mountains: and the wild beasts of the field [are] mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell thee: for the world [is] mine, and the fulness thereof." - Psalms 50:10-12 |
| THE CHICAGO GOLDSMITH GROUP www.infinite-invisible.net
(Mezzanine Level)
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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| May '08 Study Guide Photo "Cattle Upon A Thousand Hills," From the Internet |
| STUDY GUIDE AND SCHEDULE OF ACTIVITIES MAY 2008
JOEL S. GOLDSMITH: THE 1964 OAHU/MAUI SERIES "Man of Earth, Man In Christ, and Life By Grace" Tape 5 Side 2 12:30 P.M. VIRGINIA STEPHENSON: THE 1987 ASILOMAR RETREAT "He Opened Their Understanding," Tape 3, Side 2 (No. 8724) ************************************************ TUESDAY, MAY 13 - at UNITY ON THE NORTH SHORE - 7:30 P.M. VIRGINIA STEPHENSON: THE MONTHLY LESSONS OF 1995 May, 1995 Lesson: "Contemplation Unveils the Incorporeal Reality of Body" ************************************************ SUNDAY, MAY 18 - at THE INN OF CHICAGO - 11:00 A.M. JOEL S. GOLDSMITH: THE 1955 JOHANNESBURG CLOSED CLASS "Contemplative Meditation and Healing Work, Conclusion" Tape 2, Side 1 12:30 P.M. JOHN STEPHENSON: THE 2007 DALLAS CLASS "Seven Great Principles," Tape 3, Side 1 (No. 0716) ************************************************ TUESDAY, MAY 27 - at 259 SKYLINE DR., CARPENTERSVILLE - 7:30 P.M. Class, and Tape: LUELLA OVEREEM: THE 1980 DEARBORN, MI CLOSED CLASS "Karma/’Material’ Is A Sense, Not Reality," Tape 1, Side 2 (To Listen, Click on this link: http://www.infinite-invisible.net/AudioFilesPage.html ******************************************************************************************************************* STUDY CHAPTERS FOR MAY
VIRGINIA STEPHENSON: THE MONTHLY LESSONS OF 1995, May: "Contemplation Unveils the Incorporeal Reality of Body;" GOD FORMED US FOR HIS GLORY (‘78 Letters), Chapter 5, "Contemplative Meditation and Healing Work;" DEVELOPING SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS Vol. II, by Luella Overeem: May-June 1978 Lesson. ********************************************************************************************************************************** ANNOUNCEMENTS BOB HARPER CLASS, JULY 25-27, LAGUNA BEACH, CA (More details to follow.) CONTACT: Gary Hogan (949) 376-8742; Email: GaryHogan@webtv.net or Dorothy Leight (949) 583-1240. ~~~~~~~~~~~~ LUELLA OVEREEM TAPE AVAILABLE ON-LINE: You are invited to join us on 5-27 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, or Click on this link: http://www.infinite-invisible.net/AudioFilesPage.html ******************************************************************************************************************* EXCERPTS FROM TAPES FOR STUDY, PRACTICE, AND MEDITATION
"Man of Earth, Man In Christ, and Life By Grace" Tape 5 Side 2 Divine Grace does not give us anything or manufacture anything for us, Divine Grace appears as. … It is Divine Grace that appears as sunshine, Divine Grace that appears as rain and snow, Divine Grace that forms these into food in the ground, Divine Grace that appears as the sap, flowing up in the tree, Divine Grace appearing, finally, as the fruitage. It is never Divine Grace sending something, giving something, it is Divine Grace forming Itself as our daily need. To move in consciousness from "the man of earth" who is entirely limited to himself, mentally and physically and financially, to being "that man who has his being in Christ" means know this truth: "I and my Father are one;" and it is because of this oneness that I can turn within to the vine, the Christ, the Spirit of God that is in me, the infinite intelligence of the universe, Omniscience, Omnipresence, Omnipotence, and find that: This Divine Grace lives my life; and I live as a beholder to the glory of God on earth. It is the glory of God that appears as my Soul and mind and body. It is the glory of God