December06StudyGuide

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 3- at

THE INN OF CHICAGO

- 11:00 A.M.

JOEL S. GOLDSMITH: THE 1964 LONDON STUDIO CLASS

“World Work 1964 - We Shall Not Pass By On the Other Side,’” Tape 1, Side 2

These past few weeks, I have mentioning, frequently, a quotation, “The vine consumeth not its own grapes,” and I would like you to take

that quotation very seriously into your consciousness, because at this stage of your unfoldment, you will have to come face-to-face with a

truth that at first no one relishes, [but] eventually they come to love; and that truth is that God never gives us anything for ourselves. God never

blesses “me,” and God never blesses “you.” God never blesses one race or one nation or one religion. There is no such God. God is spirit,

and God is the spirit of the universe; and you do not know God aright until this. God was a God “before Abraham was,” a God before there

was a Hebrew people, a God before there was a Christian people, and God will be God if no Jewish people and no Christian people

survive. God is universal, and just as God has provide a sun in the sky that shines on all lands and on all seas, so the grace of God is meant

universally for all men.

At this stage of your Infinite Way development, unfoldment, or state of consciousness, you are responsible for every picture that presents

itself to your sight or hearing. “You may not pass by” on the road. It is given to men, the human world, to ignore the troubles of their fellow

travelers, especially if they are of a different land or a different religion, or a different race or different color. It is not so given unto you. The

grace which you have received from God was given to you

not

for you, it was given to you as the fruitage of God which the world is to eat:

“Take, eat of my body; drink of my blood.” Give up your “grapes” to the world. You are a wonderful vine upon which more grapes will grow.

You are spiritually fed and spiritually clothed and spiritually housed, and you know it; therefore, let your grapes go out into the market, into

the world. At this state of your unfoldment, you owe a debt to God and to the world, and that is that you “do not pass by on the other side of

the road,” and that you take note of every discord, every inharmony, and bring to bear the activity of the Christ, be a transparency through

which the Christ may dissolve the appearance. You do nothing, and you do not necessarily have to

think

anything, but you must be still. You

must be still for an instant, and let His spirit flow through you to the appearance and dissolve it. You may not pass by on the other side. You

are at a state of spiritual unfoldment where you have already been told to “Leave your nets,” not to go anywhere or to do anything, but just not

be concerned about your nets in the face of appearances, but rather cease your “fishing” for a moment and be “fishers of men.” And how?

Just by recognition. It only takes a moment, the blink of an eyelid, that you may realize that in the presence of the Christ, temporal power is

not power: “They have only the arm of flesh.”

For Meditation

: "The vine consumeth not its own grapes.”

For Study

: THE MYSTICAL I, Chapter 12.

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 3 - 12:30 P.M.

VIRGINIA STEPHENSON: THE 2004 PHOENIX CLASS

"Freedom," Tape 3, Side 2 (No. 0436)

... Mind controls our human experience by what we put into it and how we look at our world. If we’re looking at our world as the spiritual

universe, and we’re seeing that there are not two powers - in My world there’s not two powers, there’s only one power, and it is not a power

anybody can

use

. So it is a non-power, that when you meditate you are IN it, you don’t direct it. This power, you cannot bring it to bear upon

anything. If somebody calls you for help, you straighten out your own thinking, if you’re a beginning student, ... by realizing the individual that’s

coming to you is the Christ coming for recognition, and then you don’t have a

person

with a

problem

You know, Mrs. Eddy said that. Many, many years ago, Joel tells about in one of his class recordings, he said how he and a friend of his,

who was also a practitioner, were going to their teacher’s once-a-year Association Address, and they said to each other, “What on earth

can he say? Everything’s been said!” Then he came up with a sentence that [Mrs. Eddy] had written, in some of the archives, to her

students; and she said [that] the first thing is to take away the “person.” If you don’t have a person, there’s nothing there to support a

problem; and that’s true! So, why start with the disease or the person, why start with any of the problem? Take away the person, and

recognize, “The individual coming to me for help, for prayer, is really the Christ coming to be recognized.”

For Study: Virginia's Monthly Lesson For December, 2006; Subscriptions for Virginia’s Monthly Lessons:

Leslie Lewis, 2440 Campus Rd, #488, Honolulu, HI 96822 (808)779-9817 llewis002@hawaii.rr.com

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TUESDAY, DECEMBER 12 - at

UNITY ON THE NORTH SHORE

- 7:30 P.M.

