has all intelligence, but is not loving, then your idea of the nature of God must work out. Troubles will come to you, and you will not overcome them because you are saying, “God sent this trouble for a good purpose, and I must put up with it.” You will put up with it. Your idea of God cannot be in vain. It will work out for you in accordance with your belief.
All of us are limiting God in some respect in our thought, and because of that, we are going to suffer limitation in some way, for we cannot take the name of God in vain.
The only ways we can truly limit God is by thinking of God in limited human terms, or by closing our spirit, will and consciousness to God’s divine will, holy spirit and universal consciousness. All of this begins with our thoughts. Those thoughts then become words and ultimately become deeds.
If we are to live in the Eden God created for us, we must accept God’s reality and how that reality directs us to think. To do that we must open our  spirit, consciousness and will to God, who will then demontrate divine will, holy spirit and universal consciousness through us.
Then, the hope, peace and joy that fills our gardens will be available to us and for our best good. In this fourth week of Advent, let each of us turn from the darkness and doubt of the human self; to be clothed in the light and faith of divine love. And let us remember the season we celebrate is the ultimate dispensation of divine love that we know as Christmas.
In light and faith,
Z gardener

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Pocket Gods and Graven Images

Posted in Good Morning, tagged , on December 19, 2011| Leave a Comment »

 
THE SECOND COMMANDMENT
 
Read Exodus 20:4-6.
 
 
Thou shalt not take unto thee any graven image…(exodus 20:4).
 
 
A primitive people needed to be thus instructed because they were much given to making idols of a palpable sort. We do not do these things, but whenever we give power to anything but God, we are making that thing into a graven image. For example, we give power to ailments, particularly if it is a favorite ailment. We all know people who say, “My rheumatism,” and they say it quite lovingly. Been with them a long time! Has become a conversation piece! Others say, “My indigestion.” We are making a graven mental image of these things. It is only when we take power away from them that we can heal them.
 
 
If you forget God and worship graven images of any kind, you are going to suffer. You can demolish a stone statue; you can burn a wooden one. The way to destroy mental images is to stop thinking of them and giving them power.
 
 
This commandment goes on to say, “For I the Lord thy God am a jealous God.” Moses does not mean that God is jealous like a man, but that God must have first place. The trouble with many pious people is that they want God to be vice-president, keeping the presidency for themselves. So the Bible uses the word “jealous” in the sense that if you give power to anything but God, you have lost God altogether. You cannot have a percentage of God. Either God is the only power or nothing at all.
 
There are many idols and images that society raises up and that we worship. Money, success, power, positions, etc., are all forms of idolatry when they replace God’s love as the center of our lives.
 
While all these idols bring human approval, they do no provide hope, peace, joy and they do not gain admission to Eden. To live in the paradise God gave us, we must put these idols where they belong: subservient to our faith and our trust in God. Then we will have all that money can not buy.
 
God first,
Z gardener
 

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Raised Consciousness

Posted in Good Morning, tagged , on December 14, 2011| Leave a Comment »

THE FIRST COMMANDMENT
I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
Thou shalt have no other gods before me (Exodus 20:2,3).
Moses lived in Egypt over three thousand years ago, and he led some six hundred thousand people out of Egypt and through the wilderness. That is historical. But, Moses also stands for a faculty in yourself, and the things that Moses did typify your state of mind.
The mountain means prayer—the elevated consciousness. We are told that the general public were not allowed to go up Mount Sinai, but that does not mean that certain people were not good enough to go up. It means that if we want to go up the mountain—if we want to raise our consciousness, if we want to get closer to God—we must prepare ourselves by prayer. If we want to go up the mountain, we have to become a high priest spiritually and we must rid ourselves of our faults and weaknesses—otherwise we cannot elevate our consciousness and get our contact with God.
Moses had his revelation, and then he realized it as the experience that God and man are one. When he got that revelation, Moses brought back the laws of life, beginning with the First Commandment, as we call it.
What is the beginning of the First Commandment? I am the Lord thy God. Our trouble in our religious life nearly always is that we think, “In the beginning Me.” That is very human but is does not get us the revelation that Moses got. After affirming I am the Lord thy God… the First Commandment says thou shalt have no other gods before me.
All of our troubles begin when we separate ourselves from God. When divide ourselves from God, we put our “selfs” before God. This separation forces us to live in the world we create instead of the Eden that God created for us. That world we create exposes us to every form of human weakness; weaknesses that subject us to every form of negative behavior. When we engage in this negative behavior, it cause the words, thought and deeds that hurt us and hurt others.
It is only through prayer, confession and repentance that we lift our consciousness above the earthly world of our creation. When we put God first we are forgiven and reunited with God and the garden God created for us. Then we are one with God and can walk in paradise each day.
God first,
Z gardener

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The Ten Commandments

Posted in Good Morning, tagged , on December 13, 2011| Leave a Comment »

And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant…and had respect unto them (Exodus 2:24-25).

