Resist Not (Part 1)

A MOTHER admonishing her son not to pull the cat’s tail was surprised to receive the answer, “I am not pulling her tail—- I am just holding it; she is doing the pulling.”

Would you say that the cat was causing her own misery? She was doing a lot of struggling and resisting, at any rate.

We are told that Jacob struggled all night with the angel. Apparently things were getting pretty serious for him, but in the morning he loosed itand let it go. How strange that he should struggle with something he only had to “loose.” But he was struggling in the “night” and he loosed it in the“morning.”

We are told to “resist not evil,” and then we are told to “resist evil and it will flee.” What are we to do? Who knows? God. Hence the wisdom of following the command, “If any lack wisdom, let him ask of God.”

Where are you going to find this God? In Heaven? And where is Heaven?

So much teaching has told us about God in Heaven—in the realm of Spirit, unseen, unknown, inaudible. Until we take God out of this Spiritual Heaven and bring Him down to earth, we cannot see the “word made flesh” or the materialization of Spirit which Jesus came to explain and show.

There is, in the mind of the average person, as great a gulf between spirit and ‘matter as there is between Dives and Lazarus. To many, they are as unmixable as oil and water, and so the hopelessness of any presentassistance, in a tangible way. What a mockery it is to repeat the beautiful promise,

“If ye shall ask any thing in My name, I will do it,” when the belief is chock full of ideas about God in Heaven and you on earth, an incalculable distance apart.

Until you can see God in the flesh you cannot expect to experience the beneficent results of Prayer in anything but a mental way. Until you begin to see that matter is merely Spirit slowed down to a point of visibility, and that there is no separation between them, you cannot enjoy the Presence of this Power.

You may be denying that there is any matter. Then you are denying your own manifestation out of the picture, and by what authority will you deny God the presence of flesh, in which to clothe His own Word? “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” And by what manner of means can the Spirit search the joints and marrow if you have no joints and marrow? “Awake, thou that sleepest” and see the Oneness of this Presence in which you “live, move, breathe, and have your being,” and which in like manner lives, moves, breathes, and has Its being in you. Without the manifestation there would be nothing. Without the Spirit back of the manifesta­tion it would disintegrate. The two which God joined together are Soul and Body. God and His manifestation are inseparable and are One.

Presently you begin to see how Jesus brought into visibility the works we call miracles. He perceived them in Heaven, and then materialized what he perceived by embodying the Word. Whatsoever thing you conceive as possible to this Inner, and Only, will come into manifestation. I am not speaking of the things you wish, hope, desire, to come into manifestation. I speak of whatsoever things you conceive as possible to the Father within you; those things can and will embody themselves in thematerialized Spirit called matter.

When the command goes out, “Stretch forth your hand,” if you “try” to do this, you fail; but if you do not try to do it, and perform it in consciousness, the hand follows the con­sciousness without interference. It is glorious to begin to work with the Father instead of with the slow movements of matter. What you do in consciousness (now that you under­stand materialized spirit and the spiritualized matter) you instantly do in the flesh. “Whatsoever things you ask, believing ye shall receive,” is another way of putting it.

When you begin to work after this manner, then you find that “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work”; that the finding this out in consciousness completes the thing before the flesh takes up the mechanics of bringing it into visibility.

Coming after the way of man, you “try” to open your blind eyes, but the weight of so many beliefs and theories, which are backed up with so much proof, is too great for you, and you cannot. Opening your eyes in consciousness, or performing the whole affair within, is accompanied by an opening of the physical with perfect vision.

Just what do you think God can do for you?

The struggling all night with the problem only antagonizes the situation and wears you out. We cannot enter into the Kingdom by any other door than the I Am, the Christ—­Father. “I Am the door of the sheep-fold.” Enter in at this door and stretch forth your hand in consciousness, or stretch forth your consciousness, and you will receive the blessing of what the world calls a perfect healing.

“I Am that I Am”; at last the I Am surrounded by the barnacles of human history, race, creed, colour, family, begins to realize that it is the “I Am” of which Jesus spoke when He discovered the Christ within. “Ye must decrease; I must increase.” The belief and the considerations of “John Smith” must decrease, must be absorbed into the Godhead, must become one with the I Am, until the Soul can say definitely, “I Am that I Am.”

The last vestige of separateness passes away, and the Father and Son are one. The Son has at last reached home (he is one with the Power from which all things flow into expression).