that appears as fruitage, harmony, success, abundance in my life. I of my own self, separate and apart from that Divine Grace, the Word of God, am nothing, nothing more than a branch that is cut off from the tree. But having been consciously reconciled to God and to man, I am now the full and complete Tree [of Life], living by the grace of God, with access to all that God is and all that God hath, and then in every moment remembering, all of the good that is flowing in me, through me, as me, all of this good is the glory of God manifesting Itself, as I abide in Him and let Him abide in me … recognizing always that although invisible, there is this transcendental Being, closer to me than breathing, to which I have forever access. As spiritual wisdom begins to reveal itself to me and reveal these truths to me, it very quickly becomes apparent that whatever is true of me must be true of you, and must be true of men, women, and children throughout this universe, whether at the moment they are friends or foes. It must be a universal truth, because it is impossible to impersonalize infinite, eternality. Therefore, it is necessary for me to recognize, IT IS NECESSARY, that I recognize that this truth which has been revealed to me of my identity, of my access to infinity, Omnipresence, Omniscience, Omnipotence, that this is a universal truth. Of course, this means that I am reconciled to you, to all mankind, and it means that I am praying, because this is a form of prayer, this recognition, this acknowledgement: "Acknowledge Him in all thy ways." This is prayer. For Meditation: "There is an insight in man that visions through all appearances. Be at peace." - Wisdom #19 For Study: THE WORLD IS NEW, Chapters 7 and 8; and the LIVING BETWEEN TWO WORLDS, Chapter 9. SUNDAY, MAY 4 - 12:30 P.M. VIRGINIA STEPHENSON: THE 1987 ASILOMAR RETREAT "God Consciousness – Christ Consciousness," Tape 3 Side 1 (No. 8724) Joel said that if you permit your students or patients or friends to believe that you are going to go within for them and draw out a new house, a new automobile, or a new job, or a new type of physical body, you will keep on deceiving them and preventing your own higher unfoldment. "Your higher unfoldment, … attainment, is really dependent on your not permitting those who come to you to believe that you are going to demonstrate a material universe for them, only a healthy, wealthy one. It is dependent on the degree on which you can turn them gently away from trying to improve appearances, to seeing what the kingdom of God has in store for them, to what the in-dwelling Christ has in store for them, to what manner of temple or body It can bring forth, and to what happens when the Word is spoken through you." – Joel So, you see, if someone came to you with a deformity and wanted that healed, … no, they don’t have to wait [until the next incarnation to demonstrate a "normal" body], but they would not get that healing asking for that kind of a healing. They would get it when they say, "I don’t care anything about this world! I don’t care anything about this world, because after all, it’s just ‘another cup of coffee and another piece of pie.’" It’s just another meal. I want that bread which cometh down from heaven and gives life to the world. I want to experience that ‘hidden manna.’ I want to see that body, that temple, that is "not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. I want to live in this New World, ‘my kingdom,’ and "the world is new to every soul when Christ has entered in. For Study: Virginia's Monthly Lesson For May, 2008; Subscriptions for Virginia’s Monthly Lessons: Leslie Lewis, 240 Makee Rd, #10A, Honolulu, HI 96815 (808)779-9817 llewis002@hawaii.rr.com *********************************************************************************************************************************** TUESDAY, MAY 13 - at UNITY ON THE NORTH SHORE - 7:30 P.M.
