"A Parenthesis in Eternity" by Joel S. Goldsmith

"A Parenthesis in Eternity" pdf file

Chapter 2 - Release God

Only the very courageous can embark on the spiritual journey, and only those of great strength and vision can hope to continue on thi s Path. Nearly twenty centuries ago, the Master made it clear that the way is straight and narrow and few there be that enter. That this is true is borne out by the fact th at up to the present time very few have been able to remain on the spiritual path and continue to go forward. It is not easy to surmount superstition, ignorance, and fear, and, despite prejudice and previous failures, to set forth in search of new horizons.

We cannot adopt new ideas while still clinging to the outworn beliefs of the past: we must be willing to relinquish our old concepts. That is where the courage comes in, and the daring. It takes courage to leave behind tha t which has proved to be unsatisfactory in our experience. It takes courage to look at ourselves objectively and ask: Have I sincerely worshiped God? Have I in some measure lived up to my convictions about God?

When we turn to the search for God, we should be bold enough to ask ourselves: Am. I satisfied with such answers to prayers as have been given to the world? Do I believe that such truth as has been revealed is all the truth there is, or am I seeking for something yet unknown except to those few mystics who have experienced the truth, tried to impart their knowledge, failed, and gone on their way? Man's heritage is spiritual freedom, and if the revelation of Jesus Christ has taught us nothing else, it is that we are entitled to live in the full freedom of the Spirit as children of God, not as prisoners of the mind and body.

Freedom is not a condition of mind or of body: freedom is a condition of the Soul. If we do not find our freedom in Soul, we will find only limitation and bondage in our experience. Freedom cannot be given to a nation or to a race of people: freedom must first be realized in individual being, and then some measure of that freedom can be shared with those who are in need of it.

Nothing external to us can limit or hinder us because our freedom must first take place in our consciousness, and this, no one can prevent because fortunately no one can read our thoughts, look into our consciousness, or know what is going on in our Soul. So it is that wherever we are--at home, on the street, or at business--we can make a transition from the slavery of the senses to the freedom of the Soul. It all takes place within our consciousness.

There are those who complain th at they cannot find this freedom because of a lack of time, but there is no lack of time: that is merely an excuse that one person uses; another uses as his excuse his lack of money; a third, his lack of sight or of hearing. All th ese are just alibis and excuses.

Some persons complain that they cannot study spiritual wisdom because they cannot afford to buy books. Just another excuse! The public libraries of this country and many countries of the world are filled with books and teachings of every nature. It would take only a few minutes to pick up a telephone and learn how many informative and inspiring books there are in the library or in a nearby secondhand bookstore. The person who uses his inability to buy books as an excuse for not studying is merely trying to hide from being taught Or trying to ensure that he will not be taught.

Freedom is attained within us, and it is not at the mercy of time, rooney, health , or relationships--not even at the mercy of those countries that have made laws against religion.

The point that I am making is this: if we are bound by sin or disease, or by any form of limitation, physical, mental , moral, or financial, freedom is ours if only we have the desire to break through . It cannot be a mild desire; it cannot be just the hope, "Oh, I wish I were free; I wish I were like other people; I wish I knew what other people know; I wish I had their education."

These are excuses, alibis. There is education available for everybody, from elementary schooling on up to courses in universities, and this, without even attending classes in person. There is physical, mental, moral, and financial freedom for anyone who has a sufficient drive for freedom. Without that drive, it cannot be attained. There must be such a desire for freedom that it is virtually a passion if we are to attain the heights that we sit around wishing for, hoping for, and complaining that we do not reach. No person and no condition external to us are binding upon us. They may bind us for a year, or five, or ten, while we struggle, strive, work, and pray for freedom, but eventually freedom must come from every form of limitatio n. The only thing essential to freedom is the desire to be freenothing else-because with the desire to be free, the means toward bringi.ng it about reveal themselves. It has been said that when the student is ready the teacher appears, sometimes externally as a person, sometimes as a book; but if in no other way, when the desire is sufficiently deep, the teacher will appear inwardly because there are just as many spiritual teachers on the inner plane as there are on the outer, if not more.

