The Past

“GOD requires the Past.” This might be said in a half-dozen more popular ways. For in­stance, if you throw a log of wood on a fire the en­tire “past” of the wood as acorn, tree and wood must go in order that the new manifestation of heat and light may take place. While this illustration is entire­ly unsuitable to an act of God, yet will it cause you to understand that if the new consciousness is to take place in you, the PAST must be consumed. There is nothing to salvage, for there is nothing in it but arecord of heart-breaking failures or temporary suc­cesses, of losses and unhappiness, or joys which have become memories which may bless but more often burn.

“God requires the past.” Do you want to release it, or do you want to save your “darling from the flames,” and have the new manifestation also? This question should be answered before you ask for the new con­sciousness. Of course, in reality, you can get nothing while you hold onto the old idea, and so you “ask and receive not, for ye ask amiss that ye may consume it upon your lusts.” The lust of personal recognition. The asking for spiritual power in order to SHINE as a great personality with great spiritual understanding. The lust after spiritual recognition shows that the old consciousness with its past has not been given over to God.

It is not strange that at this stage of things there is a sudden pause, for straight is the way and narrow is the road that leadeth unto salvation. This straight­ness is not in the old sense of the word, but is a nat­ural short cut. You have found out, in mathematics, that a “straight line is the shortest distance between two points.” And it is narrow, for it admits of ab­solutely nothing but God. And this “narrowness” is Infinity, a strange but paradoxically true statement. So narrow is it that no personal opinions or beliefs, no systems, no persons, places, or things have anything to do with it.

So wide is the road that leads to destruction that it covers the entire mental thought-taking field. It is filled with uncertainty, and is constantly asking the question, “Is this He that should come, or look we for another?” If you still have to ask this question, it is because you are looking for a man or a system of ideas to get you into Heaven, and you are on the broad highway which is filled with dissenting voices. Each group is talkily building a Tower of Babel (bab­ble), every man, woman and child being sure that hisis the only way to enter Heaven; and in this very ef­fort to build a tower to Heaven he shows he has failed to grasp the truth that he is already inHeaven and is going nowhere but into a new state of consciousness. He is entering into the “flesh” which has experienced the change expressed by “Yet in my flesh shall I see God,” and which is conscious of dimensions it for­merly knew not.

The broad highway wherein every sect is building a tower to heaven is filled with confusion. Each workman on the tower begins to develop his ownidea and puts his own words into the mouth of the leader, until the whole thing becomes such a jumble that it collapses. The self-opinionated workmen run from the falling towers, and immediately begin to explain all the deficiencies of their materials. Those who have been loudest in praise are now strongest in condemnation. Then the old human thinking is off on another chase. A new Messiah has come in an­other person, fabulous stories of “demonstrations” are circulated, and these are greedily eaten up by the seeker. He immediately magnifies them beyond all reason and starts to build a new tower to heaven. Every last living builder is working for one sole pur­pose: i. e. to be first into the Kingdom of Heaven, and to get a pat on the head for his noble work. That is one reason why all such, building towers to heaven, would fail anyway. They are out for personal ag­grandizement, or for “getting” something to satisfy their greedy human selves.

Any one still looking for a new Messiah is still on the broad highway, still building towers to heaven, in­stead of being in the “narrow” way of Infinity. In­stead of recognizing that the Kingdom of Heaven is within, he clings to the belief that he must make a temple to it. A temple “made with hands,” which must pass away. His best judgment of the success of his work is how many people can he draw into his temple, or how large and impressive the place, from the outside. All such temples made by hands willpass away, and the builder will be defeated, hurt, and turned awry, until he grasps this simple teaching of Jesus, and throws into the flames of Spirit the entire bundle of junk he has taken on.

The temple that man is to discover, or have re­vealed to him, is the one “not made with hands, and eternal in the heavens (consciousness).” The temple that already is heaven here and NOW is that which has eternally been; and all this symbology unravels into the simple law of accepting, unequivocally and without reservation, the revelation o f the Master, Jesus Christ.

So filled with joy of this discovery is man, that he is ready to “give the past” to God. In other words he draws a water-tight door between himself and that which has gone before. He exchanges the limited per­sonal sense of Life for the impersonal, and this im­mediately re-personalizes itself, free from the “past” or the history of the evil against which he has put up such a losing fight all these years. “If you lose your life you shall find it.” If you lose this pygmy person­al life in the infinite, then shall you find your real life, which offers the “temple not made with hands” in which to dwell and in which to make manifest the new light of revelation.

If you suddenly experience what it is to lose this little personal, struggling sense of things for the great impersonal life, you will know you have given up nothing when you allow God to “require the past.^,‘ It is like giving up the cocoon when you have fin­ished with it, and have no longer any use for some­thing which records the history of your past existence asa grub. Do you see that what is required of you is only something with which you are entirely through? You are not asked to give up a single thing worth anything to you. You are simply awakened to the fact that you have been hanging on to empty shells (which you have outgrown and at the same time trying to be rid of the bondage they imposed upon you. This is surely the house divided against itself and doomed to fall.

The same idea is expressed in “Cast your burdens on ME and I will sustain you”—the moment you cast the past onto the shoulders of ME it is disintegrated, and presently is no more. Do you see the difference between the new consciousness which comes into be­ing when you have allowed God to “require the past,” and the old idea that you still had some “work” to do on the hulk of your past? Up to the very moment you discover this, you work with past conditions which are with you only because you keep feeding them with the one thing they can live on — your thought. Thought is the life of all evil. It sustains and keeps it going, and the whole of your past, which is really so unimportant to another, is only kept in place by your thought. Memory of an accident, and not the accident itself, is responsible for the effects of that accident today, no matter how much your humanmind may fight against this.