Moses grew up as the adopted son of Pharaoh’s daughter with all the privileges and training of royalty. As the years went by and he witnessed the oppression of his people, he determined to lead them out of their bondage into a better life—their Promised Land. We are told “that their cry went up to God” (Exodus 2:24) and God Himself led them safely through their wilderness. Then at the time of their uncertainty, their moral laxness and emotional confusion, He gave Moses certain basic rules of life, which we still know as the Ten Commandments.

The Ten Commandments at their face value are true and valid, but that is only the beginning. If people are going to escape from the continuous strife and struggle of life, they must have something more. So within these commandments he concealed the deeper laws for those who were ready for them. And within those again, he concealed the deepest and highest spiritual teaching for those who were ready for that.

In other words, Moses designed these laws of life so that the higher we go spiritually, or the deeper we go intellectually, the more we can get out of them.

It is this writer’s prayer that the coming messages on the Ten Commandments will reveal each layer of meaning contained therein. When we fully understand these commandments, our gardens will bloom with the love, peace and hope promised by God to those who would obey them.

In obedience,
Z gardener

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What Moses Means Today

Posted in Good Morning, tagged , on December 12, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Read Exodus 19:6-20:20.

Moses was a man of extraordinary understanding of God and of man. He was also one of the great historical leaders of the human race. He was born in Egypt, which was in those days the most highly civilized country in the world. But at the time, the authorities gave orders to kill the male children of the Israelites, and Moses’ mother tried to save his life by placing him in a little basket and hiding it at the river’s edge where Pharaoh’s daughter could not help but see it when she came to the river to bathe. The sister of Moses was told to hide among the tall reeds to guard the baby. The king’s daughter saw this little basket, opened it, and when the child cried, her heart was touched. She looked around, and out came the sister, and you know the rest of the story, how the sister was sent to fetch a woman to take care of the child, and brought Moses’ own mother. Now there is a remarkable text here. Pharaoh’s daughter says to the woman:

Take this child away, and nurse it for me, and I will give thee thy wages
(Exodus 2:9).

In the Bible sense you are the King’s Daughters as soon as you reach out for the Truth. The infant Moses is that higher teaching that draws out your heart. Now, how do we nourish our infant Moses? By prayer and meditation. Otherwise the child will starve. However, if we take the child and nurse it, we shall get our wages,and our wages shall be freedom, peace of mind, harmony, understanding, and the fellowship of God Himself.

When our hearts yearn for peace, hope and love: God is calling to us just as the babe crying in the basket called to Pharoah’s daughter. She responded to that cry and her actions changed the world for the better.

Our desire to know and commune with God is proof of God’s call to us. When we respond to that call, our spiritual child is protected and grows into God’s purpose. God hears our call then and picks us up and cares for us, just as the King’s daughter nurtured Moses.

Having heard the cry of our soul and responded, we are freed to live in peace and hope. We may not change the whole world with our spiritual renewal, but we will most certainly change the world we touch for the better.

Hearing God,
Z gardener

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Maintaining the New Equivalent

Posted in Good Morning, tagged , on December 9, 2011| Leave a Comment »

There is an instructive legend of the Middle Ages. It seemes that a certain citizen was arrested by one of the barons and shut up in a dungeon by a ferocious looking jailer who carried a great key. The door of his cell shut with a bang. He lay in the dark dungeon for twenty years. Each day the big door would be opened with a great creaking; water and bread would be thrust in and the door closed again.

After twenty years the prisoner decided that he wanted to die but he did not want to commit suicide, so the next day when the jailer came he would attack him, and the jailer would then kill him. In preparation he thought he should examine the door, so he turned the handle, and to his amazement the door opened. He found that there was no lock. He groped along the corridor and felt his way upstairs. At the top of the stairs two soldiers where chatting, and they made no attempt to stop him. He crossed the great yard. There was an armed guard on the drawbridge but paid no attention to him, and he walked out a free man. He went home unmolested. He had been a captive, not of stone and iron, but of false belief. He had only thought he was locked in.

