Fate – Destiny

BORN OF WOMAN”—“is of few days”—“filled with trouble.”

“Conceived in sin, born in iniquity.”

Condemned from the start. There is little cheer to be found in looking forward, and less in looking backward. The vicious circle into which the human life has worked itself is nothing to contemplate with pleasure. Such lovely and delightful things as: “As for man, his days acre few and full of trouble”; and all this beautiful picture is backed up by thousands of years of proof, it is also written in the palms of the hands, it is written in stars, it is written in names and numbers, and even on the soles of the feet. Yes, it is a fact, as for man, his days are few and full of trouble. There is no escaping it.

Then comes one called Jesus, as much under a fixed destiny as we, and yet, understanding that within every man lies a power which is capable of setting aside human destiny.

Man has tried in every way to offset or escape his human fate, with small returns. He has tried a thou­sand and one “thought processes.” Yet one of the first things Jesus discovered was that “taking thought” would accomplish nothing, and so He asked, “Who by taking thought can add one cubit to his stature?” And this same question is asked of you today. He further says, “If you cannot do that which is least, (by taking thought) why will you try to do that which is greatest?” You answer this. Why will you persist in proclaiming yourself a follower of Jesus Christ and continue to subscribe to a thought-taking method?

Daily we see people trying to escape their human fate, so filled with trouble; but like the squirrel in a cage, they make much effort and get nowhere. The squirrel runs miles, but goes only eighteen inches. In other words, he gets nowhere, but back to where he started. So with the human thought: “From the egg the chicken, from the chicken the egg.”

Like the proverbial ostrich, man attempts to hide his eyes from evil. A thousand people have told me, “I do not actually believe in astrology, palmistry or fortune-telling, and when they tell me anything evil, I refuse it. I accept only the good.” But if they—“they”—can predict good, they can also predict evil, and if what they predict as good is to come to pass, so also what they find of evil must likewise come to pass. To deny the evil in this situation is like saying to mathematics, “the law of addition is all right, but I refuse the law of subtraction. “You have nothing to do with it. Your human fate in which you will function is fixed and sealed—as much so as your spiritual destiny. In the human fate, you will take the good,bad and indifferent, whether you like it or not, as long as you function on the mental plane. You have discovered long ago that from the human standpoint, it is much easier to do evil than to do good. Evil things happen so much more easily than the good ones. From the human standpoint, you have a great capacity to make mistakes, to do things wrong. In fact, you have to learn how to do things right, because “as for man his days are few and full of trouble.” Why?

When you decided in the Garden of Eden to taste of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil, you set out to be a creator, disregarding the fact that the creation of the universe was perfect and fin­ished—nevertheless you decided to create, and the world of thought-taking evil is the result of your work. Free will is still given to you. “Choose ye—(not you and somebody else, but you alone) this day whom ye—(you—not you and somebody else) will serve.”

So this is where the so-called “taking-thought” bus­iness began. You felt you could change things by thinking about them, and even today people who pro­fess to be teaching the “Jesus Christ” are still instruct­ing people to think right.

So inured to the tedium of fate has man become, that he will blandly tell you that experiences (most always called problems) are good, and that they help him to grow. Yet he is busy most of his life trying to escape the various “experiences” from which he claims he gets so much light. No wonder Jesus called the old human mind “A liar and the father of it.” You have often heard a person in the so-called “Truth” saying of a condition he could not overcome, “This is good for me—I am getting a much-needed lesson”—and so the outside of the platter is clean.

“I saw you under the fig tree” tells its story. Jesus could see through the whole pattern of human fate, just as He told the woman at the well all the things of her life. This is as possible to you as it was to Jesus, since you are told: “The works that I do… and even greater.” This gift of prophecy is part of your herit­age, it is your prerogative to be able to see through or into any person, place, situation or experience that is brought into your life. Can you accept this? It is not brought about by entering classes on mysticism, or by developing classes of your own. We speak of spiritual prophecy-it is true, and not psychic clap ­trap.

The human mind has one capacity which is alike in all human beings—that of magnifying evil. The slightest suggestion of scandal or evil is magnified until it becomes a giant in the Philistine valley of life. Just as soon as a prediction is made regarding you, an onslaught of denials sets in. This merely accentuates the evil. The more one tries to avoid it, the surer he is of running into it. The human mind reverses the processes of the divine and hence receives the mag­nifying of evil instead of the Lord within him, and his fears come upon him. The greatest intellects, with their highest findings, have been known to change their views and to deny everything they have said or found out to be true. No human being can say any­thing good about himself, without prefacing it with some asinine remark, as “I do not want to brag,” and yet if he were speaking of Spirit he could not brag.

We are awakening a little-perhaps. What do you think?