VIRGINIA STEPHENSON: THE 1981 KERRVILLE CLASS

“After His Kind,” Tape 2, Side 2 (No. 4812)

The Seventh Day, then, of creation, is the realization that we are living in a finished kingdom. It is not evolving, in the sense that it is

emerging from an incomplete, finite, material sense, and it’s going to grow through some evolutionary process in the human mind, into

perfection. That’s “whistling Dixie in the dark,” because it isn’t so. That isn’t it at all. It says in Scripture, “As a tree falleth, so shall it lie.” So,

what ever you are in consciousness, whatever place, that is where you will be. There is no such thing as automatically unfolding spiritually

from a material basis. You either accept the fruit of the good tree, where there is only one power and one presence and one law and one

cause and one activity, and that one is infinite God good. Then you see that creation must unfold from this perfect Principle. It must unfold

and express itself and reveal itself from that perfect standpoint. Or, you take the position that God didn’t quite know what He was doing, so

he created both good and evil; and the Master said that a kingdom divided against itself will not stand. He said, “If I heal by Beelzebub, then

I am a kingdom divided against myself,” and it cannot stand. No, he was bearing witness to the truth that creation is the emanation or

expression or unfoldment of the Infinite Invisible, and that this creation is complete. Actually, “perfect” means, in Bible terminology,

“complete.” Something that is imperfect means that it’s not yet completed. It says in Scripture, “Out of Zion, the perfection of being, God

shines.” “Zion” means spiritual consciousness. So that, out of spiritual consciousness, the perfection of being shines, it comes forth. Then,

the Master, in the Sermon on the Mount, said, “Be ye perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” And Paul said, “Ye

are

complete in him.”

This is the principle from which healing takes place. Don’t go down to another level, and think that you can amalgamate the two: MY

KINGDOM IS NOT OF THIS WORLD. The Master said that, “If my kingdom were of this world, my disciples would fight.” In “this world” we

have two powers, and in “this world” we sing “Onward Christian soldiers, marching off to war,” and you’re taught to overcome evil with the

good, you’re taught to “fight the good fight” with all your might. Why? Because you are in a battlefield, you’re in the

arena of conflicting

forces

, and so, if you’re going to live on that level, you’d better be well-armed, and you’d better be ready ... . But, if you’re going to find the

Christ-way, if you are going to be “hid with Christ in God,” if you are going to be hid in the Christ-consciousness with God, then you must

forsake that world, and you must withdraw from that world; you must “leave your nets.” You must come into this other dimension which is a

new

dimension, a new kingdom. In this kingdom there are not two powers, there’s only one power which is God. This is not an overcoming

power, this isn’t a power that you can

use

. ... You sit down, “where am I in the mental argument?” If you are, then withdraw. If you are being

bombarded, mentally, with pictures of discord and inharmony, being bombarded by the belief in two powers, then you’ll have to sit there and

make an adjustment within yourself and say, “Well, just wait a minute! Where do I live and move and have my being? I live and move and

have my being in God; and there are not two powers in God. In fact, I don’t need any powers, because God is all in all, all presence and all

power, I don’t need any power. I don’t even need to pray! God knows.”

... This is a form of contemplative meditation where you are not trying to change anything but

yourself

You are trying to put yourself in the position so that the spirit of God in you, that “peace that passeth all understanding,” can enter and take

over. You are making all the adjustments in yourself, you’re making all the changes in yourself. You know just where you are because you

have listened to your mind. You listen to what is going on, and if you are in that “battle,” and that argument is coming to you, you just have to

say, “My kingdom is not of this world. ‘This world,’ all these mental pictures that are going on in my mind, they’re just like the motion picture

screen. The dialog that’s going in, and the threatenings that go on, and the dire predictions: just a movie script. Who’s writing this script?

