"A Parenthesis in Eternity" by Joel S. Goldsmith

"A Parenthesis in Eternity" pdf file

Chapter 33 - The Inner Universe

Every spiritual aspiration, every effort in the direction of Godrealization, is a step forward out of the parenthesis into the full and complete circle of eternity. As we sow, so shall we reap, and if today we are sowing to the spiritual awareness of life, the parenthesis is becoming fainter and fainter. But if we are sowing only to physical comfort—health, wealth, and position—is it not inevitable that we will remain imprisoned in the parenthesis, reaping both material good and material evil?

Our primary concern, therefore, is with the sowing of this present moment, and that has nothing to do with anyone else. There is no one who can help and no one who can impede our spiritual progress. We determine to what extent we will dedicate ourselves to the spiritual path; we determine how seriously we will devote ourselves to this Way. If we are devoting ourselves to an inner spiritual practice, no one can interfere with it because no one knows that it is going on.

It makes no difference what violent objections to this way of life we may encounter in our home, in our business, school, or social life. Nobody knows what is going on in our mind because we are praying in secret; we are living in an interior world, an interior universe. This is a secret life that we are living, this mystical life, and it does not serve any purpose to violate that secrecy by telling others about it, more especially those who have no interest in it.

In this moment we can leave our family outside—father, mother, sister, brother, husband, wife—leave all to enter the Christ-Spirit. Life is so completely individual that, for the time being, we can forget that there is anybody else in the world but ourselves. We can forget any obligation or duty we may have to others; we can forget our past, whether it is good, bad, or indifferent, and even if we are not fully able to do so, we can try to forget the future in the realization that we are creating our future: our tomorrows are determined by what we do today.

The Christ Spirit is right here where you are and where I am. This presence of the Christ is in the midst of our own being. It is filling our consciousness. We do not have to reach out for It; we do not have to think: all we have to do is to be still, and let It talk to us from within our own being.

The kingdom of God is within us. Within our very own being is the kingdom of Love. If it is love that seems to be lacking in our experience, we do not look outside our own being for it, for even if we seem to find it, we will be disappointed. All we have to do to find love is to turn to this great spiritual realm that is within us, and there divine Love has Its abode.

Go within yourself, rest there, and acknowledge Its presence, pray that It reveal Itself to you, invite It to flow out from you, and then give action and expression to It by letting that love pour out to your friends and your enemies, to your nation's friends and your nation's enemies, to men of good will and men of evil will. Open your heart, embracing the whole world, and say to yourself, "Love, flow out: flow out to the saints to support them in their activity; flow out to the sinners to cleanse and purify them; flow out to the tyrants to soften and give them mercy and justice."

If you seem to lack wisdom, turn within, remembering that the nature of God is infinite intelligence, and infinite intelligence is in that kingdom of God within. If you need wisdom, pray that the wisdom already locked up within your being as the grace of God be made manifest to you in proportion to your need of it. Seek wisdom, but seek it within yourself. Pray for it. If your need at this moment is for guidance, tum within. Do not seek the guidance of "man, whose breath is in his nostrils." Turn to the one place where infinite intelligence and loving guidance await you, the kingdom of God.

Freedom — seek your freedom from within: do not seek your freedom in the externals. It makes no difference whether it is a government or a church that would shackle, whether it is a sick body, sin, or fear, tum within and you will find that freedom is a quality of God, and it, as every quality of God, is already locked up within you.

When you achieve the demonstration of freedom from within, you will experience it in the without; but be sure that when you invite freedom to come forth, you are also willing to give freedom to those you are holding in bondage. Even if you are holding them in bondage to the belief that they are human beings, give them their freedom. Recognize that nobody is a human being, but that God sits in the midst of every individual, past, present, and future, so-called living, so-called dead, and so-called unborn. You cannot have freedom unless you first give freedom. You cannot have love unless you first give love. You can have only what you are willing to give: what you hold on to you lose—that is a spiritual law.

You can never get supply spiritually or in any other way. Supply is an activity of God; supply is the gift of God; supply is that which is embodied and embraced within God, and God is in the midst of you. Therefore, an infinity of supply lies within you, but if you let your vision stray outside to the husband or wife who may seem to be the channel, to the position, the business, or the securities that may seem to be the avenue, you may be lost, for everyone on earth has found sometime or other that all outside reliances collapse.