"Contemplation Unveils the Incorporeal Reality of Body," May, 1995 Monthly Lesson A spiritual idea never lapses from harmony nor returns to harmony, for a spiritual idea is the same yesterday, today, and forever. As a spiritual idea, body is always harmonious, perfect, complete, whole. As we maintain this truth in our consciousness, the human or material belief about body, that it is structural, physical, that it is born, grows, matures, and eventually diminishes in strength and finally dies, this belief lessens in our experience. This belief is universal hypnotism, a mortal mind construction of thought, and it will continue to unfold according to the consensus of human opinion until we stand up and consciously take possession of our experience by knowing the truth. … If you are going to love your neighbor as yourself, including the members of your family, you must start to consciously know the truth, the truth of body, business, government, supply, home. These are either the outpicturing of your ignorance of truth or they are fulfilled on the human level in a very beautiful way by your understanding that they are spiritual ideas, and thus unencumbered, untouched, by the material beliefs that are circulating around us. This is where our work begins, to know the truth that makes us free. "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." [John 8:32] The first truth is our identification with the one Life and the realization that the issues of life proceed from God, that they do not come from the organs and functions of the body, but from God. This must be a daily realization, a dying daily to inertia and taking possession of our body and our appetites, taking possession of our thinking. What I allow, what I believe, will be reflected in my body, in my home, in my pocketbook, in my government. It is up to you and to me to die daily to the belief that the body is controlled by astrology, by weather, by the food we eat, by the calendar. We must consciously know the truth. Jesus demonstrated his dominion over his body. You remember that sometimes he had to go apart for forty days and forty nights. Forty is a symbol of a complete inward retreat. Jesus was retreating from the appearance world and establishing himself again and again and again in the kingdom of God within himself. Let us go within, now, just as he would do: We start with God as Consciousness, God, the creative, maintaining Principle. "All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made." [John 1:3] God is the creative principle of body. The truth about body is that I am embodied in Consciousness. I am whole and complete in Him. I have never seen this body with my physical eyes; I can only see this reality with the fourth-dimensional consciousness, with spiritual sense or spiritual discernment. But there is a spiritual body, and there has eternally been a spiritual body: God the Father, God the Son, which is the Christ of my being, including body. Jesus knew this truth. He was dwelling in his Christhood when he walked on the water, when he vanished in the crowd, when he healed the sick and raised the dead. He had the consciousness that body is Spiritual, incorporeal, and incorruptible. He said, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." [John 2:19] Paul said, "But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you." [Romans 8:9] This must be recognized, that the Spirit of God dwells in you as the creative, maintaining, sustaining principle of Life. You must give up, surrender, or die each day to the belief in birth, realizing that there is but one Body, one Life made manifest. When the one Life, or the Word, is made manifest, we behold it with our spiritual sense as form or body, incorporeal, invisible. What I see of your body and what you see of my body with our eyes is a material concept of body, which is never the truth. The body is not structural; it is not made up of flesh, bones, blood. Those are thought formations that are formed by the conditioned mind. When we turn to God with our mind, and our thoughts are of God, our body concept improves. WE are dying daily to the human concept of body that the universal carnal mind is projecting to us. We are turning within to be reborn of the Spirit, taking no material thought for our life, but letting thought dwell on spiritual values. We contemplate the body as a body of Love and Light: … . For Meditation: The kingdom of God within me is the kingdom of Life and Light. This is a nonstructural, incorporeal universe. Bombs can never destroy it, and death can never destroy my body. Body is God-governed, God-ordained. It is not occupying time and space; it is enveloped in Consciousness. If I am living in the consciousness of one power, one life, which is the light of the world, I will never experience death. "… I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall live he" [John 11:25] - Virginia For Study: THE MAY, 1995 MONTHLY LESSON, by Virginia Stephenson ***********************************************************************************************************************************