The I Am of “John Smith,” so feeble and so enmeshed in the snare of human life, can do nothing, and yet that very I Am is told to do all things. When the reflection realizes that it is part of, and one with, that which is casting the reflection, then will it be freed of the hypnotism that it can do anything of itself. It is a strange symbolical returning to Eden—to theOneness and Wholeness of Life. At first it is almost sacrilegious to say “I Am that I Am.” When Jesus uttered it and made himself as God, the human thought wanted to destroy him. Why? Because it misunderstood the Power and thought he would personalize it, and make himself into a little individual god, with terrific dominion.

Somewhere in your make-up is all that is required to fill all the empty measures of your being. Even though it be so small as a grain of mustard, it is able to evolve into a tree. What a glorious illustration! No wonder you are commanded to “stir up the gift of God which is in thee.”

Most of the seekers of Truth believe that in some vague or strange way they have to create the “gift” or in some way act as a sub-creator in the Kingdom. After a few years of attempt­ing to “create” something out of nothing, they give up. The heart sinks into the Slough of Despair and the heaviness of futility throws its ugly cloak about it. Putting forth the best effort to know God, trying with all your might to find Him, and yet not coming within the remotest light of the Kingdom, is enough to make the heart heavy. And yet the mistaken point of attack has been responsible for all this heartbreak. The gift that you have been seeking from without is already within. Hidden away in the veils of Conscious-Thinking lies the precious pearl. You cannot see it, and will not even look for it, until you come to the point of recognition that the gift is already there.

The human mind looking upon the tiny seed and the three drops of oil casts them aside and seeks greater forces but fords none. Man goes, as did the children in Maeterlinck’s Blue Bird, through endless labyrinths of matter and mind, looking for that which is already within. Through his glass darkly the symbolical blue bird is black.

The tendency of the human mind is to discount what it has, and to reach out for something else. The gift that is within you is your starting point. Do you believe that you have this “gift”? If not, why go farther? And, if so, why not go on into expression? You are at the beginning of the new day, because, once the “Gift” has been recognized within you, there is a rest from struggling and fighting to make it appear. Already the “letting go” causes the frightful pain of futility to subside. A new light begins to break through. “Stir up the gift of God which is in thee,” is a revelation as much as a command, and it is filled with light and illumination.

Once you begin to feel that the gift is there, it is as precious as the message which came to Mary, announcing the glorious coming event. No matter how deeply you are buried in the “dump heap of human belief,” your problem is only as old as the last thought about it. With the snapping of the film on the screen the end of the tragedy definitely comes, as far as the screen is concerned; no marks are left, no sign of the suffering, no scars of the battle. With the acceptance of the “gift” as something already there, instead of something that you have to create, you will begin to “borrow measures not a few,” because the something within indicates the need of such.

“God is not mocked”; the Power which you “mock” or imitate or refuse to recognize fulfils itself irrespective of man. “Stir up the gift of God that is within thee.” You are the possessor of this gift, which is enough to fill every measure that is empty in your life. You are mocking God when you try to be a “creator,” for there is only One, and the record states that the “Creation” was completed in six days—found to be “good and very good.” What are you going to do? Create it all anew or tear away the veils from your eyes and see the real creation, as it stands in all its glory? It all sounds very much like poetry, and so it is to those who are seeing it from the outside, or trying to argue how, when, and why it can or cannot come into visibility. “I Am that I Am” finally puts the seal of silence on the lips, for the precious thing, the “Gift,” which you have suddenly glimpsed, must be held in secrecy.

Again the glorious reminder is given unto you—the sole purpose of God is Revelation, not the overcoming of Problems. Recognizing the giftwhich is within you will be your starting point to the heights where this Revelation is visible. The veils are falling from your eyes and you are seeingthe Power face to face instead of through a glass darkly.

The non-resistance of the awakened soul is not a supine waiting for something to happen. It is the “waiting patiently” on the Power to flow forth into manifestation.