Whether you think of supply in terms of a supply of love, of home and companionship, a supply of opportunity and recognition, a supply of money, compensation, or reward, the supply is within you and must flow out from you, and you must live your realization of its omnipresence by beginning with a penny, if necessary, and giving it to some impersonal purpose. Supply is omnipresent within you; supply will never leave you, nor forsake you. You can never go any place where supply is not. You carry it with you just as you carry your integrity, your loyalty, and your fidelity. You cannot leave it behind because supply is spiritual: it is your awareness of God in the midst of you to be proved by beginning at once to give, share, and express it.

If necessary, you have to give forgiveness: you have to sit down and search your thought and see what or whom there is on the face of the globe that you are holding in condemnation, criticism, or judgment, and forgive it or them. Forgive, forgive.

God is infinite being, and God is the infinity of your individual being. Demonstrate this, prove it. Begin, in whatever way is open to you at this second, to let God's grace flow out from you. Do not pray that God's grace come to you: open out a way to let God's grace flow from you.

There is a Presence within you that goes before you to "make the crooked places straight." Your realization of It releases It. There is a cement within you that cements your relationships with everybody in the whole world: your realization of that releases it.

This world is governed from within. This world, this outer world, is governed from within. No flower blooms except by virtue of an invisible activity. An invisible activity draws from the earth into the roots, and sends that which is drawn in up into the branches and out into the shoots that finally become the blossoms and the fruit.

There is an interior bond between you and God that makes it possible for God to send you where you will find whatever you need: the truth, the employment, the human relationships. The power is within you, and it is invisible.

What you behold in this world consists of effects, but there is not anything that you can behold that is not the result of an inner activity. You release this inner activity which goes out into the world invisibly and then produces visible fruitage. To abide in the Word is an invisible procedure. You cannot live in God externally; you cannot live in the Word externally: you must live in the Christ internally; you must let the Christ-word abide in you internally; and then you will bear fruit richly externally.

This world is invisible. The effects of it become visible — the fruit age and the harmonies — but the Cause, the Law, the Creator, the Activity, and the Substance are invisible. They are part of an invisible universe, and thanks be to God, that invisible universe is locked up within you. The Kingdom, the invisible Kingdom which is the source of the visible universe, is within you. You release the forces that bless you, and in your ignorance you release the forces that curse you. But the kingdom of God, the whole of God's creation, is within you.

This is an invisible world. Human beings live only on the exterior fringe of life, and that is why they find little or no satisfaction. In childhood they gain a momentary pleasure from their toys, and then they smash them: they are no longer useful, no longer satisfying, so they are broken, and another toy has to be found, and another and another. Then man finds a game, and then a business, and sometimes he finds a church, but nearly everything he finds is in the exterior world. He lives on the surface of it, and he gets a little pleasure out of it, a little joy, and perhaps a little profit, and then because it does not bring lasting satisfaction, he wants to break it up. Nothing in the exterior will ever satisfy, but when we learn to let the Invisible flow out and release Itself through us, It appears as fruitage of which we never tire.

The kingdom of God, the whole Source and Fount of this world, is within you, and it is this invisible world, so beautiful, so satisfying, and so complete, that appears as outer fruitage, as food, clothing, home, human relationships, marriage, or whatever it is that is needed. Then you never weary of it; you never tire of it: it is always joyous. You pass from glory to glory because, in this mystical life, you no longer hold on to form. You find joy in this city or that; you find companionship in this person or that; you find truth in this religion or that; you find peace in this church or that. You find them because you did not seek them in external forms, but released them from within your own being, and then they appeared outwardly as infinite, eternal, joyous, and satisfying forms.

This world within has been called a mystical world, and the life that flows from it, a monastic life. Many persons have misunderstood these terms, and they think of the mystic and the mystical as something mysterious, or of the monastic life as entering a monastery or a convent, bottling oneself up away from society, thereby avoiding labor and removing all temptation to sin. Is it not foolish? Some of the hardest workers in the world are in monasteries and convents, and if they did not lose their sense of sin before entering upon this life, they carried their sin with them right into the monastery and convent. You cannot bottle yourself up in any place where you will not find some measure of loneliness, sinfulness, lack and limitation— if these are in you.

The mystical life is the life you live when you recognize that the invisible Presence within you is the reality, and that It forms the joys of your outer experience. When you find the source and substance of your joy, prosperity, happiness, wisdom, and love within you, and then automatically find it developing into fruitage in the without, you are living the mystical life which often results in living the monastic life.

