"God sustains you. No one else. Nothing else." - Alan Cohen |
| THE CHICAGO GOLDSMITH GROUP www.infinite-invisible.net
(Mezzanine Level) (Second Tuesday*) UNITY ON THE NORTH SHORE 3434 Central Ave., Evanston, IL (Fourth Tuesday*) 259 Skyline Dr., Carpentersville, IL Conducted by Bob Harper (* Of the Month) Meditation Starts 15 min. Before Meeting Time Conducted by Bob Harper MAIL AND TEL: Bob Harper, P.O. Box 337, Carpentersville, IL 60110 (847)428-4759, (847)710-4759 (cel.), (847)428-4835 (fax) bob_harper@sbcglobal.net |
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| March '08 Study Guide Photo From Kodak Printer Software |
| STUDY GUIDE AND SCHEDULE OF ACTIVITIES MARCH 2008 JOEL S. GOLDSMITH: THE 1955 CAPETOWN SERIES "Contemplative Meditation" Tape 3 Side 1 12:30 P.M. VIRGINIA STEPHENSON: THE 1987 ASILOMAR RETREAT "Illumination On the Tares and Wheat," Tape 2, Side 2 (No. 8723) ************************************************************************************* TUESDAY, MARCH 11- at UNITY ON THE NORTH SHORE - 7:30 P.M. VIRGINIA STEPHENSON: THE MONTHLY LESSONS OF 1995 March, 1995 Lesson: "Fundamentals of Meditation" *************************************************************************************** SUNDAY, MARCH 16- at THE INN OF CHICAGO - 11:00 A.M. JOEL S. GOLDSMITH: THE 1955 JOHANNESBURG CLOSED CLASS "The Nature of the Messiah," Tape 1, Side 1 12:30 P.M. JOHN STEPHENSON: THE 2007 DALLAS CLASS "The Artist Finds the Truth," Tape 2, Side 1 (No. 0715) ********************************************************************************************* TUESDAY, MARCH 25 - at 259 SKYLINE DR., CARPENTERSVILLE - 7:30 P.M. Class, and Tape: LUELLA OVEREEM: THE 1980 PHILADELPHIA CLASS "The Silence Is the Substance of All Form," Tape 2, Side 2 http://www.infinite-invisible.net/AudioFilesPage.html ******************************************************************************************************************* STUDY CHAPTERS FOR MARCH THE WORLD IS NEW, Chapters 4 & 5: "Conscious Oneness;" and "Carriers of the Divine Message;" VIRGINIA STEPHENSON: THE MONTHLY LESSONS OF 1995, March: "Fundamentals of Meditation;" GOD FORMED US FOR HIS GLORY (‘78 Letters), Chapter 3, "The Nature of the Messiah;" DEVELOPING SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS Vol. II, by Luella Overeem: March, 1978 Lesson. ****************************************************************************************************************** ANNOUNCEMENTS JOHN STEPHENSON CLASS, APRIL 4-6, FOSTER CITY, CA Crowne Plaza Hotel: 650-570-5700. Mention the John Stephenson Seminar for special rate. CONTACT: Elizabeth or Marty Parker: 916-652-6562. Email: eaparker@aol.com LUELLA OVEREEM TAPE AVAILABLE ON-LINE: You are invited to join us on 3-25 at 7:30 PM (or at your convenience) by listening to Luella’s tape, which is now available as an audio file on infinite-invisible.net. http://www.infinite-invisible.net/AudioFilesPage.html WISHING ALL A HAPPY EASTER AND PURIM! March, 2008 Study Guide Photo from Kodak Printer Software ******************************************************************************************************************* EXCERPTS FROM TAPES FOR STUDY, PRACTICE, AND MEDITATION
JOEL S. GOLDSMITH: THE 1955 CAPETOWN SERIES “Contemplative Meditation” Tape 3 Side 1 Remember [that] it is a state of duality to behold good and evil. Remember that nothing exists in all of this world that is good or evil. It becomes good or evil in proportion to your thinking it so. So, something that is very good to you becomes very evil to your neighbor; something that is very evil to your neighbor is very good to you. The reason is that there is neither good nor evil in anything in and of itself, but your thinking can make it so unto you. And then, not as a reality, but as an illusory experience which will certainly seem real and painful and harmful and destructive to those who entertain thoughts of evil and destruction. Now this calls for a rebirth on your part and on my part. It means that you are going to consciously make the agreement with me now that, in this whole world of men, women, and children, in this whole world of conditions, there is neither good nor evil: God alone is good, and God’s goodness permeates all that exists. There is no evil in any condition, there is no evil in any circumstance, there is no evil in any person, because God, the infinite good, has not created evil, and there is no other creator. If we have entertained an evil sense of some person or condition, let us, in this morning of purification, let us purify ourselves of such belief. In all of this world, there is not an evil person or condition, meaning, there is not a person or condition