Bring my soul out of prison, that I may praise thy name: the righteous shall compass me about; for thou shalt deal bountifully with me (Psalm 142:7).

How many prisons have we locked ourselves in by thinking the equivalent of imprisonment. “I can”t, they won’t, it is impossible, that’s just the way it is”: are all forms of mental prisons. Of course we have all said these things. The good news is we have the key to these locks and are our own jailers.

So today, let each of us realize that we have the keys to all limitations of thought or perception. Let us commit to unlocking the shackles of mental restraint by building the mental equivalents of freedom. When we can say that we can “do all things through Christ who strengthens us”, then we will break the shackles of self-limitation and fly above all forms of bondage.

Then we can soar in the garden God gave us, free, alive and filled with the unlimited potential of God’s children.

Soaring,
Z gardener

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Easy Does It

Posted in Good Morning, tagged , on December 8, 2011| Leave a Comment »

What you concentrate upon you bring into your life. Many people fail to concentrate successfully because they think that concentration means will power. They suppose that the harder they press the faster they get through. But that is quite wrong.

Think of the photographic process. The secret of a clear picture lies in focus. You focus your camera lens steadily for the necessary length of time. Suppose I want to photograph a vase of flowers. I place them in front of the camera and keep them there. But suppose that after a few moments I snatch away the vase and hold a book in front of the camera, and then snatch that away, and hold up a chair, and then put the flowers back for a few moments. You know what will happen to my photograph. It will be a crazy blur.

Is not that what people do to their minds when they cannot keep their thoughts concentrated for any length of time? They think health for a few minutes and then they think sickness or fear. They think prosperity and then they think depression. Is it any wonder that man is so apt to demonstrate the “marred image”?

It is always good to make a practical experiment, so I advise you to take a single problem in your life—and just change your mind concerning your problem and keep it changed for a month, and you will be astonished at the results. If you really do keep your thought changed you will not have to wait a month for results.

…He that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved (Matthew 24:13).

So, when our focus and concentration slips into negative things or things we do not want in our lives (stress, fear, anxiety, etc) we must consciously bring our focus back to the positive things for which we strive. It is no more complicated than that. We attract what we think about. This takes mental discipline and concentration. It also requires a vision of where we want to be in our lives and how we want to live it. When we do these things, we can live in the Eden created for us.

Focused on Eden,
Z gardener

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The Mental Equivalent

Posted in Good Morning, tagged , on December 7, 2011| Leave a Comment »

There is one thing that means more to us than all the other things in the world, and that is our search for God and the understanding of His nature. Our aim is to learn the practice of the presence of God. We practice the presence of God by seeing Him everywhere, in all things and in all people.

Some years ago I coined the phrase “mental equivalent.” For anything that you want in your life—a healthy body, a satisfactory vocation, friends, opportunities, and above all the understanding of God—you must furnish a mental equivalent. Supply yourself with a mental equivalent, and the thing must come to you. This expression “mental equivalent” is borrowed from physics and chemistry. We speak of the mechanical equivalent of one kind of energy in another kind of energy. They have to find out how much coal will be needed to produce so much electricity, and so on. In like manner there is a mental equivalent of every object or occurrence on the physical plane.

The secret of successful living is to build up the mental equivalent that you want; and to get rid of, to expunge, the mental equivalent that you do not want.

I will meditate in thy precepts, and have respect unto thy ways (Psalm 119:15).

The most sure way to develop the mental equivalent of that which we want in our lives is to follow God’s advice. When we surrender our will to God and obey God’s commandments, we are on the path to the mental states required to attract that which we seek. Then we are “meditating in thy precepts and respecting unto thy ways”. Following our own desires and will takes us in the opposite direction mentally and physically.

While this is simple, it is far from easy. It demands that we rise above the self-centered universe, spirit and perceptions that blind us to the garden. It demands that we show tolerance, compassion and love in all circumstances. And be sure, it will take our lifetimes to learn how to live in this way. But even that is not enough. Without God’s help we could never hope to achieve it. Yet, God’s promise is sure. We will walk in our gardens each day when we adopt the spirit, attitudes and actions that the Bible prescribes.

Seeking equivalence,
Z gardener

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