Freedom comes only when we can break through the limitations of Our mind, when we do not try to pin everything down to a meaning or confine every statement to meaning the same thing always. Words sometimes seem to be contradictory, but that is because they mean one thing today, and something different tomorrow, when they are used in different ways.

The real things of life cannot be restricted. Freedom will not limit itself to a word. It is like joy; it is like peace: we know what they are, but we cannot describe or explain them because they cannot be confined to a word or a phrase. How can anyone explain what the Psalmist meant by "the secret place of the most High"? What is that? Where is it? Is it a place? Is it up high somewhere? Can "the secret place of the most High" be located in time and space?

Paul said, "For in him we live, and move, and have our being." How can we describe the place where we live, when we live in God? Where is that? What is its climate?

We are instructed to open our consciousness. How do we open our consciousness? What does it look like open, and what does it look like closed? When we speak of going within, closing the door, and entering the sanctuary to pray, where is that sanctuary? Is it in our home? Is it in a church? Is it anywhere except in consciousness? Those are just words, and if we try to break them down into their meaning, we lose them. We might say that they are poetry. They are, but we are never going to find the kingdom of God without poetry. We must let imagery and poetry have their way with us, and not try to confine ourselves to the literal meaning of words. Let us be free from the limitations of made-up words and made-up prayers and accept the poetry and the imagery of our Soul, accept our freedom in God--not lose it by trying to analyze and dissect every word.

For years I have been seeking for a word in which I could imprison what I am trying to teach, and so far I have not succeeded in finding that word: What. comes nearest to expressing my meaning is the word Christ, but If we try to pin down that term and find a meaning for It, we will lose It because what the Christ stands for cannot be limited within the confines of a word or a term.

The Spirit, or the Consciousness, of man cannot be restricted. We cannot confine God; we cannot understand, analyze, or dissect God; we cannot even name God. God eludes us when we try to put God into the letters G-o-d. The Soul of man is free; the Spirit of man is free; the consciousness of man is free. That is why we cannot put God into a religion, we cannot put the Christ into a religion; and we cannot put religion into a man. We cannot confine, restrict, or limit God, the Christ, or religion. These are free, and if we ever try to Contain them within a form, we lose them.

One thing we do know: there is God, and the nature of God is omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience. These do not limit God, but the reason they do notlimit Him is because we certainly cannot claim to know the meaning of omnipresence, omnipotence, and omniscience. Those are just words we use that have a special meaning for us.

If we can accept the Christ, if we can open ourselves to receive and rest in It, It will function in and through us. If we try to understand or explain It, or have It explained, we will lose It. We cannot bring It down to the confines of our mind. Nobody has ever has a mind big enough to hold the Christ; nobody has ever had a mind big enough to embrace It, and yet the Soul of man can experience It. But we must be willing to experience It, and then let It go. The experiences come, over and over, and they go. When they go, we let them go because it is not possible for anyone to sit on Cloud Nine twenty-four hours a day. Those to whom much has been given, of them much is expected. So, when we receive even a ray of this spiritual light, we have to come down to the valley and share it with others who are seeking it.

Spiritual freedom is attainable by anyone of us. It is our birthright. Every person on earth, be he white, yellow, or black, friend or foe, Christian or Jew, Moslem or Buddhist, is entitled to the fullness of life. But the attainment of that spiritual fulfillment does not come lightly or quickly. The whole point is whether the desire for it becomes the ultimate meaning of life, or whether we are hoping to achieve it in our spare time. It cannot come that way. It will involve effort and struggle.

Why, then, are we not enjoying it? Only because of ignorance, an ignorance of God and an ignorance of prayer, for when we .know God as He is, when we understand how to pray and to pray Without ceasing, we find that none of the evils of the earth come nigh our dwelling place.

It requires boldness and daring to release God, to acknowledge that we do not know God and th at we do not know how to pray. It takes courage to be done with the old and to seek the new, to prove that we can live as children of God, as the very temple of God, glorifying Him.