Of course this is only true in the Jesus Christ reve­lation wherein you are “born again,” and “must be born” again. Breaking the thoughteam to the past will cause the past to disintegrate. Already it is noth­ing but a memory to you. So much of it is important only to you, and if you could not remember it, it would lose that importance. The moment it is dropped from your consciousness it is dropped from the only place it ever existed. You think you have thousands of testimonies against you, but the mo­ment you have dropped the past in consciousness, it is gone. Where are thy accusers?” There are none as soon as the idea is dropped from the consciousness of the one accused. This does not bespeak license, butliberty, freedom from the bondage of the past which you have bound to yourself like a terrible weight of oppression. As long as you thought it was real, it seemed to be there—but suddenly it is dropped from you and then it is gone for ever.

The human mind imagines the past is much more important to others than it really is, and in some strange way imagines that all other people have to do is to remember the evils it has done. Examine a little into this. Your vanity will get a shock when you find that you are not that important. As a human being you are going to pass away, you can last only so long, that is if you do not bring about the Union of Body and Soul. You cannot b_y“knowing the truth” hold this old structure into place. It is a record of the past, a history of all the evil, an account of all the fear, age, limitations, disease, etc., etc., that you have had during your lifetime in this body, unenlight­ened and uninspired.

How marvelous it is, this “requiring the past” when you SEE it. When you suddenly understand that you are the only one holding the past into place, what a sudden cleansing and freedom comes when you “loose it and let it go,” and enter into the New Day. You will lose nothing that is real and will be able, for the first time, to go free into the new day, for the shackles which have bound you all these years have been the hindrance that has kept you from your heav­en-on-earth. Awake thou that sleepest and Christ shall give thee light—awake and arise from the dead! Do you hear? Yes, the light is breaking over you as you read, and as I write I am standing in lovely agree­ment with you. I am speaking this to YOU even though I do not know you in the flesh. I AM now sending it along to you, and one day you will come to this recording of the Word, and everything will burst into light. A light so bright as to make mid­night as noonday. You will see for the first time what the Scriptures say unto the Churches (temple bodies), and you will pause a moment and praise GOD from whom ALL Blessings flow.

Do you begin to experience the automatic power which is even at this moment operating in you? We have automatically — you and I — made to descend divine blessings—the All-Blessings; and everything is being flooded with them. And the littered, futile past is being loosened from its old mooring and is about to float away into oblivion, and naught is left but blessings which you automatically share with everything you consciously touch. You are “breaking bread” at this instant with everything, for the “for­mer things are passed away, they shall not be remem­bered nor come into mind any more.” It is so wonder­ful—all the old heavy stumps of hatred, resentment, injustice and the like, are gone for ever. Even the memory of them is passed, and you are standing in the light—yourself the Being of Light. Do you hear-see? Do you sense the whole lovely automatic unity thatis possible when “Two shall agree” as we are agree­ing at this moment?

I am recording this for YOU. I AM is speaking unto you, for the Voice is not mine (the recorder’s) but His—who hath sent me into expression. It is the Voice which is even at this moment precipitating the flood of blessings on you. Suddenly, you are out in it—the life-giving rain and downpour of substance. It is permeating every cell of your body, your con­sciousness, your house, your world. “Heaven and earth are filled with Thee.” The glory of the Lord is filling the house, and is shining forth from your “temple” with such a power of illumination that everything that “touches” you at this high moment will be healed—healed without knowing the “flesh” source from which it comes.

From now on you will begin the automatic process of revelation. At the mere mention of the WORD of Jesus Christ a glorious vista of new joy will be yours. This is spoken to you from Spirit, from the Father within me to the Father within you, and it is so. There is LIFE everlasting in the WORD, and it is this touch of LIFE everlasting which shall release it­self to you, now that you have SEEN what is the WORD of Jesus Christ. It will come into being with such bliss and joy and such freshness and freedom that you will never again think of “words” but the WORD of Jesus Christ, and you will never again hear the WORD without experiencing a great burst of thanksgiving. You live “not by bread alone but by every WORD that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” You drink of the WORD and you breakfast with the WORD, and you are suddenly about your “Father’s business” because you have given up the tedious business which had to do with the worn-out past you had been carrying along with you, lo, thesemany years.

“God requires the past”—can you give it to Him? Are you ready to leave the husks which you have out­grown and which are tiresome to others who have had to put up with them because human fate so decreed? Are you ready to discard the whole thing and “Come to me?” The first time you wanted to come you thought too much about it, and on the think­plane of things you cannot “walk on the water,” so you floundered and sank. But you are at the point of again asking ME, and I AM at the point of again say­ing, “Come,” and this time you will make it to the boat of realization. For you are not again going to descend to the PAST with its laws of fear and evil, but will keep your Mind stayed on ME and this time you will reach the BOAT.

Keeping your mind stayed on ME is not such a task when you have let “God require the past,” for there is not a lot of “unfinished business”—hate, envy, get­ting even, etc.—to take care of. You have nothing to go back to, for the former things have already passed away, and they shall “not be remembered nor come into mind any more.”

Yes, I know that the BOAT of manifestation or materialization will be reached many times now that your mind is stayed on ME. Whenever you ask, I say, “Come,” and if you can see the light in this you will always reach the boat without help. You will reach the manifestation over and over again, and with in­creasing ease and joy. You will discover a new sense of well-being stealing over you, a new feeling of freedom and peace, for the great weight of the past is no more, and you are free.

“I shall remember your iniquities no more.” “Though your sins be as scarlet they shall be white as snow.” The past with its hate, criticism, poverty, envy and disease shall be no more. God has required and received the Past.

 

Walter C. Lanyon