In the monastic life, you live within, where you find your completeness in God, and where you discover that you do not need anyone or anything because you have found Self-completeness in God. You draw to yourself worthwhile companions, understanding and loving relatives, capable and honest business associates, because the monastic life bears fruitage on the outer plane in harmony and all forms of good.

You are living the monastic life when you are in the business world, even if you are surrounded by a thousand people, because within, you are living as one with the Father. You are living the monastic life when you are married if you have found your Selfcompleteness within, and then share it with your companion without. You are not living the monastic life if you are dependent on parents, wife, husband, or children, and cannot find your peace without them. You have not found the monastic life if, out in the business world, you are placing your dependence on person, influence, power, or money.

The monastic life is a life of Self-completeness. You can lead the monastic life while living in the midst of a busy city or alone on a desert because you have found your Self-completeness within, and yet that Sclf-completeness you have discovered within, you share with others. That is the true monastic life.

You do not have to live separate and apart from your family or your business; you do not have to be separate and apart from this world. You can hold political office, and still lead the monastic life, if you have inner integrity, and bring to that political life the integrity of your inner life.

The greatest, the most satisfying, rewarding place in all of this world is within you. There you can tabernacle with the Spirit of God in you. And do not be surprised if in that temple within yourself you meet the saints and the sages of all times, for these saints and sages are only spiritual consciousness at different levels, and you must expect to meet spiritual consciousness within yourself at many levels. When you make your contact with God within, you find fulfillment, for it is by what takes place within that you establish your outer life, and the degree, intensity, quality, and quantity of the without.

Living in the interior world ensures a perfect balance to life. If you live wholly on the outer plane, everything with which you come in contact ultimately becomes just a toy that either breaks of its own weakness or that you yourself break. If, however, you live part of your time in this interior world, tabernacling in the kingdom of God, communing with the inner Presence, you will then find that that inner substance you have released will appear outwardly as a successful day, a protected day, a day in which you can bless those with whom you associate.

Of your own self you can bless nobody. You are of no value to anyone except in the measure of your contact with the Spirit within. As you draw on the kingdom of God within you, it has a way of satisfying all those who come to you. It becomes meat and drink, opportunity, supply, home, happiness, and joy.

The springs of water within bubble up into life eternal, and it is water you can draw without a bucket. How? By living an interior life, by realizing that the Substance of all form is within, and then by going in and being with It, praying with It, living with It, and releasing It.

You have meat that the world knows not of, but you must go within to find it, to share, experience, and release it. "I am the bread of life." Why struggle so hard for bread? Why fight for it, sometimes lie, cheat, and deceive for it? Why? You need not fight. All good is within you, but if you do not go within, if you do not learn to spend a little more time there, if you cannot find there a peace, a joy, it will not appear outwardly, and you will walk through this world, with nothing to give anyone.

If you have quantities of money and give of it, the world may hate you for it. If you forgive those who have wronged you and tell them so, they will hate you because they wronged you. You have nothing to give humanly — no one has, not even Jesus Christ himself had. But as you spend time with your Father within, God's grace within you can flow out, and you can share abundantly with all who are a part of your experience. God's grace is equal to any demand that can be made upon it. No demand upon you can be too great when you have divine Grace upon which to draw.

The interior world, the world within you, is the world of Reality. Externally, you find only forms, hollow forms, if you have not first gone within to make contact with the Father. The promise is, "I will never leave you, nor forsake you." What good is that to you if you do not go inside and meet that I? I is there in the midst of you; I is mighty in the midst of you. But what good is that to you if you will not go in and get acquainted with that I?

You must have periods day and night when you go within to meet God. But because for centuries He has been hidden under layers of humanhood, centuries in which man has been walking up and down the world, living on the edge, the outside of the world, living for the externals, the first few times you go within you may not meet Him. With patience, however, eventually you will.

There is probably a thick crust of self between you and the I that is within you. Be patient: knock, and it will be opened unto you; ask, and it will be given to you—but go within and knock, go within and ask, "Father, Teveal rThvself." Leam to go within because the whole kingdom of Reality is locked up deep inside of you; the whole of the Christ is embodied within you. It is not walking the streets of Jerusalem, although I will say to you, that if you walk the streets of Jerusalem with sufficient humility, you will feel It there. You can walk the streets of Damascus and feel Paul walking right beside you. In that great rush of mass humanity that today walks the street called Straight, where Paul walked, you can actually feel Paul's presence.

