Letters of Myrtle Fillmore., by Myrtle Fillmore, [1936], at sacred-texts.com
Letters of Myrtle Fillmore., by Myrtle Fillmore, [1936], at sacred-texts.com
It is truly wonderful to have children and to be truly awake in caring for them, that they may grow up in health and poise and the assurance that they are God's and that all things needful come through them and to them.
The first five to six years of an individual's life are very important, and to keep him healthy and happy and busy with suitable entertainment and work during that period means everything. He is truly laying his foundation and preparing his many faculties for other activities that are to follow.
Grownups and their children can do without homes of their own, without good furniture, without cars, without many of the luxuries that have grown to be everyday habits with many. But all of them, large or small, need time for quiet and for well-planned meals and for attention to the little things (little in themselves, but necessary to health). Daily study with Unity helps to gain the understanding and faith that make these things possible.
Some way you have come to believe that a constant repetition of words representing Truth is necessary in order to live as you should and to establish order in
your affairs. In reality, the repetition of words, however true they are, cannot make things right if they are not right at the foundation. For example, you used to keep blessing and praising your husband and declaring guidance and prosperity for him. But he wasn't cooperating, and so there was only a condition of cross-currents and a delusion of the personality resulting from personal assurances, without the inner confirmation of Spirit and without the purposeful cooperation of all the faculties and powers in living the Christ life. And since, you have been thinking so constantly of your children, and doing more than they are doing to try to bring them into the Truth way of living. Now, the most helpful thing is just to give them freedom. Stop thinking of their problems; leave them to their own resources, and let them feel the need for spiritual quickening and Truth for themselves.
If it helps you to study and pray constantly, do it. But try to grasp the full value of each and every word, speak it deliberately and with assurance, and then let it rest in the soil of your mind and in the elements of being from which it is to form blessings, until it brings results. Don't keep repeating the word, assuming that it hasn't yet taken root.
Certainly, you don't need to bother with the child's speech! Or with the tendency you call "stubbornness!" Why, dear, he has a right to be "stubborn" if others keep at him too persistently! He must release his own
powers and be permitted to try them out unprompted much of the time. Too much attention and help and fretting, even silently, on the part of parents is responsible for the "I can't" habit. Suppose he doesn't do a thing as well as you could do it. That is no reason for your correcting him or showing him how to do it--let him do it his way and discover later, by himself, that he can do better and better, until he perfects his expression. He will have much more interest in trying things if you permit him more freedom in doing them alone. To take away that "stubbornness" would spoil a wonderful God quality in the early stages of development, and he would have to work hard for years, later on in life, to regain the proper use of it. So don't try too hard to make your child just what you feel he should be. Let God in the midst of him interpret for him and bring forth His conception of this particular child of His. God knows best.
You feel that you and your wife have not done your full parental duty. Well, who of us can say that he has? For that matter, we are all children, floundering in our immaturity, making mistakes, learning to love and forgive, looking to the Father-Mother of us all for light and strength and training!
Let's not condemn ourselves or resent it if at times a dear one feels a spurt of ambition or anxiety, or fails to see things just as we do. Let's endeavor to look
through the veil of personality and see the Christ within, and trust this God self to come through, gloriously!
I want to add something to what you said of the past and the future. The "past is what it is," but we do not often understand it and see it as it really is. The past recedes from us if we do not hug it to us, and the light that the changing perspective throws upon it makes it a pleasing background for present activities! As we rise higher in consciousness, the whole is revealed as a wondrous picture of the soul's progress.
The future is what we make it. But we are learning that we are developing God-given faculties and powers, coming into consciousness of sonship. After all, the future is in God's hands, and it will reveal in our lives the state that Jesus called the kingdom of God or the kingdom of the heavens--the order of the universe established in our daily lives!
Let's remember that those children are God's children. You know this in theory, but in actual fact do you think of them hour by hour as the Father's children, unfolding out of His life and love and wisdom and provided for out of His inexhaustible store? Are you teaching them that they are God's children, that He is the Father, and that they must look to Him by turning their thoughts to their own capacity to interpret the divine plan and to do that which opens the way of supply to them? Or are they growing up looking to you for what they want and need, depending on
you to think out the problems and to bring forth the good things?
Not all their education is coming through the schools, you know! It is your privilege and duty to give them the Truth of their being, and to see to it that they enter into the consciousness of Truth and make practical use of it in all their ways. Otherwise you push them forward intellectually, without the proper spiritual development and daily use of their faculties in meeting what life brings their way.
You are no doubt too anxious about the children and their schooling. You must remember that their education is from within out. Outer opportunities come as their inner development requires them, and it is all a matter of God-Mind unfolding and bringing about that which is best for all concerned. When you become personal and anxious, you push and cause tension. The children may cram what is offered them, but will they be eagerly assimilating and making use of what comes? Let them hunger for opportunities and they will open the way for their own progress.
Sometimes the very efforts of a wife and mother to go beyond the home to bring in supply and to establish the social life on a higher level through such efforts, will tend to depress and discourage and to lessen the initiative and executive ability of the husband and father. Wives usually help best by standing back of the husband and inspiring him with the feeling
that his ideas are good, his undertakings worthwhile, the results satisfying, even though they feel confident they could do better. Occasionally we find that a splendid wife will use her ideas, without realizing it, in the effort to inspire and push the husband into doing that which she feels he should and could do. Not having come from his own inspiration and ability, the plan falls flat or fails to bring the splendid results dreamed of.