"Contemplative Meditation and Healing Work - Conclusion," Tape 2, Side 1 I’ve said, in one of the writings, that someday, all healing work will be done with a smile. Why? Well, let us suppose that looking at those flowers over there, which are so beautiful, suppose we had bad vision, and we looked at them and saw them as a blur. A lot of dark or black in them, and blurred into each other, so that there was blurred color and blurred form. Then, all of a sudden, someone put eyeglasses on us, and we said, "Oh, oh, that is the way it is!" From now on, with your glasses on, it’s always beautiful. If someone else were to come along and say, "Isn’t that too bad, how that is blurred and blackened!" You’d say, "Oh, no! That is perfect and white." They would be very shocked at you. Well, that is what happens in healing work. Somebody with "blurred" spiritual vision says, "I am sick; I am poor; I am dying; I am old; I am unemployed." But the person who has attained that Fourth-dimensional Consciousness, that which is called "Christ-consciousness," looks out and says, "I don’t see any of that. It isn’t there!" And it really isn’t! It really isn’t. It is only to the unillumined human consciousness that there is any phase of "blur" or discord or sin on the face of the globe. "God is too pure to behold iniquity." [Hab. 1:13] There just is no iniquity in the whole face of God. There is no sin, disease, or death on this earth. If there were, some way would have to be found to remove it, some way other than God, because if there is any on earth, God has been very lax in all of these thousands of years in permitting it here. So you see, there is no use now turning to God to remove sin, disease, death, if it is here: He should have done it long ago. No, there is no sin, disease, or death here, but you can’t know that through the three-dimensional mind, because you have the evidence of "poor vision," of "blur." It is only as your spiritual sight is opened that you are able to look right at the person, place, or thing, where the sin or disease is, and say, "Who did sin? This man or his parents? Neither." [John 9:2-3] "Neither do I condemn you." [John 8:11] "I will take you into Paradise with me." [Luke 23:43] Why? I’m not aware of any evil. The spiritually illumined are not aware of evil as a reality, although they are conscious of it as a claim, as an appearance, as a suggestion or temptation in human thought. … The spiritually illumined, the truly spiritually illumined, know that "this world" is full of the appearance of sin, disease, and death. But they know that their spiritual illumination wipes it out, because of their seeing through the appearance to the Reality. For Meditation: "There is only one treatment: dropping the patient and the condition from your thought, contemplating God until you are at rest in Him, in the bosom of the Father, where you have the absolute feeling, ‘Ah, the Father within me is doing the works.’" – Joel, from the tape. For Study: GOD FORMED US FOR HIS GLORY (1978 LETTERS), Chapter 5. SUNDAY, MAY 18, 12:30 P.M. JOHN STEPHENSON: THE 2007 DALLAS CLASS "Seven Great Principles," Tape 3, Side 1 (No. 0716) This was hard for me to accept, in my spiritual growth, and in a way, it was one of Joel’s deepest revelations: "Not my will, but Thy will …". [See Mt. 26:42] I can’t remember the statement, but Joel wrote it on a Christmas card: "Purify me until there is no will in me but Thy will" (something like that). Now, if there is any kind of orthodox conditioning where the will of God is capricious, rewarding you one moment and punishing you the next, that’s very hard to accept, that I’m going to give up my will completely; I’m going to completely give up my sense of human will so that I can experience God’s will. Now we have to be sure that God is love. We have to know that this activity of Spirit is absolutely, completely based in love and that there is no punishment at all. When we see changes and turnovers happening in our life, we realize, "Well, that is just the purification of my conditioning, the emptying out of my attachments so that I can be an instrument of God. What is this "I"? How can "I" be God? What is the "I AM that I am" mean? That is the basis of all mystical unfoldment: "Know thyself." Know what this spiritual dimension is within. And when you understand the nature of I, that it isn’t physical, it isn’t emotional or mental, but it is your Soul. "Nearer than breathing, and closer than hands and feet." It is this essence of who you are, but it isn’t the "who" that is defined by personality and appearances. It is the "Who" that is "hid with Christ in God." [See Col. 3:3] It is that eternal Being in expression, individually. … God is not an entity or identity, but God is an experience. When you experience the presence of God and you realize what it is that you have experienced, you are set free. And that freedom, then, manifests itself in your experience. For Study: LIVING THE ILLUMINED LIFE, Chapters 7 and 8 ***********************************************************************************************************************************
"Karma/ ‘Material’, Is A Sense, Not Reality" Tape 1, Side 2 To listen, click on this link: http://infinite-invisible.net/AudioFilesPage.html Question: "This past week, it has come into my mind that there is no karma and no reincarnation. Could you please comment?"
