The Immaculate Conception

“SEARCH the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have life eternal.”

Until the Scriptures yield up their symbology, they remain a rather tedious history of a decadent civilization. Once you become the principal actor, as it were, in the moving pictures of the sacred book you begin to understand the revelations of Jesus the Christ; how it was that he constantly spoke in parables because of the ignorance of the people, and how necessary it was for the people — even you and me — to release the blessed revelation from these stories into the present-day, practical, everyday living.

Who then has not written the psalms of desolation and the Psalms of Praise? Who then has not found all of the incidents of Job’s painful and triumphant existence shadowed forth in his own life? So also hidden in the various events is the actual power for those who have eyes to see — what the Scriptures say unto the Churches — unto your temples-bodies.

To the human thought the way of Jesus is the way of the Impossible, even the way of fantasy. Who believes in miracles as natural, normal things? They are classed in the unnatural and the impossible, and it is from this elevation we must approach them if we expect to understand their practical use in everyday life.

Everything that Jesus did is “impossible” to the human senses. The three-dimensional mind speaks from that mass of knowledge it gathers looking through the “glass darkly,” but it speaks truly as far as its limited vision is concerned. We know that a heavier-than-water body will sink in water, and that gravity, cohesion, adhesion, attraction, have a definite power which cannot be set aside, even temporarily, except with great effort. Yet everything that Jesus did was outside of all of these laws.

Many people are still trying to work in the three-dimensional-thought world with this new Power, and find it utterly incompatible and impossible, and so it is.

If the Christ Power could do only the possible there would be little use to bother with it, since you are daily doing what is possible. We are only interested in the teaching of Jesus Christ because of its doing the impossible.

If you cannot readily take off from this level you are still looking for miracles, and verily after you have seen one, and keep looking for them, you will not even be able to find ME. “Ye seek ME after the loaves and fishes and cannot find ME” – not because I AM not there, but because through the glass darkly you have glimpsed the impossible happen and are still treating it as a magic power, a worker of tricks, and a doer of legerdemain. If you cannot conceive that the IMPOSSIBLE is the field in which the Christ Power operates you will still be swinging between something and nothing. And it will be mostly nothing.

Hence all the deeper lessons tucked away in stories and parables deal with the doing of the impossible. The problem is clearly stated and worked out; the way out of every difficulty is clearly given. No one of the present day can enter into a situation which has not been fully and amply covered, explained, and proved nothing by the Jesus Christ Power.

“Search the Scriptures.” Do you hear?

Mary the Virgin was overshadowed by the Presence. The Annunciation was made. An impossible thing was to take place. She was to bring forth a Messiah, and this bringing forth had to be outside the offices of man. Instantly the whole proposition was put on the plane of the impossible — it just could not happen. Anyone could see and understand that. And Mary asked: “How can this be, seeing I know no man?” In other words, it was an impossible situation, and could neither be understood nor manifested.

Is this situation any different from what you are trying to do? Have you not arrived at an incurable state of a diseased or worn-out body and mind, or a hopeless state of waiting, or a half dead state of no expression? And are you not trying to bring out the impossible when you try to get rid of the incurable disease? When the annunciation-desire-is made to you of perfect health or substance being possible in your life, what does your mind echo? Yet where did you get the desire for the perfected state of health or expression? Why doesn’t everybody have the same desire; and, when you bring this state of perfect health or substance into manifestation (when youembody it), will it not be a Messiah to your world? Will it not save you from destruction by disease or limitation?

The Presence urging upon you constantly for expression stands at the door of consciousness – “Behold I stand at the door and knock, and if any man [that includes you] hear My voice and open unto Me, I will come into him and sup with him and he with Me.” This constant annunciation of the Presence, over-shadowing your consciousness – urging you to give it a body and form — results in the eternal immaculate conception taking place in you.

Instead of your desires being merely floating thoughts which have to be “worked” out, they become the annunciation of the Presence asking for permission to come in and sup with you. The Holiness of this eternal function puts a seal on the lips, and we find that as soon as Mary found that “nothing was impossible with God” she then “magnified the Lord within her.”