that has within itself any powers of evil. Regardless of what you may look upon, regardless of what its appearance of this moment to you, you will remove its sting, you will remove its seeming destructive nature, when you look upon the person or condition, and say within yourself, “You have no powers of evil, for there are none. I have heretofore mislabeled you. The world has mislabeled you, and it says that you are evil, dangerous, destructive, and now I know it isn’t so. I know that in all the universe, there is no person or thing or condition that has any quality of evil in it, or any power of evil, or any power of destruction. It is neither good nor evil, for only God is good. ‘Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil,’ for there is no evil in that condition: there is no evil presence and there is no evil power. Though I seem to be consumed with disease, I will no longer fear it, for it has within itself no element of destruction, no element of pain, no element of death. It is in and of itself nothingness, since all power is in God. I will not say of this condition that it is good, nor will I say of it that it is evil: I will say, merely, it is nothingness. God is allness, everything else is nothingness, and God’s allness, and God’s goodness, and Gods power, and God’s law permeates me, this universe, all being, and all conditions.” For Meditation: “To pray is to become aware of the harmony without a mental effort on your part.” - Wisdom 10 For Study: THE WORLD IS NEW, Chapters 4 & 5. SUNDAY, MARCH 2 - 12:30 P.M. VIRGINIA STEPHENSON: THE 1987 ASILOMAR RETREAT “Illumination On the Tares and Wheat,” Tape 2, Side 2 (No. 8723) If you have been consistent in the metaphysical practice of the Infinite Way, if you’ve consistently withdrawn power from the realm of effect and realized there is no power in person, place, or condition, all power is in the great I AM that is within me and in every individual, if you have been consistent in doing this, when you feel that emptiness of self or that void or vacuum, you begin to see little glimpses here and there. They may be very small signs. You may see a child in your family becoming more cooperative, without you ever working on that child. You might see more harmony in all your relationships. First you won’t understand it, but then you’ll realize that the part of you which always was picking up the sword, and always was answering back or had a comment, is gone. It takes two to argue, it takes two to discuss, it takes that going back and forth. When there is nothing going back and forth but inner silence, the other person is feeling that personless Presence, which is dynamic. You may not feel it, but the other person feels the dynamics of this personless Presence. … You will not feel any power. A transparency, I suppose, a window pane, doesn’t feel the sun’s power, the light going through it. That is what you and I are, a transparency for the light to go through. … You can never have peace on the level of “many minds.” There is only peace when there is one mind, and it is up to us to be that one mind, and that mind is unconditioned and pure. Healings take place in that mind when there is no reaction, because it is the reaction or the response to the problem that keeps perpetuating the problem. When you stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made you free, when you stand fast in that I that is the totality of your being, you find that this Christ-activity is performed through you, and you may not humanly feel that anything has happened. You know, no one knows how to heal; no one does, because in truth there is nothing to heal. For Study: Virginia's Monthly Lesson For March, 2008; Subscriptions for Virginia’s Monthly Lessons: Leslie Lewis, 240 Makee Rd, #10A, Honolulu, HI 96815 (808)779-9817 llewis002@hawaii.rr.com *********************************************************************************************************************************** TUESDAY, MARCH 11 - at UNITY ON THE NORTH SHORE - 7:30 P.M. VIRGINIA STEPHENSON: THE MONTHLY LESSONS OF 1995 “Fundamentals of Meditation,” March, 1995 Monthly Lesson Meditation is a fine tuning. Our body and our mind are instruments for God, but we haven’t used them as such. We have thought of ourselves as the body, identifying with it, and we have used our mind as a power, a power of persuasion, of argument, and as a power of manipulation. We have had no conscious awareness that we were using our mind as a power; it is just the way of this world, and we have unconsciously followed along. But in The Infinite Way, we are learning to live without power, which is a change of attitude and a change of altitude. … You