there either, nor anywhere else, actually. It’s a sense. Karma is the belief in cause and effect, and it’s a cause apart from God, and there is no such cause. Yet, to human sense it’s very real. You can’t say that there isn’t any evil in the world, when it is surrounding you on every side. And what we’re saying is that evil is not what it appears to be. We’re not putting any labels on it, on what we see, calling it good or evil. Whatever it is, it is; but this is an all- spiritual universe, and therefore, there isn’t anything evil in it. God is all good, and God created this universe out of Itself. It’s Consciousness, God, formed AS. So, there is no evil; and if there isn’t any evil, then how can there be a cause for it, or a healing of it? There is no such thing in ‘My kingdom,’ but in ‘this world,’ there appears to be good and there appears to be evil, and that’s what the world is judging by, the pairs of opposites. Reincarnation is, also, a sense, an appearance, because Life is continuous, unbroken, eternal. There isn’t any ‘break’ in it, any being born, living, and dying. That all is a sense. It’s like the horizon. Whatever is at a certain place has no awareness of you being right there with it and seeing it as ‘now,’ or whether you’re ten miles away and seeing it as disappearing or coming into view. Reincarnation is the same as death or birth. It doesn’t happen to the person who is experiencing it. It’s a concept, that we have, of something that we see as outside our self, just like the train going down the tracks until it disappears. The people on the train have no sense of becoming smaller and smaller and disappearing. It’s the same way with death. The person who does what we call ‘die’ doesn’t, but it looks that way to us, because they’ve gone out of the limits of our sense of seeing and experiencing. When you have spiritual discernment developed, then you see that we have never been in this body anyway. Question: "The creation of God was perfect, and man went off on his own. If he returned, would he have no more physical life?" Answer: "He hasn’t any physical life now! There isn’t any such thing as a "physical life," there is only a physical sense of life. There is no physical life, there is no material life. THIS IS AN ALL-SPIRITUAL UNIVERSE, there is nothing in it and nobody in it but God. But if a Pine tree has forty branches on it, each one of those branches is 100% Pine tree, whether it is big or little, or apparently dead or alive. It is still Pine. And it’s the same thing with us. We’re Spiritual Being, and it makes no difference what material sense, the human eyes see us as. We aren’t physical, we aren’t material, and we aren’t dead, and we’ve never been born. That is all an outside view of us, a concept. It’s not us. And the creation of God is perfect. … There isn’t any ‘time’ when you are going to see it appear on the earth: it’s already HERE. We aren’t seeing. It’s already here, this, right here and now, is the spiritual universe. You are already in it, and you are Spiritual Being, and I am Spiritual Being, and we are invisible. So there isn’t any ‘time’ when the kingdom of God is going to ‘come’ to earth, or when somebody is going to be born or die and appear again. This is our sense of it. And karma is the same thing. It is completely impersonal. It has nothing to do with you or me, anymore than the ‘man stealing the wallet’ was him. Karma is the belief in cause and effect, and it isn’t true, since God is the only cause. If you could see it as impersonal, then it isn’t you. If you can’t be good and you can’t be bad, then nothing that you appear to do that was good or bad could have any effect on your experience. If you get back to the truth of it, no one has ever done anything good nor evil, because God is the only do-er, the only presence. So, this whole thing of karma is a belief, an appearance. For Study: DEVELOPING SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS, Vol. II: May-June, 1978 Lesson. ~~~~~~~~~~~~ SIGNPOSTS "Jesus said, ‘If your leaders say to you, ‘Look, the kingdom is in heaven,’ then the birds of heaven will precede you. If they say to you, ‘It is in the sea,’ then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is inside you and it is outside you."
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| by Luella Overeem: DEVELOPING SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS, Vol. II: May-June, 1978 Lesson |