We need to remember that work and business are, after all, just means of developing certain soul qualities and avenues through which we serve others in return for the services rendered us. That which the soul really desires to do is its present way of progress and success. To clear away the feeling that one must do what others expect of one, or do what seems to promise larger returns because of obligation, is the greatest help another can give.
The real life of the home, the intercourse of members of the family, the development of each soul, means so much more than does the kind of house you live in, the things worn, the neighbors you associate with, the things purchased or used which the bills represent. I am sure you know this, but the constant suggestions on every hand of the desirability of things tends to pull one off center--until one forms the daily habit of keeping in close touch with Spirit.
Now, dear, just turn your entire attention to God
and earnestly seek to see as He sees. See your children as eagerly growing souls. See them as individuals unfolding their own faculties and powers, individually doing that which seems to them best at the moment. Let your mind rise to the heights where you can view life on a larger scale. See these souls not bound by conventional millstones and others' opinions and their own immediate personal problems, but as sons of God learning by experience and by yearning and by inspiration the way of Truth in life. Forget the present in the eternal; rejoice that all God's children are coming to know His plan of life. Be not only willing but happy to think of your children and all others as they are in God's kingdom--free, free to live life as they see it--free to change, where they feel they have made mistakes, or where the present mode of living seems to depress or to hinder progress--free to stand for their highest ideals, assured of blessings from others.
I feel that I know how you must think and feel in this matter of your children; for you are looking on with the eyes of a devoted mother and feeling with the heart that knows sacrifice and loyalty and righteous ambition. But really in handling such a "problem" (this word does not describe just what is meant) one must have more of the positive ability of the masculine soul and less of the negative or feeling side of the feminine soul. You, as other women are wont to do, are feeling much more than you are thinking. The feeling is human
and based on personal views and past experience. So it will not serve as a power in solving the problem; it will throw in a disturbing element and tend to confuse. But if you will turn your attention to really thinking about this matter in the splendid way a man will think out the best method of procedure, you will open your mind and heart to the Christ ideas. Then you will begin to be a real help, for you will release these children from preconceived opinions as to the suitable thing to do.
In His sight your child is perfect. The standards of weight, height, and so forth that people have set up as a guide are not by any means in accord with God's idea of what is good and perfect. So don't worry or be in the least anxious about the weight of your little one. What is really important is the "stature" of her "inward man," her soul and consciousness. To measure up to the Jesus Christ standard she must keep her thoughts good, pure, lovely, joyous, beautiful, and based on the Truth.
When she does this, her body temple is bound to show forth the perfection of the Christ within.
We are lifting you up in the great love and light that will make you feel the peace of Jesus Christ and rest in the assurance that all is well. Your child, over whom you watched so tenderly and for whom you have expressed your highest concept of mother love, and who has grown to manhood and taken advantage of his
God-given freedom and the powers that it has been his privilege to unfold and to express as he felt best, is also God's beloved child. He is ever in the presence of the Father, and the Father is helping him to awaken from the dream of sense and to judge wisely and to discriminate between the worthwhile things of Spirit and the false and undesirable things of immaturity.
Trust this dear boy to the Father, dear, and know without doubt that he is being lifted up and set free, and brought into an entirely new consciousness of life and love and power and freedom and success. Even though he should not at present know how to get into and redeem his body and set it in order, he is getting needed lessons and will not have to suffer for the same mistakes again.
We'll help you to know how to speak the Truth to this dear little daughter, to set her free from the limitations that have hindered her progress, and to encourage her in expressing herself through all her senses and powers. She is God's child, and He has created her like Himself, perfect in every part and free to express herself.
Think of your child as God's child, and as God's child ever abiding in His love and surrounded with peace and plenty. This is the truth: Your child is God's child. And she does inherit from the divine Father-Mother the perfect Christ Mind.
Something has interfered with the full, free, harmonious
development of her faculties. But this is only a temporary condition. And as we who love her think of her in the true light and hold that the Christ Mind is now awakening and quickening and developing all her faculties, she will respond. Her soul does not really want to give way to negation and resentment. But error thoughts have been building up, and she says and does things that her lack of good judgment makes her feel will help her. The Truth spoken with faith and power and love to her soul will break up the old states of mind, and she will begin to take hold for herself.
Assure her daily, as many times as is necessary, that she is perfectly safe and that no one is going to disturb her or take her away. She is at home with those who love her and who know her to be God's child. Talk to her just as though she were expressing herself in a perfectly normal way. That which you think of her and the way in which you appeal to her will determine her reactions.
The love that is the fulfilling of the law is not the personal affection and the clinging to personality that is the usual expression of a happily mated man and woman. Love that fulfills the law is the great sense of unity that prompts the soul to seek the understanding and practice of that which is for the welfare not only of the beloved but of all humanity. When woman recognizes the divine in men and inspires them to
express it, she has no difficulty living happily with a man to whom she has been drawn. When men understand women and adore the divine qualities in them they will be endowed with power from on high to live so that perfect harmony results.