Note from John W.
This is a transcription of a YouTube video I found on January 17, 2023. I cannot find the video anymore and it appears that no transcription exists. If you know more about the origins of this audio please let me know, so that I can credit the source. I have been listening to it for the last couple of days and wanted to read it as well. Hope you enjoy.
MIND, not MIND
"Mind and not mind, I do not have a mind. I am mind. I am the mind of God unrealized. I am the Universal Mind in miniature. I am the microcosm and the macrocosm. I live, move, and have my being in mind, and I shall never leave it. I am in the midst of a creative mind that acts upon the thoughts I impress upon it. I am in this mind, and this mind is in me. It is the power by which I think. It is to me what I am to it. It responds to me by corresponding to my states of thought. It is God's mind in my mind. At the same time, my mind is not another mind, but God's mind manifesting as me.
The highest mind and the innermost mind are one mind. I am the divine mind in essence and the human mind in manifestation. I am the mind of God on a small scale in the mind of myself on a large scale. I am the mind of Christ, in the seed in the mind of mortality in the blade. I am the mind and its thinking. Everything in my home, business, and environment is what I think it is. It can never be anything else. For persons, places, conditions, and things have no existence apart from my mind.
I, in my mind, therefore, everything must be to me when I think it is. Everything that I am is what it is because of what I think I am. It is both the good and the evil because there is nothing good nor bad, but thinking makes it so. I am also a not mind. It is the absolute antithesis of what I am in essence. I know my real mind only, but I have failed to accomplish through this not mind. My failures and mistakes are but the manifestations of my non-use of the real mind.
This not mind was created not by God but by me. It is the cause of all my sin, trouble, sickness, and distress. When I try to know the truth in this mind, I fail, for it is incapable of knowing the truth. How then can I displace it? By taking it out of myself and by letting my real mind take possession. What will happen then? I shall find that I have absolute dominion over every circumstance and condition of my life. I shall have the solution to every problem, the cure for every disease, the fulfillment of every need, the correction for every mistake, the salvation for every sin, the adjustment for every difficulty, the truth for every error, and the answer to every prayer, thinking with the mind of Christ.
Unless one thinks with the mind of Christ, he is not really thinking at all. He is merely a sounding board for the thoughts of others, thinking without a source by reflection. He is like a phonograph recording only what others say. He is like a man breathing his own air. He is thinking in a circle, an action like that of a dog chasing its tail. We are told to repent and change our mind. Change it from what to what? From the carnal to the spiritual, from self to Christ. Thinking with the human mind is like the action of a man trying to lift himself by his own bootstraps. Both are without power and without result. That is why St. Paul said, 'Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.'
What is his mind which was also in Christ Jesus? It is our Savior. It is the mind of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It is our mind too. Then how are we to have no other mind but his? By thinking in one direction toward good without doubt or compromise. It is the difference between thinking from the source of life or from the circumference. It is a difference between immaculate perception and human fumbling. As Jesus pointed out, thinking was God is thinking by indirection or without effort. 'Take no thought for your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink. Take no thought for your body. Take no thought for your future. Your heavenly Father knows that you have need of all these things.'
And when you have no other mind but his, they will be supplied without any intervention of the carnal mind. At the center of man's being, he is essentially whole and perfect. At the circumference, he is confused and divided by his adulterated thinking. To put it plainly, he is thinking in the human mind, ignoring the mind of Christ. It is not a sin of commission but of omission.
What is the remedy? To begin thinking in and with the mind of Christ. How does one do that? By refusing to entertain human thoughts, beliefs, or opinions, by refusing to accept the testimony of the senses, and by seeing God is everywhere evenly present. The spiritual law of adjustment, when we recognize that all the power in the universe is on the side of good, that the law of good has the power to enforce itself, and that there is no law to support what is not good, we shall have means of adjusting and harmonizing every discordant condition in our lives. St. Paul said, 'The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death.'
The law of sin and death, negative creation experience, has nothing to back it up and nothing to support it. It is a parasite; it operates only on borrowed power through a divided and adulterated consciousness. It is therefore temporary and unreal. We can use this law of cause and effect in any way we choose, but it will always be to us what we are to it. If we have been using it to create bondage, we can now use it to create freedom. We do not use two powers, however, but use one power in two ways. Like the law which causes iron to sink in one form to float in another form. The law that has caused disease and failure can produce both health and success. The change by which this metamorphosis is brought about is not in law, but in our mental position or relation to it. The law of the Spirit of Life is self-operative; we have absolutely no responsibility for its execution.
The only thing we can do in solving a problem of any kind is to invoke the law, declare the truth, and then put the problem out of our thought. When we have done this, or recognize the law's presence and operation, we have brought the whole presence and power of God to bear upon our problem, and whatever is unlike God will be cast away. But how, you ask, can a law that is purely spiritual change a condition that is purely physical? The problem is clear when you understand the problem itself is mental and not physical. There cannot be a problem without a mind to create and sustain it. That is why you are told to resolve the problem theoretically into mind, and then change your thoughts about it. When you have done this, you have done everything that can be done. You have brought the law of spirit into contact with your problem. Where the Spirit is, there is freedom, harmony, and order, setting law in motion.
Before we set the spiritual law in motion, let us first consider the conditions necessary for its operation. There are three:
- The recognition that the only adjustment that has to be made is in the human mind, to the desire of the human mind to surrender its preconceived opinions, beliefs, attitudes, and feelings.
- The willingness to let God have full responsibility for harmonizing every discordant condition.
It makes no difference where we find ourselves today, in the vicious circle of slander, the vacuum of misdeeds, the sloth of doubt, the swamp of failure, the maze of habit, or the quagmire of disease. It makes no difference what the problem or trouble may be. The moment we appeal to the spiritual law of adjustment and fulfill the conditions of its operation, the moment we relinquish our beliefs and recognize that the law is now at work and the problem or need, it will take possession of our minds and harmonize, heal, and correct whatever is out of adjustment with the Divine Will. It is not the action of the human will that brings order out of chaos and good out of evil; it is our willingness to let God dominate every situation to the operation of His own law.
In the human consciousness, our present problems may seem beset with impossible odds. In the Christ consciousness, everything is already in its right place. The evil that appears is what the human mind believes. How can we remove the cause of evil? By reversing our beliefs and by using the law in a better way. Instead of using a law to create the undesirable, we can use it to create the desirable. The law, which is always in operation, does not take from the rich man and give to the poor, nor does it withhold from some and give to others. It serves all alike.
Then what shall we do when we find ourselves embroiled in argument or victims of unjust criticism? The first thing is to depersonalize the incident. We must give it no power in our thought. We must keep it so far from us that we do not have to take it into our hands. If the spiritual law of adjustment equalizes, harmonizes, governs, and regulates all discordant conditions, our part is to assume no responsibility beyond realizing that the law of God is at work bringing a correct and satisfactory solution to the problem.
No matter how grave or serious the problem may be, the answer will come if we stop conscious thinking, get ourselves out of the way, and allow the law to work. The whole problem is solved when we realize that the eternal pneuma of our own being is, 'Before Abraham was, I AM.' Death loses its sting, and the grave its victory when we realize that life did not begin when we entered the body and will not stop when we leave it. St. Paul said, 'For me to die is gain.' Then what difference can it make when or how we go? Everyone travels the same road sooner or later because nature will not allow us to congeal. If God is omnipresent, He is where we are and where He is, and there is no coming or going. There is no separation in spirit."