The Spirit of God is within you, but how are you going to meet It if you play around on the surface of the world with toys and baubles? Go within and meet the Christ which is the Spirit of God individualized. This Spirit of God was the intelligence and the love of Laotse; It was all that went to make up Gautama the Buddha; It was the life, heart, and soul of Jesus.

The message of Jesus Christ has given It to the world in words so plain that you cannot miss It. You cannot miss It if you once catch a glimpse of the truth that he is revealing an interior kingdom, an interior world that is more real than the exterior one. The interior world cannot be destroyed, and even if a bomb were released that destroyed this whole earth, there would still be as much of God as there was before. When there were only a few million people on earth, was there less of God than there is now with three billion? Will there be more of God next year when there are an additional one hundred fifty million on earth? Is not God always present in Its completeness and Its perfection even when there is but one? Is not the allness and the fullness of God represented in everyone?

You are that one. The fullness of the Godhead bodily is expressed as you. If you were the only person left on the face of the earth, you could live the monastic life—complete, perfect, and harmonious. If there were a billion around you not understanding and not believing, you still could lead the monastic life, that full and complete life in God, because you could always close your eyes in your office, in a park, or in your own kitchen, turn within, and realize, "Within me is the secret of the universe. Within me is the whole secret! The Holy Grail is within me; the word of God is within me, the Hebrew Torah, the Ten Commandments, the Bhagavad-Gita, the Hebrew Testament, the Christian Testament — all of these are within me. I can open myself to them, and let them flow out."

You go within and tabernacle with God, with the Christ, and with the saints and sages of all ages, and when you come out into the exterior world, their spirit will flow out through you to be the bread, the wine, the meat, and the water to those who come in contact with you in your family life, your business, your social, and your political life. They may not know the Source — they do not have to know It. That is your secret, and it is a secret you can divulge only to those who know how to respect and appreciate it.

To the many persons you meet every day, you are just a man or a woman in everyday clothes, and for the most part they are completely unaware that locked up in you is the secret of life, the kingdom of God, the healing grace of the Christ, the power to multiply loaves and fishes, the joy and peace of the universe. Locked up in you is the power to attract to the word of God all those who are seeking God.

To some extent all of you have demonstrated this, but not enough. To some extent I have demonstrated it, too, but not enough. I know, as you now know, that there is an interior worid, a real world which is the Source of the outer world, the creative, maintaining, and sustaining Principle of the outer world.

You must leam to tabernacle with God, to commune with Him at the center of your being. Meet Him there every day. And there, too, you can meet all the other people that you have known on the spiritual path. Go within yourself and meet them there. You can never be alone—those you know on the spiritual path are always with you. They are as much a part of your consciousness as your own family, if only you will close your eyes and look for them there.

Every word of riuth that God has ever uttered is locked up within you. Loose it and let it go, but never tell this secret except to those of your spiritual household. Do not expose your "pearl" to those who are not connoisseurs of pearls. Do not ever give anyone an opportunity to ridicule your inner life. Do not let anyone try to destroy your faith, your understanding, or your wisdom. You have a "pearl" for which the people of the world would sell their souls if they only knew what it could do for them.

This is the mystical life. This is the monastic life:

"I and my Father are one," and in God I find my Self-completeness, and then when I open my eyes and go out into the world, I share the glories of God, the grace of God, the peace of God that passes understanding.

I of myself am nothing, but I can go within and there enjoy God's grace.

No man can take your riches from you; no man can take your peace. The world cannot find you when you are living inside because it knows nothing of an interior world, and if it were told, it would only laugh in disbelief. If the world strikes at you, it will merely be to take your money, your property, or your business. It does not know that those are your toys, the fruit that grows on your Tree of Life, the effect of the mystical life. And so that is all the world will ever want to take from you. If it does try to deprive you of this fruitage, you will remain undisturbed because you know that if this attempt should be successful, a process of spiritual multiplication is already in progress, and in due time there will be more fruitage on your Tree.

No man can take your peace from you after you have discovered the interior world. After you have discovered that within you is the substance of all form, the law of all effect, the divine Grace, never again can the world disturb you, never can it touch you.

The heart and the soul of The Infinite Way is its mysticism and its monasticism, a way of life that has nothing to do with leaving the world on the outer plane. It has all to do with leaving the world while you go within and eat of that inner meat, drink of that inner water, tabernacle with the saints and sages — the Christ — and then come out and enjoy every person and every thing that God's grace hangs on your Tree of Life.

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