The questioning and wondering, the guessing and worrying about it all, were entirely dropped out of the scheme of her thought. If all things were possible to God, then the impossible thing would find a way and means of expression. The annunciation or the desire carries with it all the necessary ways and means of bringing itself into manifestation, but it needs the perfect cooperation or integrity of Mary. She is found to be the perfect exemplar of bringing forth the invisible, impossible thing and giving it a body and a form. She “pondered these things in her heart.” There seemed to be so little chance of the thing taking place through the thought of man. Also we see her in a very difficult situation as far as the actual affair was concerned.

Who was going to believe in the Immaculate Conception? Who would believe it today? Not many; and Mary would not have been more popular in her home town than she would be under like circumstances today. Hence the need for silence and the deep magnifying of the Power; the turning entirely away from the appearance, and the “letting” the Impossible become the Possible by is own way. “ii have a way ye know not of”; hence, I can and will handle the manifestation. It is wonderful when you liken your desire with this glorious Immaculate Conception from the standpoint of symbology.

When you tell your desire, what do you find happens? Does anyone believe you are capable of bringing it out? Not one. Everyone knows that it cannot happen; for what you are trying to do is outside of the laws of man. Who believes that you can prosper yourself through your understanding of this overshadowing Principle? It is impossible and it cannot happen. Yet the Spirit is over-shadowing you with an endless stream of desires, all of which should find a body and form and go forth into expression, if you but followed the law of Mary.

“And Mary magnified the Lord within her.” She ceased to look to the ways and means, or to consider the almost hopeless situation that confronted her. “She pondered these things in her heart.”

The holiness of Life ! when you see, even for a moment, this glorious idea of the Immaculate Conception. Your desires are dignified with the joy of being possible because they are impossible to the reasoning of man. This very recognition of the Impossible as possible shows the first faint streaks of wisdom and acceptance in a power which is not dependent upon the limited laws of man.

The Spirit is overshadowing you now, even as it is overshadowing every other temple, body, urging upon it to open the “door” of expression and “let” ME in. The thief, the crook, the harlot, and the saint are all overshadowed with this glorious Presence, flooding them with desires, every one of which is a holy thing seeking a body and a form, but, because of the impossible nature of the desires as viewed through the “glass darkly” of the human thought, only distorted and ugly manifestations can get through. Every desire is holy and from God, and in its purest form is true and good, but, by the time it is put through the thick fog of human belief, that which comes out into manifestation is so far removed from its original urge as to be unrecognizable.

Life circumscribed by the human mind is a series of blasted hopes and desires, and yet it should be just the opposite by reason of the revelation made by Jesus.

“With God nothing is impossible.” WITH God? Or with God” Does it mean it is only true to a God separated from you or because you are with God? Do you recall that Jesus made Himself as God, and do you begin to see how the IMPOSSIBLE becomes the possible to the consciousness that is of the same substance or nature? “Awake, thou that sleepest, and Christ shall give thee light.” Jesus did not try to use a POWER to work things out on the plane of the Impossible; he found his true nature to be God, and to God all things were and are possible. The coming forth of this may have set aside or upset all the human beliefs regarding the situation, but that was of no consequence. So does an electrical storm many times set aside the best-laid plans of mice and men, and neither one nor the other can do anything about it, whether they like it or not. Jesus was not concerned with what the human thought would think or do about the situation. He made Himself as God, and from that Plane the Impossible became the Possible, and its coming into manifestation might be considered a miracle or a coincidence; it made no difference. Suffice to say, he knew that the human mind would dispose of it some way so as not to upset its own basis of life.

Presently the idea will be made clear to you. You will begin to see the plan of manifestation. The Overshadowing Presence announces that which is to take place in and through you. You have it as a desire, and the moment this is accepted in the clear Virgin mind (the mind which is not cluttered up with a lot of metaphysical teaching and beliefs) the silent announcing of its advent goes forth. The Wise Men from afar, seeing the star, come with their gifts. So with every desire that is immaculately conceived and brought forth according to the way of Jesus Christ – it draws everything to it that is necessary, instead of going out into the world seeking for its own. Every desire that you ever had, or ever will have, which is handled from this standpoint will be recognized and receive its gifts from the Wise Men. It is wonderful when the revelation of the Immaculate Conception takes place within you. You will feel the scales dropping from your eyes and the new day appearing. The old idea of getting an idea and then trying to remonstrate it, even in the face of the knowledge that it is absolutely impossible, falls by the board, and the Recognition of Presence shows forth definitely in results. “If I be lifted up [to the point of recognizing that my desire is the annunciation of the Overshadowing Spirit] I will draw all men unto me.”