The first bit of courage required is to acknowledge that we have never really prayed to God. Instead, we have prayed to some concept of God, a concept that came either from our parents, a church, or from books. Nevertheless, it was not God that was revealed to us, for if God had been revealed to us, we would now be living as children of God, and all our prayers would long ago have been answered. No one can deny that in the presence of God there is fullness of life. Who would be presumptuous enough to deny that "where the Spirit of th e Lord is," there is fulfillment and freedom, freedom from all the discords of th e earth? Unless we deny this, we must be willing to admit that it is true; and if it is true, we will have to confess to ourselves, "I have not known God: I have known some concept of God which I have accepted and to which I have prayed, and this concept of God is really an image in my mind, a thought, a belief, or an idea." Such an admission takes courage.

If God is infinite, it must be self-evident that God cannot be contained within the mind, yet we go on believing that some concept of God in our mind is the infinite God. If the Spirit of God were as close to us as to be within our mind, we actually would be children of God, and as such would be set apart from this earth. But, instead of having the Spirit of God, what we really have is only a concept of God, a concept which may envision God as a man with a long white beard sitting up on a cloud, as a man hanging on a cross, or as a hundred other different concepts. And what do we do? We pray to these images in our own though t and expect to receive answers from them. Is that sensible? Is it reasonable?

No image that can be conceived in the mind can ever be God; no concept of God ever entertained by man has the power to answer prayer. Then, is not the acknowledgment that God is too great to be bound by the mind and body the very first step that a seeker must take?

"Thou shalt not make thee any graven image ... Thou shalt not bow down th yself unto them, nor serve them." What difference Whether the graven image is external to us or an image in though t? It is still a graven image which we ourselves have carved out of our own thought. Let us do away with graven images; let us have no image of God; let us have no belief of what God is.

No one knows what God is, but if we think of God as Omnipresence, we are free of concepts because since God is, God must be here, there, and everywhere. There is no place where God is not, or God would not be infinite Being. If we think of God as Omnipotence, we are not building any image of God: we are merely stating that God is the only power there is, the all-power and the omnipresent power. If we think of God as Omniscience, then we also are not building an image in thought: we are merely realizing that there could not be a God if Its nature were not infinite intelligence. Infinite Intelligence, All-power, All-presence! And still there is no picture in our thought, still no image in thought, still no creating of a God in our image.

Ultimately, every concept of God we have ever had must be dropped--every image, every belief. The moment we think Omnipotence, Omnipresence, Omniscience, we have no time, no space, and no place, nor is there any time, place, or space where there is an absence of God.

This may cause some to shout, "Oh, you have taken my Lord away from me. Where have you buried Him?" Yes, yes, we have, and that is a very healthy place to come to-where our Lord has been taken from us. But was it our Lord, or was it our concept of Lord that was taken away?

Do not think for a minute that every one of us is not guilty of having created a God, and then going to Jerusalem to look for Him --to Rome, to Mecca, or somewhere else. We have all done that: it is part of human nature; it is part of the belief that we are man and that somewhere there is God--and if we could only get the two together! Originally, this was part of paganism, this making a mental image of what God is, and then going out to try to find Him. Later, this sense of separation from God was made a part of the teaching of Christianity.

The beginner who thinks of God as something far-off, perhaps only half believing that there really is a God, should be guided into acknowledging that there is a God and that it is His good pleasure to give him the Kingdom. But that is really a trap into which we are leading him, for when he believes that there is a God and that God is within him, then afterward, when he is ripe, we tell him, "Now, throw it away. 111at image was all right for yesterday, but today let us throw all images away."

"You mean there is not a God, that God is not within me, that there is no God above me, that there is no God here with me?"

"No, that is not what I mean. I mean that God is both within and:without, up there and down here."

We are now making a transition, having gained a better image in mind than we had before, but only for the purpose of leading us step by step up to the moment when we can say, "Now be still, be still and know." That is all--just be still and know, but we are not to know anything because anything we know will be incorrect, only an object of sense, an object in mind.