“Hold the thought” is another human teaching, wholly opposed to the teaching of Jesus Christ. He definitely said, “Take no thought.” The point is well illustrated in the Hindu story of a man who went to a Mystic and wanted to know how to become rich. He was told it was easy—if he wanted to pay the price. So he was instructed in the ways of Consciousness; but, just before the student went into his first medita­tion, the apparently mischievous Holy Man added: “But don’t, for the slightest moment of your medita­tion, think of monkeys.” The net result was that every time the student tried to meditate about riches, monkeys appeared, until finally he found himself con­stantly in a jungle of monkeys. Was Jesus right, or are you and some modem system of truth right, when you “take thought”?

Jesus knew that it was hopeless to fight against the fixed pattern of life. He also knew that He could of Himself do nothing. You, the reader, have probably already come to the same conclusion, having passed through a dozen or more “systems of truth” and as many or more teachers. Strange, too, since all claim to be followers of Jesus Christ.

If there is to be any escape from the human fate, which daily is causing you to do things you do not want to do—“When I would do good I do evil”—it will be through a close adherence to the revelations of Jesus Christ and not through any man or organiza­tion; the assumption of His consciousness—the “Let that mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.” But first the differentiation between the mind of Jesus and the consciousness of Jesus Christ must be under­stood. The mind of Jesus was as human as your mind is, and as filled with the human thought-taking limit­ations. He, as Jesus, could no more feed five thousand at a moment’s notice than you could; for so long as He functioned on the Jesus (thought-taking) plane of life it was utterly impossible to increase substance, by giving away substance, or to set aside time and space, or to do a thousand and one other things that have not yet been told you. There is no way to under­stand all this by human thought, yet when anything does come that sets aside human fate immediately, an attempt is made to explain the way. Failing in this, it is charged off to a mysterious thing called a miracle, and the sooner forgotten the better.

Jesus came setting aside the fate of humankind. Every one of His “miracles” was proof of this. He immediately broke the human fate atoms, substituting instead the Divine Destiny. The Divine Destiny of man is a heritage which he left when he departed (by request) from the Garden and wandered into a far country of belief and sub-creation. That Divine Des­tiny, however, has continued to function always, and every time the human man (Jesus) lifts himself up to this state, he immediately manifests what the human world has to call a demonstration. He is merely manifesting his true destiny, which is always wonderful.

The moment the human fate pattern is broken by the Jesus Christ Consciousness, the Divine Destiny is found functioning in all its glory—very much the same as a small opening in the clouds of the worst thunder storm permits the sun to shine through. Whenever this happens, man exclaims, “I have made a demonstration” in the same silly manner as if he might say, “I have made the sun to shine,” because he has made an opening through the clouds. The sun was always shining, his Divine Destiny was always functioning. Through the thunder storm of his be­lief in good and evil, he has been able from time to time to elide, or blend with his destiny. Every time Jesus “went unto His Father,” He was able to bring forth that which was functioning in His Divine Des­tiny at that moment. Hence, His eternal and uninter­rupted success—and likewise yours. When you “re­turn” to your Divine Destiny, you will automatically find yourself functioning on the plane of harmony without the so-called necessary footsteps leading up to it. One moment of breaking through to this Divine Destiny causes man to function in a success which is humanly impossible. Do you hear what I am saying to you? IT IS WONDERFUL, when you contemplate it, and that is why “It is done.” Yes, Beloved, it is already done in your Divine Destiny. The reason you have such a desire for certain things is that they are at this instant functioning in your Divine Destiny.

All human prophecy from whatsoever source is broken up—dissolved and put to flight with the com­ing of this Divine Destiny, and you—this funny little you-have the ability to “let” it come to pass, through the simple recognition of your Permanent Identity.

Created in the Image and Likeness of God—con­ceived in the Mind of God, your beautiful Destiny is as marked and perfect as the path of the sun. It is the way of “helpless success” — in other words, you can’t help being a success. You bring with you from your Divine Destiny a capacity which is so definitely original, so different, so unique, that you have no com­petition. You are a success because you cannot help it. You are a creature of Light in the Universe of Life, and suddenly all the shadows of Human Fate disap­pear. You are Freeborn—the old patterns are broken.

“When ye pray, enter the closet and shut the door.” Prayer is a recognition of the Presence of God within you, and without you. There is no need to formulate words, for the moment you become conscious of this Presence within and without, all the evil with which you have been dealing, no matter of what intensity or power, no matter of what standing or duration, dis­integrates and the void of thought is filled with the substance of the Presence in the precise shape and form necessary to make its Omnipresent Harmony manifest in a tangible form.

Entering this Presence, is not by the way of thought —it is by pure assumption, which can be made only when you have come to “feel” the Presence. “You shall find Me, when you feel after Me.” In this Pre­sence—in this place of the “feel”—whatsoever you (not you and somebody—but you) tell the Father in secret, shall be called from the housetops.” Immedi­ately following this “telling” (or perceiving of the finished thing) comes the challenge to you—“Believest thou this?”

