Unity Church of Castro Valley
Sunday Message for June 6, 2010
Mind is the Master Power that Makes & Molds
It's June already - we are almost half way through this year. This month we will be talking about the Power of Imagination. Imagination is one of the faculties that God has created within you. It is represented by the color 'light blue' and by the disciple Nathanael Bartholomew.
So what we want to learn and practice this weeka is what the poets talk about - our ability to picture or visualize ideas in our minds. We need to use this power of imagination carefully and very responsibly in shaping a self-image, home, body, career, relationship and worldview.
MY POWER OF IMAGINATION
So; let's explore the tremendous ability or power with which we have been gifted that we call our "imagination."
James Allen wrote this poem called "As A Man Thinketh"
Mind is the Master-power that moulds and makes,
And Man is Mind, and evermore he takes
The tool of Thought, and shaping what he wills,
Brings forth a thousand joys, a thousand ills,
He thinks in secret, and it comes to pass:
Environment is but his looking glass.b
We start from the principle and premise that we are already "the image of God." We are to express and manifest this divine image of us held in the mind of God. It is not a matter of making up long lists of what I want to have and then using mental science (name it and claim it) to get them. We are working with spiritual science in the Christ consciousness to demonstrate the higher, more abundant and peaceful world.
If we truly knew and believed the Truth of ourselves, that we are the image of God; we would be manifesting peace in this world. So we really do need to spread this Truth to more and more people.
(2 Corinthians 3:18) "And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit."c
As our thought is opened and we behold the image of eternity within ourselves, we are changed by this image into a newness of Life. This is accomplished by the Spirit of God, or the Holy Spirit.
Ralph Waldo Emerson tells us that we are inlets and might become outlets to the Divine Nature. We are already inlets, but we must consciously become outlets. A mystic, Plotinus, tells us that the upper part of the soul is merged with God and the lower part with time and conditions. He says that when the soul looks to God alone for its inspiration, its work is done better - even though its back is turned to its work. And Jesus tells us to seek the Kingdom of God first and that all else will be added unto us.
The image of God is imprinted on each one of us and we all reflect the Divine Glory to some degree. In fact, we are part of the Divine Glory. When our thought is turned from limitation to the greater glory, we then reflect that glory.
Because what we know; we create. But we have forgotten the Truth of ourselves, and we picture ourselves as less than perfect - and therefore we create a less than perfect world. Our world, our body, our relationships, our finances are all a mirror of our mind. We imagined it, and believed in it, and we created it.
If this is not good news, then it's time we used our imagination in a different way.
IMAGINATION IS OUR ABILITY TO FORM THOUGHTS & IMAGES.
Imagination is our ability to form thoughts and images - it is our picturing ability. Charles Fillmore said: "Faith is the perceiving power of mind linked with a power [imagination] to shape and mold substance." Substance is the "body of God," mind essence, energy, spiritual raw material out of which all visible and invisible is composed in an "Einsteinian" universe where all is energy, existing at various rates of vibration.
We don't will to live; we live because we have life and cannot help living. We didn't make Life and we can't change It, but we can use It, and the use of Life is through the imagination; because this faculty has, at its roots the very well-spring of life and action.
Imagination carries with it feeling and conviction, which means life and action. It awakens within us all the inner forces of nature and stirs into action latent powers which otherwise would never come to the surface. Will power may be necessary in its place, as a directive agency, but as a creative agency, it is non-existent. To feel that we have to will something to happen casts doubt into the face of Creation, and pre-supposes that Life is not Self-Existent and Self-Propelling.
Imagination taps the very roots of Being and utilizes the same Power that brought the world forth from chaos. It says in the book of Hebrews, The worlds were framed by the Word of God.d Imagination is the power of the word, while will is the directive agency, indicating the purpose for which the word is spoken. Man reproduces the power to create, and in his own life, controls his destiny through the activity of his word. This word cannot be willed, but it can be imagined or imaged forth into expression.
Whatever we can imagine is the mold into which God substance flows and congeals into physical form - in just the shape and color that we have imagined.
SHAPES AND COLORS
We can pour water into bottles of various shapes and colors to help illustrate how this works. The bottles are like our imagination that shapes and molds the "substance" of the water.
If we pour water into a round, blue bottle; the water conforms to the round shape and appears to be blue. If we pour water into a red bottle; the water appears to be red and conforms to whatever shape that bottle may be.
Substance takes on the shape or pattern or "self-image" or "mind-set" into which it flows. Your life experience is formed out of your "self-image" - not the other way around. If you are convinced that life is hard and that you always get the bad breaks - then that is exactly what you will get to have. If, on the other hand, you think that life is a joyful experience, then you will get to have that.
We don't start being a shaper of Divine Energy now that we know about it. Rather, we are always doing the shaping. We are always the shaper of our life, home, career, business, school, marriage, face, body, consciousness, recovery, and world. We draw upon or mediate the God Energy and mold it by our power of imagination. We image, visualize, form, make up, claim, conceive, dream, picture, and feel. It is "seeing with our mind's eye." Imagination combines closely with our faith power to bring forth into the three dimensional realm of our life what we look for (perceive) and believe. Whatever we perceive and conceive and believe in, we can achieve.