God is: that is enough to know. No images! No concepts! In the moment of not knowing, of unknowing--not in a moment of blankness, dullness, or of falling asleep-in a vibrant aliveness, God is experienced. Then we find that through this experience we live and move and have our being in God, and God in us.

Mind and body cannot contain God, and He is so far beyond our imagination that no one can draw pictures of Him or hold mental ideas or concepts of what He really is. All we can do is to declare with all our heart and soul that God is. Only God can maintain and sustain the heavens, and hold the sun, the moon, and the stars in their orbits. Only that which is beyond man's ability to conceive could bring forth such wisdom as is evidenced by man's ingenuity in his discovery of the principles underlying the inventions resulting in the manufacture and use of the automobile, airplane, radio, telephone, television, space rockets, and atomic energy. Only out of the storehouse of God could these emanate.

Who can stretch his imagination sufficiently to conceive what God is, God that is the Source of all that exists in the sky and in the air and in the earth and in the waters beneath the earth? We earthbound creatures are aware of only one tiny corner of the universe, one little speck called the earth, but what must the wisdom of God be that encompasses the countless planets, suns, moons, and stars of this and all the other universes?

Think of the discoveries and inventions of past centuries, and then remember that an entire century is of no more importance or significance in the mind of God than is one grain of sand on all the beaches of the world. Think of what is yet to be revealed! Think of the marvels which already exist and have existed since time began, only awaiting to be revealed!

After we begin to see how foolish it is to cling to a concept of God will come the second piece of wisdom, and we will see how foolish it is to tell God what we need or think we need, or to try to influence Him through our prayers to give us our desires, as if He were capable of withholding good or as if He were some kind of human being with power to give and to withhold. How limited is our concept of God if we believe that we have the power to influence God to do for us what He is not already doing, and how finite our sense of God must be when we go to Him with our picayunish desires or approach Him in any way except to ask for light, grace, and wisdom, for an understanding of His ways, His laws, and His life.

When we pray, we should release God from any personal obligation to us, release Him in the awareness that we are trusting that which created this universe to maintain and sustain Himself and His creation, that we are trusting God in His infinite wisdom to be about His business and God in His divine love to care for His own. When we do this, we are releasing God and no longer trying to channel Him in the direction of our personal desires. Actually, we shall find that we cannot release God, for God never was imprisoned in our mind or in our desires, nor was He ever obedient to our will.

God will not chan ge His ways to benefit or bless us: we must change our ways in order to receive God's grace. We cannot bring God to our disobedience and ignorance, but we can become obedient and spiritually wise.

Let us give up every attempt to use God and every expectation that God will do our will or fulfill our desires, and yield ourselves to Him:

Not my will, but Your will be done in me. I do not ask You to fulfill my desires, my hopes, or my ambitions: let me fulfill Your will, Your grace, Your direction.

You have never failed me, but now, Father, I ask in what way I have failed You. Nevermore will I ask You to do my will; nevermore will I pray that You do something for me. Use me; fulfill Yourself in me; let Your will be done in me.

Release me, Father, from all desires, hopes, wishes, and plans. Let me be obedient to Your plan for me. Show me plainly the way in which I am to go, and I promise to follow the light as it is given to me.

We must let go of God and let God use us. We must release Him from our mental clutches , stop hanging on to God, and let Him hang on to us. If we are in ignorance of God and His ways, let us become spiritually wise. If we are willfully disobedient to the laws of God, let us correct ourselves and bring ourselves into attunement and alignment with His laws that the finger of God may touch us to His will and His grace. The moment we relax and stop trying to bring God to our mind or body, that moment we shall find that God has always been there.

God has made a covenant with His own image and likeness:

Fear not! Fear not! If you walk through the fire, the flames will not kindle upon you; if you walk through the water, you will not drown. Fear not! Let go and be confident. In quietness and in confidence shall you realize your spiritual sonship.

My peace, give I unto you. Do you not see that there is no need for you to struggle, no need to exert mental effort, or to attempt to mold My will to yours? My peace, I give to you. That is My gift to you, a Spmtual gift of spiritual peace. Only let go!