If you can answer this in the affirmative without emotion, without fear, you can rise and go on your way, for the manifestation will take care of itself. “I have a way you know not of.” There is no question about it, because it is already done and finished. You have conceived it through thesense-feel, and no words are necessary to make it so. It is a case of pure acceptance, and has nothing to do with the old worn-­out idea of concentration or visualization which says, “If you think hard enough or long enough, or picture a thing hard enough and long enough, you will bring it to pass.” The best you can do with this system is to bring out clouds without rain, which are no good to you. A man demonstrated a million dollars by visualizing a million dollars. He actually brought forth a million dollars worth of German Marks which at one time had had a value of a million dollars, but which now were worth only the paper they were printed on. Yet, the paper had not changed, but he had “Clouds without rain.”

Imagining “All that the Father bath is mine” will do nothing but drug you into a semi-comatose condi­tion in which you will exist in a state of disillusion, until you discover that at this very moment, regardless of what you have, you have all that your Father bath. Your Father is your Recognition or the degree of God within you. Do you wonder then that Jesus admon­ished, “Launch out into deeper waters”?

There is no imagination in the life of Jesus, if we interpret this word to mean credulity or childishness. When we assume such a state as “All that the Father hath is mine,” it is an appropriation of the “Substance of things hoped for” and the evidence of things not seen in the manifest world.

You are standing at the threshold of life. It is glorious no matter where this finds you, in what condition, in what place, how much or how little you have had, it is all nothing. You are pushing back the curtains of a lovely new day. No matter with what “swine” you have consorted, and what mud (of be­lief) you have on your garments, it is all nothing, un­less you persist in taking this past yard-stick into the future.

You are born under the sign of God—“Call no man your Father.” You are an aristocrat, no one has greater forebears than you, for you were created in the Image and Likeness of God, you partake of the na­ture of God, you have freed yourself from a thousand and one human beliefs to which you have been heir. You are directly under the influence and control of God, and in like manner you have been given control over everything in your universe. Dominion over the stars—over the things on the earth, under the earth, in the sea, under the sea, etc..

Note carefully how Jesus set aside human fate, broke patterns of years standing, wiped out even kar­mic debts. Notice that the Magdalene wiped her slate clean with one “stepping-up” into the presence of her Divinity. She had arrived at a state of con­sciousness where she was being stoned to death by her own thought, which was embodied in men. You will notice that she had been taken to the Outer limits of her city (consciousness) and was being stoned. Unless she could go beyond that consciousness she was to die; (just as you, who have arrived at the walls or limits of a given state of consciousness of disease, fear or poverty, must die in that city, if you cannot get beyond it.)

But suddenly she is saved from this destiny by the recognition of the Christ. All the evil thought em­bodied in men disappears. All the evidence of her past evil disappears. The harlot of human thought becomes the Virgin of Spirituality. The old disease­-racked body suddenly becomes whole and fresh and immune—it becomes Virgin—it is wonderful. We are speaking of the Christ Consciousness. There are no words in which to put this, yet will you read be­tween the lines and perceive.

Jesus on the way to the cross could easily have turned aside the fate which was facing Him, had He so desired, but He wanted to bring to us definitely that even the Last Enemy had no power, and that eventually man would resurrect himself even though his thought-body had been destroyed. He performed a surgical operation on the Roman centurion’s ear, the like of which has never been heard or seen even in the twentieth century. You seem to have over­looked this detail in your grief over Jesus. Well—ponder this a little, too.

Jesus was able to stop the on-going of human pat­terns set in motion by desire, neutralizing a whole life of evil and turning it into the pure fields of glorious self-expression. You have set many evil things in motion, they are like hoops running down a hill, and they will continue with accelerated force until this force is spent —unless something knocks them over. That something, that is to knock over these evil pat­terns of your human fate, many of which are now en­tirely out of your control, is the Jesus Christ Con­sciousness. Do you begin to see why every knee will eventually bend at the name of Jesus—the One who gave us this beautiful revelation? Human thought and its results are fairly well pictured in the story of the maniac in the tombs, playing with dead men’s bones—playing with dead ideas in the graveyard, in the yesterday—and then suddenly he is in his right mind, sitting at the feet of the Master. Are you a maniac playing with the bones of dead men in the grave yard of yesterday, tortured by every fear and belief? Do you want to be in your right mind, sitting at the feet of the Master?

It is all as if we were suddenly coming into a new day of light and revelation, up through the slime of human thought into the place of pure unadulterated Presence. Everywhere, even in and through the most evil situations of the thought-taking world, comes this Light which disintegrates the congestion of human thought called evil.

“Ye are born of spirit”—“Ye are born again,” and you are beginning to partake of your spiritual nature.

 

Walter C. Lanyon