Fear

We have selected this chapter due to the revelation that is presented on the subject of UNBELIEF, as is manifested through FEAR. If God is ABSOLUTE, then the ONE and only Power of the universe “embraces” the Law of LOVE; that Power through LOVE, which IS your inheritance,  is manifested within YOU.  You are made into a “new creation”, and you now “have the mind of Christ”– Christ consciousness. Paul wrote, ‘But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind.” Simply stated, “that which I do not want to do, I do.” It is true we war “not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers….. wickedness in high places (our minds).”  As  negative images are produced in our mind-consciousness we enter into UNBELIEF. Lanyon, in his writing, does not waste time in going direct to the root cause of fear and the resulting unbelief as he states:

‘The thing I feared has come upon me.’  By fearing it I gave it the force and power to embody itself in something evil and hateful. The Childhood fear that creates a Boogey Man out of thin air is not quite as ridiculous as the Adult fear which creates out of ‘thinner air’ a figure or set of situations which will not only bring tears to his eyes but will also actually annihilate him.

If you were to tell a man who was fearful, that he was giving to the thing feared all the power it had, he would no doubt laugh at you, for the ‘thing,’ be it person, place or object, might be completely detached from him. In fact, he might even protest he had never even thought of it before. It is of little moment to him that thousands of people live in the same universe with him who are neither afraid nor mindful of the thing that petrifies him with fear. 

The reaction of everything in the universe is a result of your attitude toward it. Everything must and does act in accordance with the power you give it. The level of consciousness at which you function draws for its support on the accepted race consciousness of the thing. Hence a savage believing that electricity is the power of an evil god would be backed up by the conscious thinking of everybody at that level, and this, together with his own fear, could precipitate the evil of his belief. Yet millions of people dwelling there in the same world would laugh at his fear and would denounce the results as self-hypnosis. The moment he ‘saw’ the truth about electricity he would drop all fear of it, as a power of a strange god. He could then acquire the (fear) reverence of this newly discovered substance and respect its laws, knowing that as long as he cooperated with these laws he could count on harmonious performance of many wonderful things.

All fear of evil is engendered by the belief in two powers, one good and the other evil; or the distorted belief that God has the capacity to curse or destroy his own creation. The whole of creation is God himself. Cursing, damning, and all the other horrible beliefs attributed to God are not in accordance with the Law that God is Love. If God is the Only Power in the Universe, then everything you see in the Universe is God in action, befogged as it may be by a belief in evil. You have only to recognize this Presence to shatter the evil belief appearances. Even Hell must give up when you realize that ‘If you make your bed in hell there am I.’ If I Am there in the midst of Hell– then it is Heaven. All this simple teaching is for the consciousness that can ‘believe’ and that has lost much of its ‘double-sighted, double-tongued wisdom.’ If you can, you can–do you hear. If you can FIND ME in the midst of the evil which you are sustaining by your thought, I will appear to you and that is the end of the evil. The belief pictures which you are throwing on the screen of ME are cut off. Nothing has happened to me ‘HERE AM I in the midst of you.’ It is wonderful. Praise the Lord.

You endow the thing you are afraid of with all the Power it has over you. A doctor normally is not afraid of morphine or other poisons.  He handles them with impunity, but a drug fiend is scared of them, especially if he is trying to break a habit of drugs. This shows definitely that habits cannot be successfully broken unless fear of the thing is removed. Then he, the victim, does not run away from the thing which he has endowed with power. He discovers it powerless to affect him. Every cell of his mind is cleansed of the desire for the drug the moment he sees this. You cannot run or hide from the thing and thereby free yourself from it, for it is within you and will embody again. But once you have taken away the belief in its power it has nothing more for you. A person whom you have endowed with evil over you is only operating because of your belief in evil. Every time you think of him you give him more and more power over you, until finally he comes upon you. But once you take away this power through the recognition of LOVE, then will you perceive that he disappears from your life as an evil influence. But it makes no difference whether he goes or stays; you are free from it all. 

Fear of Poverty brings out a whole reel of pictures of the poverty, keeps you from getting a job, and holds you out of expression. This of course only takes place in the hypnotized thought realm. You as the Spiritual being can never be out of your place. This is not an affirmation that can be made to happen. It is something that is so, and will have to be recognized.  Once the fear of poverty is deleted and you move out into the God substance, the pictures that make up poverty will disintegrate before your eyes and you will go to the level and degree of substance you are able to recognize.