Once you are lifted up, once you experience the eternal rightness of the Presence of God in and through all things, you will understand how the impossible — the Immaculate Conception, symbolically speaking — is taking place through you, and you are bringing into manifestation the Messiah which will save you from the difficulties into which the conscious-thinking has brought you.

The judging from appearances will completely fall away from you. Appearances will be ignored, just as they were by Jesus when he was bringing forth the “desire” which the Overshadowing Presence was urging him to set free. The battling with appearances only establishes them. The more attention you give to negative things, the more they increase. The case of a man with a great fear of knives kept him constantly on the qui vive, and enlarged the possibilities of something dire happening from this source. Why? Because in his attempt to rid himself of them he endowed them with all sorts of power which they did not possess. Millions of people do not think of “knives” in negative terms, and yet to this man they were the symbol of all that was evil. Other people could live with them or without them. To thousands of people they were a necessity. You begin to understand how it is that you put a thing into the negative classification and work to get rid of it. You are only endowing it with the very thing you are working against. What is true of the knife is true of the man. Some person may work against another who is keeping him out of expression, or is dominating him. He holds him in the negative position, and at the same time tries to rid himself of this negative thing. It only increases. The knife and the man are the same thing. Putting things into the negative place of manifestation does not necessarily make them evil. “One man’s meat is another man’s poison” is proof of that.

So the recommendation of Jesus, “Judge not from appearances,” carries with it something deeper than “ignoring” evil as a realty. Ignoring the appearances as Jesus did was the result of an understanding of Power. He knew that the “thing” of itself had nothing to do with the reaction you were getting from it.

And so we find Mary, the symbol of that which brings forth what is most impossible of expression, and in a way entirely outside the laws of man, showing us by the Magnifying of the Lord within just how the desires are brought forth.

All the reports of the coming event given to the unbelieving world, will only raise up a Herod of disbelief and fear, and, though it may not touch you, it will cause you to do many things which would be entirely unnecessary had you bided the counsel of Jesus Christ: “See that ye tell no man,” but “show John.”

Beloved, you are overshadowed every minute of the day and night with this great Presence, and, as the Spirit moves on the “face of the deep,” an annunciation is made, a desire is born, and this desire must come through outside the human laws. The moment you give it the recognition and the full power to express in a “way ye know not of, ” at that instant it will find its means of expression. “Neither say Lo here! or, lo there ! for, behold, the Kingdom of God is within you” — the state of the consciousness of this Presence is in you, and that is the only place it can ever be felt, known, or experienced. The moment you recognize it there, you see it in everything, and the impossible thing, which has to be born outside the offices of man, comes through in a normal and natural way without disturbing anything. It is wonderful. “Is anything hard to ME?” Answer me. Your little problem fades away. You begin to see that hitherto you approached your desires as problems to be worked out, instead of the urge of the Great Spirit overshadowing you with Love. It is wonderful.

When you come to understand this great overshadowing of the Presence you will understand the eternal coming of spring in all its symbology, and your body shall be like a garden planted by the banks of a river, bringing forth its fruit in due season. What are you worrying about? Align yourself with this glorious thing called Life and the fluttering, fitful sense of things will pass, absorbed into even and beautiful patterns of rhythm.

Your desires will no longer come under the heading of something to be “worked out”; they will be the eternal annunciation. Remembering that the sparrow is just as precious as the eagle, you do not have to worry about your desires being so trivial in the scheme of world events.

Mary did not run into the streets and tell the world that she was going to bring forth a Messiah by other than the offices of man, she “pondered these things in her heart.” The heckling and arguing of ways and means, the pro-and-con standpoint, have nothing whatsoever to do with this revelation of Jesus Christ. It is, and therefore it Is. “Flee from that man whose breath is in his nostrils” is a good thing to remember always. “Agree with thine adversary quickly.” What difference does it make to you what he “knows,” thinks, or believes about the Truth? Let him have his way — don’t argue, don’t expose, don’t talk, don’t tell the glorious annunciation which has been made unto you. “My sheep hear My voice.” Do you?

Be still — even at this holy moment you are over-shadowed by the PRESENCE — it is urging upon you the new idea. Your desire is a holy thing, a thing of joy, a glorious inner revelation — an Immaculate Conception. “Praise God from whom all (not some) blessings flow.”

 

Walter C. Lanyon