cannot be a male or a female while living out from the premise that I and the Father are one. You cannot be an Anglo or a Chicano and I and the Father are one. You cannot be occidental or oriental or black or white or Jew or Gentile and I and the Father are one. You cannot; those are but labels given to the form as which you appear. You must know yourself as you really are, an incorporeal being. Just feel the expansion of your awareness as you contemplate: I am conscious awareness – this is what I am. I have an awareness of my form. It is mine; it is my instrument, my body. This is the proper relationship. I am not the body, the body is mine, I possess it and have dominion over it, so this body is not self-acting. Now you see that you have become momentarily absent from the body and present with the Lord. This is the altitude of a contemplative meditation and prayer. Let us think about our dominion over the body. This hand cannot pick up a water glass and take a drink unless there is an impulse within me to do so. This hand is mine, and I must receive the impulse before the hand moves. But this impulse does not need thought-taking. I do not have to think, “Now I am going to put my fingers around this glass and pick it up and put it to my mouth.” No, a simultaneous activity takes place without my taking thought. This is the way Omniscience governs you when you attune yourself to this higher Consciousness. It doesn’t give you a message which you carry out. You find yourself doing whatever you are supposed to do without taking thought, because God, Spirit, is really the volition of your being. “For in him we live, and move, and have our being.” [Acts 17:28] Spirit is what moves and animates you, so the connection is very smooth –everything flows – and you find yourself living spontaneously. The spiritual life is a spontaneous life, for you are governed by the Spirit. However, since the volition previously operating in you was programmed to the belief in good and evil, there is a period in your development when you stop the impulse that comes to you to ponder, “Is this a spiritual impulse, or is this just a human desire to do good?” You stop to consider the spiritual sense of what is coming to you. You turn within and listen with the attitude, “Thy will be done in me.” “I will arise and go to my father.” [Luke 15:18] When you meditate, this is what you are doing. You are rising up out of the tomb of material sense, the corporeal sense with which you have been identifying, into divine Consciousness, which is the Father’s house. Actually, this is the return of the Prodigal to his rightful state of being as the heir of God. When we enter this higher Consciousness, we feel a peace, a peace that passeth understanding. We discover, too, that in this inner peace we can watch dispassionately the action of the human mind. Human thinking doesn’t turn off automatically. It often continues its ruminations about this world, especially if we are the type of person who always turns on the radio or television the moment we come into the house, or if we jog with earphones or listen to the radio in the car. We overfeed the human mind until it just regurgitates all that has been fed into it. The Master said about a certain healing, “This kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.” [Matthew 17:21] The greatest fasting we can do is to fast our mind, give it a rest, not overwork it. Let the mind be quiet, let it be still. You do not have to take though for your life every moment of the day – it isn’t necessary. We learn to fast the mind, to have periods in which there is absolute stillness. When the mind is at peace, that is, when there are no words or no thoughts in it, the body is in the eternal Nowness of being, since it responds to the mental state. You are an integrated being, having much more strength, more energy, because you are being maintained by this higher Consciousness. Too much though-taking, worrying and planning, is destructive to the body, whereas, when your mind is at peace through right identification, identifying with this higher Consciousness, your body immediately responds. For Meditation: “I and my Father are one. I am not a dweller in a material concept of body, nor do I use the mind as a power to bless or to curse, to give or withhold, to condemn or to judge. I let my mind be an instrument of God’s grace, an instrument of intelligence, of love. I am living without mental power or physical power. I am taking my body and my mind out of the arena of conflicting forces, out of what the Master called “this world.” My kingdom, the kingdom of God, is not of this world.” V.S. For Study: THE MARCH, 1995 MONTHLY LESSON, by