It is amazing the power that can be given to an inanimate thing. Jewels have been, in some instances, the apparent cause of death, accidents and evil of all sorts because they were believed to possess evil powers. In one instance after a long series of evil events had taken place attributed to a certain jewel, it was found that the original jewel had been pawned and a cheap substitute put in its place, but with the same power. ‘Red brings me good luck’ says one– ‘Yellow makes me sick’– ‘Blue is healing,’ etc., etc. What say?  If blue healed, alI we would have to do is to paint all hospitals blue and the doctors would be out of a job. Do you see what all this is leading to?  It is leading YOU to the magnificent power that is already yours.  Not a power to use. You are that power.  You will eventually see this and “decree.”

‘Well, I cannot help it, thirteen is unlucky–say what you will,’ and so it goes, and you have the support of everybody in the race who thinks as you do. But there are those who reverse this and say ‘Thirteen and black cats are lucky’—and so. Do you begin to glimpse why Jesus, discovering the reservoir of power within himself, knew his Freedom to such an extent he would risk the sum total of race consciousness, and go through its most final belief—‘death’? So are you beginning to SEE the POWER of the Christ, and how it is that now this permeation of the two–Spirit and Body–is actually bringing forth the “God in the Flesh” through which all things are to be manifested and brought into being. It is wonderful.

‘The thing I feared has come upon me.’ It has not come upon another, it has come upon ME because it has been in me all the while and finally I have magnified it and contemplated it within myself to such an extent that it has taken on a body and form.  The Giant of the Philistines is a picture of fear embodied. The David is the awakened consciousness with its five Spiritual senses that bring him down. David destroys the mental ( thought) structure of the giant and he collapses.  If you have already gone so far that you have put your fear on earth and made a reality of it, you can destroy the thought structure of the giant and see the embodiment crumble to dust. The moment you shut off the stream of thought feeding him, he will begin to totter and presently, as he has spent the last bit of energy given him, he will disappear. This can happen to the most adamant thing or belief in your life. It is wonderful–how you now can take away all life from your fear giant, no matter what his name may be. You have come to the new day–the former things and order have passed away.

Do you begin to note that most of the schools of Metaphysics are starting at last to take up the idea that thought will do nothing? In reality they are only finding out what Jesus taught two thousand years ago. For years the central theme of the teaching has been ‘think, think, and think,’ and thereby do what Jesus said could not be done by thought. But now are WE in the last days and every stone shall be thrown down until not one stone shall remain upon another, and the headstone of the Corner of Jesus Christ shall be set in place.  All the old beliefs are wearing so thin and are so worn out they are exposing their own impotency. The power of the drug has gone–it is nothing but personality and psychology.

Organizations so often start with the premise “God is Love,” but end by introducing a heterogeneous collection of fears which cause the members to lose all sense of freedom. I have met many people in what they called the Truth, afraid to leave their organization which was supposed to heal, help and love, because of the evil that would befall them. What of all this? Ask yourself.  Awake from this separated sense of life. Enter into the oneness and be free.

A case in point happened daily in a San Francisco building. Two ladies who were in the business of Truth used to be controlled by a girl of another faith. It often happened that whenever these two ladies who professed One Power decided to go downstairs, the girl in question left her office at the same time. Then the two ladies were obliged to turn around and go back, because the girl had another Faith. The simple little girl was quite unconscious of the power with which she was endowed– but she operated it over two somewhat husky ladies. Why? She controlled them– but they controlled God! And so it goes. Who or what is keeping you from going down in the elevator of life when you want to? What? Is that so?

Remember, Fearful One, that even Jesus was powerless to do Good unless it could be accepted. Do you believe that some personality, condition, organization, no matter however important he or it may be, can cause evil to happen to you? Will you answer, whether you believe Evil more powerful than Good?  Do you know of anyone who had more power than Jesus? And yet in ‘some places he could do not many mighty works because of their unbelief.’  If Good cannot be forced upon you by Jesus Christ the Great Power of the Universe, then will you not understand that evil cannot be forced upon you unless you BELIEVE in it? And your divine indifference to it cause it to return to the source of its own creation.

If the thing you feared has come upon you stand up to it. Don’t run from it. Take away the belief structure of it and see it fall to the ground, a heap of dust. Remember, pay tribute to no personality. No personality is worthy of anything more than your respect.

Remember, the moment you break the thought flow to the evil you see, at that moment you have shut off its life power. The thing you feared comes at you again only to run full on to the sword of Revelation, and thereby destroy itself.

 

Walter C. Lanyon