Don’t think

you’re

writing it, you’re not. It is being written by the universal carnal mind, or the universal belief, operating in human

consciousness, of cause and effect, based on the belief in two powers. It is an impersonal activity, and we all pick it up, like all of us can

tune in our radios and pick up channels on the radio. So it is with our mind. Our brain is a receiving set, and we can pick up all sorts of

thoughts and fears and guilt. We just have to recognize, “Well, I can turn that off!” And how do you turn it off? Withdraw from it. Make yourself

so unreceptive and unresponsive by focusing yourself on the spaces in the mind, those spaces between the thoughts, until you get into that

peace. Or, you can mentally withdraw from the battle by turning your gaze away from this world, and what is going on in your mind, and

directing your mind. That’s really what “repentance” means. It means “to turn with your mind.” “Repent! The kingdom of God is at hand.”

For Meditation

: GENESIS, Chapter 1

For Study:

Review of Virginia’s GENESIS: Awakening From the Dream.

SIGNPOSTS

Be at peace.

have thought of everything.

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SUNDAY, DECEMBER 17 at

THE INN OF CHICAGO

- 11:00 A.M

JOEL S. GOLDSMITH: THE 1960 MAUI WORK

“Purpose, Method, Attainment of the Contemplative Life,” Tape 4, Side 1

Now, why did the Master say, knowing full well that we all have human parents, why did he say, “Call no man on earth your father.”? For this

reason: we

have human parents, but they are not the creators of our life. Therefore, we do not actually inherit the qualities of our

parentage, we inherit the qualities of our Father, which is Spirit. We have spiritual being, spiritual health, spiritual laws governing life and

body. So you overcome the law of cause and effect, in every condition that has to do with either heredity or the passing of time, by

reestablishing yourself in the Tree of Life. Of course, you are denying your human parentage, you are acknowledging them merely as the

instruments through which you were born; but not the cause of your birth. Behind them there had to be a principle of life operating, that is, a

spiritual principle of life. Therefore, your heritage is spirit.

Every time that you are faced with some condition of “humanness,” human life, one way or another, you need only visualize the Tree of Life.

Visualize yourself as a branch of that Tree. Gradually you’ll find this: when you look at a tree from a distance, you don’t dissect it and say, “I’

m looking at the trunk; I’m looking at the branches; I’m looking at the roots; I’m looking at leaves. You look at it, and you say, “That is a tree.”

So, you’ll eventually come to see that you are not merely a branch, but really, you are a part of the whole Tree. ... The Tree is constituted of

you; and therefore, you are more Tree than you are branch. You will find that as this, the qualities, the quantities, the nature of the Tree

manifests Itself in every branch. ... Since the nature of the Tree of Life is spiritual, immortality, eternality, infinity, that is the nature of your

being. ... This is the truth that will make you free, but it won’t make you free except in proportion to your consciously knowing it.

For Meditation

: “The mind of the individual seeking help is the Christ-mind – awaiting recognition.” -

Joel, Wisdom #71

For Study

: I STAND UPON HOLY GROUND, Chapter 12.

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 17 - 12:30 P.M.

HOLIDAY PARTY: EVERYONE IS WELCOME; BRING FOOD TO SHARE, IF YOU WISH

HAVE A BLESSED AND LIGHT-FILLED HOLIDAY SEASON!

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TUESDAY, DECEMBER 26 at

259 SKYLINE DR., CARPENTERSVILLE

- 7:30 P.M.

Class and Tape:

LUELLA OVEREEM: THE 1976 PHILADELPHIA CLOSED CLASS

"Realizing Consciousness As Our Identity/ Supply," Tape 1, Side 2

(Click on this link to listen.)

Question

: “What is the ‘Sword of the Spirit’ that Joel mentions?”

Answe

r: “... We’re on the spiritual path, which is going from depending on humanhood, depending on what we can see and hear and feel,

we’re looking outward, outside of our self for everything; and there’s nothing on the spiritual path that’s just words or talk, it’s all experience,

whether you are aware of it or not. As long as you’re looking to any form, and you’re on the path, this is going to be cut-off. This is what is

called ‘The Sword of the Spirit:’ it’s an experience of coming into the realization of God as our consciousness, as our Self; as the law and

the substance of everything there is. This is the direction that we are going in. So, we have to lose all of these human beliefs that we have of

looking to the body, the functioning of the organs for health, or looking to ‘man’ for good. Any kind of dependence that we are putting on the

visible world, we have to leave it. You can’t just

say

you are going to drop it, it has to be an actual experience.”

For Meditation and Study

: I STAND UPON HOLY GROUND, Chapter 8; and