When Peter was thrown into prison, had he judged from appearances he would have had a prison problem to solve, a satisfying of all sorts of civil and political laws. It is possible that this could have been done. It would have taken time and influence. But he stayed upon the consciousness offreedom which he found in Spirit. The I Am of Peter became that I Am of God which knew no bounds or limits. It is reported an earthquake set him free. It does not make any difference what it takes to bring the Word into manifestation. That is not your concern. The Power has a way ye know not of, never working twice in the same manner, so you may rest the matter of manifestation with that Power. And now we see the I Am of Peter which was thrown into prison with all sorts of laws laid heavily upon it, invited to come out into freedom. His captors did not want him any more. Why? When the human mind comes in near proximity with the manifest power of God, it can conveniently forget and set aside its most invulnerable law. It will not stand on ceremony, no matter what a stickler it is for carrying a thing out to the last letter. “I have a way ye know not of.” Only recognize the gift of God that is within you and your prison house, no matter what you call it, will also experience its earthquake, and you will be invited to come out into a full manifestation of the freedom. Do you begin to understand how it was that the flowers and plants were already in the fields and yet there were no men to till the soil and no rain? Do you begin to see that the I Am that finally recognizes itself as “that I Am” can and does believe the unbelievable?

The resisting and the pulling away from conditions only tighten the manifestation about you, and cause all sorts of pain and despair. “Loose him and let him go” is more than just a Bible phrase.

Do nothing from the outside. “My Father [where is He?] worketh hitherto, and I work.” Recognize first the gift within yourself, perceive the working of this Spiritual Father within, and your hands will do what they have been incapable of doing. You say things you have been wholly incapable of saying. Your little message, your little three drops, your handful of meal, will become the Message of God, the ocean of oil (joy), storehouses full of meal (substance). “Look again”; the fields are white. Do you see? Do you understand what is given to you—not is going to be given to you, but is already given unto you? “Stir up the Gift of God that is within thee.” You have it already. Its manner of manifestation is in the hands of the Father.

The overcoming of habits is difficult. Everything is suggested—hypnotism, will-power, trying to cultivate another habit. All of these may obtain certain results, but at best can be only temporary. A habit that is merely held out of mind by will-power may at any moment catch up with you. If you have to avoid in order not to indulge an evil, you are not safe. The call of your “love,” whatsoever it may be, sounds constantly on the strings of desire, like the waves of a raging sea beating against the sand walls of your castle.

Then comes the Light that you do not have to overcome the habit. Your stirring up of the gift of God which is within you, and your contemplation of this gift, will furnish ways and means of releasing you from the habit. It will then be finished and done. No matter whether you be associated longer with the symbol of your habit or not, the sting has been taken from it, and it is neither good nor bad; it is nothing. It is amazing how you take the poison out of the habit by removing your attention from it. It is as if you removed the poison from a deadly cobra. The fear of it is gone. Do not run away from your habits and hide your head from the appearances of them in the manner of the ostrich. There is no protection from a thing because you hide your eyes from it. “Stand and see.” The empty measures are filling even as you are contemplating the gift. It is wonderful ! Resist not.

“Stir up the gift of God which is within you”—now.

Your gift holds all that your heart has dreamed of. It holds Heaven for you. It urges upon you, “Behold I stand at the door and knock, and if anyman” (I do not care who he may be—if “any man”—you are any man) will open unto Me, I will come in to him and sup with him and he with Me.”The “silent” knocking at the door, the three drops of oil, the handful of meal—they are all so insignificant, even as is the stir of life in the egg. But what a mighty force they become when they are once recognized. The “tiny” gift you have is sufficient to bring it to pass.

The Voice speaks in parables, but it speaks a secret doctrine to those who are listening. “Ho, every man”—that includes you; do you hear?—“let him come to the rivers of life and drink freely.”

Nearer and nearer the recognition is coming unto you. So many weights have been disposed of. The heavy task of trying to create the God urge or Power, and the terrific task of finding suitable ways and means for it to express, have fallen away, and you stand with your gift, ready for expression.

“Look,” says the servant, “we are about to be destroyed.” Sure enough the way of life is blocked with a thousand armed warriors and horses rushing madly upon you.

“Look,” says the prophet, and the mountains are filled with a host of power.

The I Am must become one with the I AM; it must become that I AM if it expects to make use of that which the I AM has shown to it.

“Look”—the barren fields; we must plant.

“Look”—the fields are white. “Thrust in the sickle.”

Do you begin to see why we practice the non-resistance, and why we begin to see beyond the veils of the conscious­ thinking.

“Look”—the desert!

“Look”—the garden!

The Gift of God that is within you will give you the ability to “look again” after you have looked and reported nothing worthy of mention.

The secret of Life is being revealed to you. You may go your way in peace.

 

Walter C. Lanyon