And still with some there is a mental strain as if it were not true as if we had to make it come true, or as if we' had to woo God. The mind struggles to get God instead of to let God, while all the time the gentle Presence envelops and enfolds us.

We cannot make God do our will, but that does not leave us hopeless. Rather does it give us added courage and strength because we know there is no need to reach God in order to sway, influence, or persuade Him. When we learn that, we will realize that instead of releasing God, we have released ourselves from finite concepts of God, from our ignorant superstitious beliefs about prayer, and from the paganistic belief that we know more than God and have more love than God.

When we pray for ourselves or for our neighbors, we evidently think that we know better than God what our need is or what out neighbor's need is, and furthermore that we have the love to want that neighbor to have it, but believe that God neither knows the need nor has the love to want to fulfill it. In our innermost heart we know that that is not true even though that is the human picture.

Human picture or no human picture, however, it is not that way at all. God is not the servant of man and God does not act in accordance with what man thinks God should be or how He should work. If it were left to man to guide the affairs of the world, all his friends and relatives would be blessed and all his enemies cursed. Then, tomorrow when his enemy becomes his Wend, this procedure might be completely reversed: he might begin to pray for the enemy who has now become his friend and curse the friend who has become his enemy.

God is not like that. God is not changeable as we are, and we must give up these childish concepts of God and grow into spiritual adulthood, not attempting to tell God what His grace should be or when, but resting in the confidence that His grace is our sufficiency, and. releasing ourselves from the absurd idea that we can reach some God who may, if it pleases Him, do something for us.

Let us release ourselves into the rhythm of God and thereby become a part of the rhythm of this universe. The Master gave us explicit instructions as to how to do this : "'Take no thought for your life. . . . It is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom'-- it is your Father's good pleasure to give you life eternal. Take no thought for your supply, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you supply. Take no thought for peace on earth, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you peace on earth."

Let us follow the Master's teaching. Let us give up believing that our wisdom is greater than God's wisdom or that our love is greater than God's love, and in silence let us accept God's grace. Silence is the only form of spiritual prayer. True, we may use words and thoughts to lift ourselves into an atmosphere where we can be still, but the words and thoughts we are using are not prayer: they are merely aids to lift us to the heights where prayer can be experienced. If prayer is to be effective, whatever words or thoughts we use in the preliminary stages of prayer must eventually come to a stop, and we must retire within in the attitude of "Speak, Lord; for thy servant heareth." Whether it takes a day, a year, or many years, it is imperative to have those periods of silence until we do hear that still small voice within and feel the Presence and Its power.

We do not have to go anywhere to find God: we carry God within us, not in our mind and not in our body, and yet the kingdom of God is within us. God constitutes our being; God constitutes our life; therefore, our life is as eternal and immortal as God's life, for there is only one Life. God constitutes our consciousness; therefore, our consciousness is the same consciousness as the consciousness of God. There are not two: there is only one. "I and my Father are one . . . . He that seeth me seeth him that sent me."

There is only one Life, infinite Life; there is only one Consciousness, infinite Consciousness; there is only one Soul, infinite Soul. The Soul of God embraces man; the consciousness of God contains man; and the life of God is the life of man--not a part of it, but all of it. To pray aright, then , means to release God from any obligation to give us more than we now have. True prayer is a realization that God constitutes our being and our life. God is the Father, and God is the Son, and all that God the Father is, God the Son is; and all that God the Father has, God the Son has: all th e dominion, the grace, and the glory.

To pray without ceasing is to rejoice all day long that the grace of God is working in us and through us without our telling God or pleading with Him, without our asking or desiring anything from God because He has already given all good to us, and we have only to be still to realize it and show it forth.

We have sought every kind of power in heaven and on earth to meet our needs except one, and that one is the power that is within us. That power is not in heaven, and it is not on earth; it is not to be found in a beok, in a building, or in great teachers. True, it is within great teachers, but it is there in exactly the same measure that it is within you and me, and in no greater degree. We are all equal before God, and the grace of God that has given spirituality to one has given it to all. The one difference is that only a few seem to have gained access to it because only a few have learned that the power of God is made manifest in silence and in stillness. It is a power that we cannot use, but which we can permit to flow from us by our recognition and realization of it.