Virginia Stephenson *********************************************************************************************************************************** SUNDAY, MARCH 16- at THE INN OF CHICAGO- 11:00 A.M. JOEL S. GOLDSMITH: THE 1955 JOHANNESBURG CLOSED CLASS “The Nature of the Messiah,” Tape 1, Side 1 So it is, when a practitioner or teacher has a spell of illness of some kind, or some other temptation or problem, even the practitioner or teacher is apt to believe, “Well, I’ve wasted my life. This thing doesn’t work! This isn’t true; this isn’t real. Why does this happen to me?” That’s their blessing! That’s God showing them the difference between human health and spiritual eternality. Everyone in this world must some day come to an end of human health and human wealth and make the transition into their spiritual Sonship, in which never again can the laws of matter, the laws of money, the laws of any material thing touch them. But no one is ever going to make that demonstration except through crucifixion. There never will be a resurrection until there is a crucifixion; there never will be an ascension until there is a resurrection. Unless you lose your life, you will never find your life eternal. Now that does not mean that you have to go through all the tortures that Jesus did on the cross … . It doesn’t mean that like Paul, you have to die in prison; but it does mean that you, at some period time or other, would come to a place in your consciousness where some great problem will bring you to the realization that physical harmony is not the solution of life, that physical freedom, or the physical right to vote, is not the solution of life, or that the physical possession of a million dollars is not the solution of life. Then you will find [that] the solution is spiritual. Then you will find that health is not a matter of body, it is a matter of consciousness, and that attaining that consciousness, you attain the health that is not at the mercy of matter, not even the nails on the cross. Nothing can destroy your life, nothing can destroy your body, once you have come to the realization of Spirit. But you wouldn’t come there while you are sitting back with a healthy body and a fine family and an abundance of supply: because it is so easy to rest back in that experience. Each one of us, at some period or other, comes to that place where we realize that the nature of the Messiah isn’t merely to give us a heart that functions or a liver or lungs, or so many dollars a week, but that the function of the Messiah is to reveal to us our spiritual identity and the eternality and immortality of our very being and body. “In this flesh, I shall yet see God.” Right now, here and now on earth, I must eventually meet my eternality and my immortality face-to-face, so that when the time comes for me to make the transition from the human scene, I don’t get kicked out of a body, I walk out of a body. I don’t lie around for years For Meditation: “I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it's not the answer. – Jim Carrey For Study: GOD FORMED US FOR HIS GLORY (1978 LETTERS), Chapter 3. SUNDAY, MARCH 16, 12:30 P.M. JOHN STEPHENSON: THE 2007 DALLAS CLASS "The Artist Finds the Truth," Tape 2, Side 1 (No. 0715) Mystical living is an art. … Joel recognized this: two of his most well-known books, THE ART OF MEDITATION and THE ART OF SPIRITUAL HEALING indicate that to live a mystical life is living an artistic life. Now, I’m sure that we all have concepts of an artist, and if we are not talented in any of the visual arts, we think, “Well, how can I be an artist?” Well, the expression of an artist is not really what people respond to. They respond to the truth that an artist is; and for an artist to really know and express a degree of truth, they have to know themselves. If they think of themselves as human beings caught in a particular culture, they are angry at what they see around them, if they suffer, then all that shows in their art, because their level of truth only goes as deep as their level of concepts. Spiritually, when we find that Self within us and let It express Itself, the art of living becomes an expression of this spiritual activity of love; for that, really, is the only spiritual activity there is – love. So, as Joel had the analogy of the “onion skins,” and we keep pealing off the onion skins, because of my artistic sense, this new idea of deconstructing concepts is really the same thing. Unless we are aware of what “presses our buttons,” what makes us angry, what makes us happy, what satisfies us on the material level, we are going to be hypnotized by those activities and manipulated by those concepts, concepts of good