Showing results by narrator "Jim Wentland" in All Categories

Our teaching has a very great deal of mysticism in it and it should be more completely developed with the realization that mysticism is not mystery just as intuition is not psychism. Half of the world and three-fourths of the world in our field, who should know better, mistake intuition for psychism and think if a person gets a hunch they must be very spiritual so most people mistake mysticism for mystery.

I love Laotzu! That is the reason I offer another interpretative translation. I want you to appreciate this wise and kindly old man, and come to love him.

Demonstrating the spiritual principle of life is a process of convincing the mentality of an inner and ever-present good, reality is already perfect. God is always God and good is never evil. It is only as we turn, with our whole consciousness to the light that we receive light. It is impossible, while we keep ourselves covered with darkness, for the light to shine on us.

I have felt the unseen hand, been guided by it, and felt the kind but steady urge in the direction which it knew to be best, though my intellect failed to see the beauty of the road toward which the hand was directing me.

This Book may justly challenge the first place for antiquity, from all of the Books in the World, being written some hundred of years before Moses' time, as I shall endeavour to make good.

Friends, I want to talk to you about some of the secret powers hidden within each one of us, powers that are transcendent of our ordinary faculties. We are so used to thinking that we are made up of flesh and blood and bone and hair that we lose sight of the more subtle powers of the mind. Yet, throughout the ages there have been people who have had transcendent powers that go beyond the bounds of physical laws, as we understand them.

When Jesus said, "It is done unto you as you believe", he not only announced a law of faith, he explained how it works. If there is a law of faith, it is right where you are, and it will operate like any other law in nature.

All things respond to the call of rejoicing; all things gather where life is a song. This is the message of the new order, the new life, and the new time. It is the golden text of the great gospel of human sunshine. It is the central truth of that sublime philosophy of existence, which declares that the greatest good is happiness, and that heaven is here and now.

Friends, you and I are interested in learning how to use our minds and in the most effective way. We want to know how to think in such a manner that our lives will be happy and successful. And learning how to think rightly is like learning how to use any other set of tools.

Blake asked the question: "Why is it that the Bible is more entertaining and instructive than any other book? Is it not because it is addressed to the Imagination, which is spiritual sensation, and only immediately to the understanding, or reason?" The one book, called the Bible, is composed of 66 books. Take this challenge. Study each book as though the depth of your soul is speaking to your surface mind. As though the ineffable Imagination is speaking to the human Imagination, and not to your immediate understanding or reasoning mind.

Friends, if God is all there is, it follows that the spirit within us must be some part of the divine being. When we were born into this world we were accompanied by a spiritual presence which is the real self. But this spiritual self is pretty much an unknown guest to all of us.

Down through the ages, men have been accustomed to call that to them was unknown, unexplained, or incomprehensible - a mystery. There has been a tendency to wrap veils of mystery around natural phenomena, around the causes of daily experience in the lives of men, and even around God.

Did you know that you are a wonderful person in your own right, that life has set a unique stamp of individuality on you, and that no one else can ever take your place in the scheme of things? No two persons have identical thumb prints, no two blades of grass are alike, no two leaves of trees, no two snowflakes are ever identical.

Today I want us to build a ladder of personal achievement, with 10 steps in it, steps that I believe will help us to live happily and successfully and in so doing, help us to help others in the glorious game of living.

Today I want to tell you the story of a beautiful young woman who proved in her own experience that there is one divine presence in everything and in everyone. This is the story of a young school teacher who learned how to solve her problems through meditation and prayer.

What is truly meant by consciousness, or what is the principle back of that term? There are many ideas which cannot be expressed properly for lack of words, or lack of terms. The word consciousness is really derived from the Latin root scio, to know, and con, together; so the word consciousness from the derivative meaning would signify: to know together.

There is a creative urge back of everything you do - an urge to express life, joy and happiness, an urge to reach out to everything that lives, as though you belong in the universe in which you live; to be one with it and have an enthusiastic zest for living. Man's nature is such that it is necessary for him to express life, to come into the fulfillment of joy and happiness and he is disconsolate until this happens.

We are all on the receiving line, wishing to get the most out of life. We wouldn't be normal if we didn't wish to enjoy living, for life is made to live. How could there be a song unless someone sings it? But sometimes we fail to realize that there is an exact law of life which tells us that in the long run we shall only receive what we give.

I think you are all familiar with the sixth Beatitude: "Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God." I daresay it would be unwise to pick and choose among the beatitudes, and yet I daresay most people look upon this beatitude as the particular star in the heavens. It really seems the most inaccessible - not only the promise, but the conditions that must be met in order for the promise to be fulfilled. We must be pure in heart to see God - and what wouldn't man give to see God!

Then the disciples of Jesus asked, “What must we do that we may work the works of God?“ all the reply that Jesus gave was, “Believe”, and this was the substance of all his instruction. Set your thoughts in a certain direction; make your mind to hold thoughts that believe in the Good as possible. That is all that is necessary for us to do to increase our belief, to extend the boundaries of what we believe to be possible. All that we are now is the result of our believing; every action and word shows forth what we have been believing, and are now holding in mind.