As we walk the earth, realizing that the kingdom of God is within, we are releasing this power and letting it flow out from us to the world, but if we try to use the power of God or push it out into the world, we lose it. It is when we realize quietly, peacefully, and confidently that all the power of God is within us that we have it. We need but be still and know that God in the midst of us is mighty, and then go about our daily work, whatever it may be: housekeeping, painting pictures, building buildings, or ministering to the sick. We do all that we are called upon to do, always realizing that we are just witnesses to God's glory and to the kingdom of God within us.

When we do this, our very presence makes the Spirit of God felt, giving peace and comfort and uplift to others; not because we want to be a blessing to our fellow man, but merely because we have learned to be still and let God's power and grace flow without any help from us, without forcing, begging, or pleading for it, and without any thought that you and I are spiritual. There is only one Spirit, and that is God in the midst of us.

We are dishonoring God if we think that He is withholding wisdom, integrity, loyalty, fidelity, justice, or harmony from us or from anyone else. Whatever qualities seem to be absent will quickly begin to appear as we learn to honor and love the Lord our God with all our heart:

I will rest in the assurance that Thou, God, knowest my need before I do, and it is Thy good pleasure to give me the kingdom.

I will not seek: I will rest. I will release myself from any belief that Thou art separate and apart from me. "If I make my bed in hell," Thou art right there with me. If "I walk through the valley of the shadow of death," Thou art with me. Wherever I go, Thou goest with me, for I and Thou art one.

Our realization and acknowledgment of this bring the presence of God into activity in individual experience. It is important to remember that there is no power in the sky to which we can appeal to save this world from catastrophe. There is no power except what comes from God: there is no power in the whirlwind; there is no power in the storm or the tempest; there is no power in madmen; there is no power in ambition, lust, or greed. Power is only in the still small voice within. Then, as we tell no man what we have learned, but share the truth with those who by their dedication and devotion have shown their readiness for it, we will be releasing this infinite power into the world, and the world will respond.

We do not have to do or think anything to release the kingdom of God into the world: we only have to know that it is, and be still. It will do its own work. It may be that the faithful practice of the principles of spiritual living by "ten righteous" men here, and another ten there, will release this power of God on earth. Nobody will be able to take credit for it. God's power has always been available--that is the glory! And no one can brag or boast that he is able to use it. On the contrary, the greater the power that flows from a person, the less the person is as a person and the greater he is as a child of God. Within ourselves, however, we will know that releasing God into the world brings spiritual freedom and spiritual fulfillment to those who are receptive.

God's will, God's love, and God's law are all-embracing truth and universally in operation: for you, for me, for friend, enemy, saint, sinner, for the just and for the unjust. God's activity is not directed to you or me, and yet it includes you and me: it embraces all men because of its all-inclusiveness.

We cannot bring God to our body or mind: God is already the life of every body; every body is the temple of the living God, whether animal, vegetable, or mineral. We are now under God's law, God's love, and in God's being, not by bringing God to us but by bringing ourselves to God, and by placing every person--saint and sinner alike-in God.

Those who bring themselves to God are the beneficiaries of God's grace. Those who try to "finitize" God and pull Him into their minds and bodies lose Him. Loose Him and have Him.

When we release ourselves from the mental struggle and let God have His will here where we are, and in th is whole universe, we have released God and we ourselves are free. The fetters that bind us are in the mind. It is with our mind that we are trying to hold on to God. If we let our mind relax, we will realize that we cannot lay hold of God, but that God can lay hold of us. We cannot use the mind to get God. Our mind has a function, and it can operate constructively in our life, but let us not try to use it to get God.

There is no struggle except in the mind. When the mind is still, there is no strain, and God becomes a living presence: the Christ, the individualization and individual experience of God, has come alive in us. We feel It as a Presence, as a Cloak around us.

Release God from any obligation, and let God perform His work.

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