and concepts of evil. So the beginning steps in any artistic endeavor is really two-fold. Number one, an artist must have something to say, something to express. If an individual just doesn’t feel they have anything to express, when they put a pen to paper or when they sculpt, there’ s nothing there, because there is no inner sense coming out. Spiritually, we have a greater canvas, because the canvas is life itself, and what is the expression that we want to have but our own experience in living. We’ve been taught that if we turn our attention to spirit, if we “accept God” (using Biblical terms), if we allow this spiritual nature to be acknowledged within us, then our life is going to be an outpicturing and activity of this spiritual dimension. For Study: LIVING THE ILLUMINED LIFE, Chapter 2. ********************************************************************************************************************************** TUESDAY, MARCH 25, at 259 SKYLINE DR., CARPENTERSVILLE - 7:30 P.M. Class and Tape: LUELLA OVEREEM: THE 1980 PHILADELPHIA CLOSED CLASS "The Silence Is the Substance of All Form," Tape 2 Side 2 Go to infinite-invisible.net to hear this tape! We aren’t voting for people. There aren’t any “people”! … Humanly, the country thinks, “This man is good,” and the polls go up, and then, a day or two later, they think, “Well, he did this [so] he isn’t very good,” and the polls go down. But you see, that doesn’t happen where you are seeing God as constituting individual being. We aren’t governed by people. We aren’t governed by governments. There is nobody out here who has any power over us unless we are accepting that belief in a selfhood apart from God; and when you accept that, then you are giving power to anybody that happens to be in office, in power, in any way. You’re giving them the power over you. There’s nobody who has any power over you unless you give it to them. This is just as true in the government as it is in your home or your business or on your street. Nobody can hurt you unless you let them, and nobody can do any good for you unless you let them do it. And how do you let them? Through believing that there is somebody besides God, through believing in a selfhood apart from God, a power apart from God. So, of course we’re going to go and vote and choose who we think is the best person, but I should hope not before we have meditated and made our contact with God. It isn’t they outer action that does the work, it all takes place in consciousness. We have to be in the world …. . Question: “What is the relationship between realization of God and work? Example: If I think that a new law should not be passed, should I write letters or lobby? How does one discern the place to begin working on the physical plane?” Answer: “Well, everything begins by your making that contact within. That’s where it starts, and that’s where the work is actually done. And then, after you’ve made that contact, and you’ve felt that presence and the assurance that “God is on the field,” then you can go out and do something for or against, or do your voting, or whatever. But the power isn’t in what you do out here, the power is within. And that contact that you’ve made within is what has determined it. That’s where the “battles,” so to speak, are lost or won, in consciousness, not out here in the work we do out here. Yet, we have to do it, but not as a human state of consciousness. What we’re doing we’re doing out of God realization, so that it’s not “us” doing it through human values, human standards. We’re doing it out of the realization of one power. For Study: DEVELOPING SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS, Vol. II: March, 1978 Lesson. SIGNPOSTS “That’s the only purpose of having a class, that you can be lifted to where you can turn within and make this contact with God. That’s all you ever need! If you have that, you have it made. You don’t need anything else. But in order to make that contact, you have to drop the desire. A desire is all there is to the lack of silence. The silence is a silence of desire.” - Luella ~~~~~~~~~~~~ IS cannot be moved, changed, or improved. IS is! We can work mentally, but what would we ever get but dream-stuff? “If ever I want you, all I have to do is dream. Dream, dream, dream …” – Everly Brothers As soon as we’re in desire, we’re in the dream. “That which I am seeking, I AM.” *********************************************************************************************************************************** |
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| by Luella Overeem: DEVELOPING SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS, Vol. II: March, 1978 Lesson |