FORMATION PROCESS: PERCEIVE --> CONCEIVE --> BELIEVE = ACHIEVE
But the Important point is: Achieve what? The other Powers (wisdom, order, love, life) are extremely necessary in this creative process to guide what we choose to make and become. A person could perceive that drug deals make a lot of quick money, and he has the ability to do that. He can conceive "I can be the biggest dealer of drugs in the city and I believe it" = achievement of that goal. Any goal has the possibility of being achieved, but that is not spiritual growth and accomplishment. It is just goal achieving, which may have nothing whatsoever to do with Christ consciousness and spiritual development. Make sure your desires, goals, and motivations are guided by wisdom, love, life, order and all the other spiritual powers. - or you might get off on the wrong road like these three:
In 1665 a man named Solomon Eccles was jailed in London's Bridewell Prison for striding through Smithfield Market stark naked, carrying a pan of blazing sulfur on his head, and prophesying doom and destruction.
Solomon's imagination may have been a little out of whack.
Then in 1874 Charles Taze Russell, founder of the sect that became Jehovah's Witnesses, concluded that the Second Coming had already taken place. He declared that people had 40 years, or until 1914, to enter his faith or be destroyed. Later he modified the date to "very soon after 1914."
Over the years many other date-setters have come along. Each one has been wrong. It makes me think of a minister in Germany named Michael Stiftell. Based on his study of Revelation, Stiftell proclaimed that the world would end on October 18, 1533. When it didn't happen, Stiftell was given a thrashing by the townspeople. Not a bad idea.
So make sure you are guided by ALL your spiritual powers.
THE SCISSORS OF OUR MIND
Unity calls our faculty of imagination, our "mental scissors." This is how we "cut out" from the Universal substance or energy the shapes and form of "my life," "my body," "my manifestations."
To get your mental scissors in shape, you might try using your physical scissors to make a treasure map on paper. Just cut out pictures and words from magazines that are representative of the life you want to create. It will help you to focus your imagining ability in the right direction.
THE DISCIPLE NATHANAEL BARTHOLOMEW PORTRAYS THE POWER OF IMAGINATION
The disciple Nathanael Bartholomew portrays the power of Imagination. Suné Richards writes, "The quality of imagination represented in Bartholomew was the divine 'imaging' quality of creativeness through which spiritual ideas are made manifest. When Philip found Nathanael sitting under the fig treee, and told him he had found the Messiah, Nathanael's first reply was: 'Can anything good come out of Nazareth?'f Nathanael was one of the first six men chosen as a disciple by Jesus, who recognized him as a man of vision and imagination. Philip bade him, 'Come and see,' and when he had come to Christ, and was convinced, he declared 'Thou art the Son of God; thou art King of Israel.'"g
When Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him, Jesus said, "Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!"h Nathanael was surprised that this man knew what was in his heart and asked, "Where did you get to know me?" Jesus answered, "I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you."i
A fig tree grows to a height of 15 - 20 feet and the spread of its thick branches can be 25 - 30 feet. Commonly the fig tree grows overshadowing wells so that there is shade and water in the one place. Often it was the shade of the fig tree which was a man's private room for meditation and prayer; and that is why Nathanael was amazed that Jesus had marked him under the fig tree. Nathanael knew that Jesus had not physically seen him hidden by the tree - but had used another type of sight.
So Nathanael came; and Jesus could see into his heart. "Here," said Jesus, "is a genuine Israelite, a man in whose heart there is no guile."j That was a tribute that any devout Israelite would recognize.
(Psalms 32:2) "Happy are those to whom the Lord imputes no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit."k (Isaiah 53:9) "... he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth."l
Nathanael was surprised that anyone could give a verdict like that on so short an acquaintance, and he demanded how Jesus could possibly know him. Jesus told him that he had already seen him under the fig-tree. No doubt Nathanael had been meditating and praying under the fig tree. And now he felt that Jesus had seen into the very depths of his heart.
Nathanael probably said to himself: "Here is the man who understands my dreams! Here is the man who knows my prayers! Here is the man who has seen into my most intimate and secret longings, longings which I have never even dared put into words! Here is the man who can translate the inarticulate sigh of my soul! This must be God's promised anointed one and no other."
It may be that Jesus smiled. He quoted the old story of Jacob at Bethel who had seen the golden ladder leading up to heaven and said, "Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these." And he said to him, "Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man"m
So use your imagination to take you One Step Further in life:
| Do more than exist | LIVE |
| Do more than touch | FEEL |
| Do more than look | OBSERVE |
| Do more than hear | LISTEN |
| Do more than listen | UNDERSTAND |
| Do more than think | REFLECT |
| Do more than just talk | SAY SOMETHING |
What the world needs is spiritual conviction, followed by spiritual experience.n I would rather see a student of this teaching prove its Principle than to have him repeat all the words of wisdom that have ever been uttered.
The practice of Truth is personal to each, and in the long run no one can live our life for us. To each is given what he needs and the gifts of heaven come alike to all. How we shall use these gifts is all that matters! To hold one's thought steadfastly to the constructive, to that which endures, and to the Truth, may not be easy in a rapidly changing world, but to the one who makes the attempt much is guaranteed.
The essence of healing - and of all true religious philosophy - is an inner realization of the Presence of Perfection within and without. It is the hope of heaven, the Voice of God proclaiming: "I am that which thou art; thou art that which I am."
a Twelve Powers In You Revs David & Gay Lynn Williamson and Rbt Knapp, M.D.
b As A Man Thinketh James Allen
c 2 Corinthians 3:18
d Hebrews 11:3
e John 1:45
f John 1:46
g John 1:49
h John 1:47
i John 1:48
j John 1:47
k Psalms 32:2
l Isaiah 53:9
m John 1: 50-51
n The Science of Mind Text Ernest Holmes
--------------------
