The Creative Use Of Imagination - CHAPTER 3 DESIRE

The Creative Use Of Imagination - CHAPTER 3 DESIRE

CHAPTER 3 DESIRE 

As you are, so shall God appear to be to you. The priest will see God as the head of all celestial and terrestrial records. To a judge, he is the great judge forever meting out punishment. To the Hottentot, God is the kind of chief he, himself, would like to be. So, you see, men are forever creating God in their own image. 

"God is God from the creation. 

Truth alone is man's salvation. 

But the God that now you worship Soon shall be your God no more. 

For the soul in its unfolding Evermore its thoughts 

remolding And it learns more truly in its progress Whom to 

love and how to adore." 

Through this teaching, you will learn to outgrow your concept of God, for God changes not, only your ideas of Him change. 

Desire is your mainspring of action, for you cannot move without desire. Ask yourself, "What wantest thou of me?" and then formulate your desire. Feel its presence and you have granted yourself the desire's fulfillment. Human life is nothing more than the appeasement of hunger, and the infinite series of levels of awareness is the means to satisfy that hunger. Health is a desire, a hunger which can be appeased when the idea is formulated in the mind that I am healthy. The same is true for wealth, peace, harmony or fame, for all of these are states of awareness. Identify yourself with the state desired. Persist in this identification and, because you and God are one consciousness, what you are conscious of, you outpicture. 

The cross is the symbol of suffering. There is no physical cross upon which a man was nailed, but a body of beliefs which a man wears. "Except you deny yourself and lift up your cross and follow me, you are unworthy of me." Lift up your cross by raising your awareness, for your I AMness is the creator of your world. 

As an individual, you move and live in time, but your true being is in eternity. Think of the vertical line of the cross as the line of being upon which there are unnumbered levels of awareness. Now, time cannot make you better or wiser. In fact, time cannot do a thing towards changing your level of being, for change is all on the vertical line where you move to higher or lower levels of your own being. Because change is imminent, we speak of it as infinite imminence; as nearer than near and sooner than now. The man you would like to be is imminent. He is nearer than near. The ideal you dream of being is sooner than now and is brought into being by a change in your reactions to life. 

In the Book of Revelations, we are told, "I will give to every being according to his work." The only work you are called upon to do is work on yourself. Start this work by observing your reactions to life. Remember, your future is not being developed, it already is. The time track is complete as well as all of the events you can encounter. As you move up or down the level of your being, changes will occur in your life. You are now resting at a certain level. "Arise, take up your couch and walk," by breaking the threads of life that bind you to the state you are now in. Break these threads by changing your thoughts, for only as you rise within, will you find a corresponding change without. 

Have you ever wondered what it would be like if you were of too pure eyes to behold iniquity? If you were all tenderness? All love? All generosity? Aim for those feelings and then watch your relationship to them. It is here, in the midst of the storms of life, that you work this law. If you identify yourself with an unlovely state, you will find yourself sinking into it. But you can lift up your cross by breaking your automatic, mechanical reactions to life and sacrificing your present level of being. 

This message comes, not to bring peace, but a sword. It comes to set a man at variance against his brother, father, mother and all the members of his household, for I bring the sword of truth which is the word of God. This word is sharper than any two-edged sword, for it is capable of piercing the soul and spirit. I am not suggesting that you turn against your earthly relatives, but that you turn against the psychological ideas that govern your behavior and the dominant mood which governs your actions and reactions to life. If, at this moment your feelings are not noble, turn against them, for they are your psychological mother. This is done by putting new feeling in their place. You cannot change your thinking until you change your feeling, and all feelings come from ideas. A man's enemies are those of his own household which is everything he accepts as true. 

This sword can pierce, even to the severing of soul and spirit. Your Father (your I AM) is Spirit, and when you worship Him, you must do so in spirit and in truth. Be still and say to yourself, with feeling "I AM He." 

All that you consent to, all that you believe and accept as true (be it wise or foolish) forms the clothing you wear. But you can be reclothed and ascend to a higher level of being when you take up your cross and follow your imagination. 

Most of us are aimless. We want more than we presently have. We want the other fellow to change, but we don't want to do the one thing that will bring the change about, for we don't want to change self. In Revelations, John tells us, "I will give to everyone according to his work." The gift is not given according to the work of another, but according to the work you do on yourself, and that work is to uncritically observe your reactions to life, as they bind you to a certain level. Disassociate yourself from your unpleasant thoughts and associate yourself with your aim, thereby rising to its level, for your ideal is on that vertical line you stand upon. 

Scripture tells us to "Seek and you shall find: and when you find him, you will be like him." I tell you, you will never find your fulfilled desire until you are the desire! Those who go searching for love only make manifest their lovelessness, for you never have to search for what you are! 

I am Mary and you are Mary too, for we are forever conceiving of ourselves. The whole of human life is the appeasement of desire, and desire, conceived as fulfilled, will externalize itself. If you are not hungry enough to transcend your present level of consciousness, you will not conceive of anything greater. As long as you are in love with the state you are in, you cannot and will not rise from it. 

Without the vertical line of states, life would have no meaning. The ancients called this infinite series, Jacob's ladder. You do not build this ladder, rather you climb it through self-discovery. 

When you think of another, you are seeing only your opinion of him. If you think he is kind, he is kind. If you think he is stupid, he is stupid as he is playing the part you have assigned him because of your opinion. Therefore, if your desire is for him to change, you must change your opinion of yourself, for "he" is only your opinion pushed out. 

Where you are psychologically is what you are; therefore, only associate with the feeling that leads you to the fulfillment of your dreams. And may all of your dreams be noble ones.