You realize now that whatever of the nature of spiritual good -- harmony, wholeness -- that is to come in to your life, you have to bring in through an activity of your own consciousness. You know now the meaning of "ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free", and that you cannot bypass that statement of scripture. It is ye that shall know the truth and ye shall know some very specific truth. There is quite a disagreement at the present time on this subject of freedom of choice, as to whether or not you can know the truth or know more of it than you are now knowing -- whether you can be more diligent, more faithful, more specific. And according to the Infinite Way it is not possible for you to be other than you are. And if it is your nature to spend 15 or 20 minutes a day with truth there is not much you can do about it, even to increase it for your own good. Even though you know that if you could increase it to two hours a day it would change your whole life. Yet you do not have the capacity to increase that. And for that reason you are doomed to just whatever measure of spiritual good you can assimilate through whatever amount of devotion to truth you are giving. This is unfortunate because there isn't any one of us that would not rejoice if we could be wholly spiritually free. If we could live and move and have our being in God. If we would remain untouched by material law, mental law, the universal beliefs. And yet, until something is awakened in us that compels us to go further and deeper we are victims of inertia.

And the great question is, "Is there any way to overcome this inertia that prevents us from giving ourselves wholeheartedly to the spiritual way of life?" And the answer is, that there is only one way, and that is to recognize that it is inertia that is holding one back. It is inertia that is claiming us, and usually with that recognition we are enabled to break through because up until that moment we do not know what it is that is keeping us back -- letting us read one hour a day when we know right well that three or four or five hours would do something to awaken us -- or listen to truth for an hour or two instead of idling away that time.

Unless our recognition that it is only inertia that is holding us -- unless that recognition changes it for us -- we are just going to go along in the mold in which we are going, until something awakens us. And this is sad because it has a sad connotation for the world. It means that because the world, which would love to be free, which would love to be enjoying freedom, which would love to be free of all of the limitations with which we are now surrounded humanly through the new forms of government. While many I'm sure would like to know something of the freedom that was enjoyed in the earlier part of this century, yet this same power of inertia prevents them from doing anything about it. And so it is that we watch our freedom slip away from us -- knowing as one professor brought out at a meeting that the people who are trying to prevent the separation of -- or rather prevent the amalgamation of church and state, and who think that by fighting this support of schools -- parochial schools to be specific -- that they are accomplishing that, are really accomplishing nothing, because mathematics is beating them. It will not be long until there is a mathematical supremacy of the Roman Catholic members in the United States. And that alone will entitle them to the schools and to the government support, and to everything else that they might wish.

And inertia alone prevents the right solution, which is by no means a human one. Inertia prevents the Republicans from coming out to the polls, and in England prevents the Conservatives from coming out to the polls -- nothing but inertia. There isn't a person who doesn't want what a different form of government would give them, but they don't want it quite enough to go out and vote, even if voting would be the answer, which of course, it isn't.

Do not forget that regardless of what we receive in the balance of this lesson -- do not forget that if there is any reason for us not attaining more of what is promised it is because we allow ourselves to be handled by inertia. The promises will be fulfilled in proportion as we can fulfill the terms.

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