Teach Us to Pray, by Charles Fillmore, [1941], at sacred-texts.com
Teach Us to Pray, by Charles Fillmore, [1941], at sacred-texts.com
EVERY TIME we go to a movie we are witnessing a likeness of what is constantly taking place in our mind. A likeness is an imitation or repetition of a thing. The projection into visible action of a series of small images by a motion-picture machine is the copy of a process that we all use, the picture-making ability of our mind. However the picture-making ability of our mind is a far more substantial thing than the weak imitations of the movie camera. We clothe our mental pictures with flesh and blood, while the movie is merely shimmering shadows.
It is true that persons who are shallow in their grasp of the deep things of life image weakly, and the projections of their mind are transitory. But those who have meditated seriously upon the source
of existence and stirred up the inner substance and life make very substantial pictures in the universal ether or "kingdom of the heavens." An image projected from the head alone, which has not made union with soul substance, is a mere flickering will-o'-the-wisp that shimmers for a short moment in the mental marshes and then fades away.
There is a vast difference between the thought images of an intellectual thinker and those of one who has got access to the spiritual substance and life within. One may make brilliant pictures in the ether, but they are without the substance and life that is so essential to the structure of things eternal. Jesus illustrated this in His comparison of the man who builds upon rock with the man who builds upon sand. The house built upon sand soon falls, but the one built on rock (substance) endures when the winds and floods descend upon it.
Spiritual insight or discernment shows us that Divine Mind, which created in the beginning, must still be carrying forward the universe and the man that it originally conceived. It also shows us that by projecting the perfect picture of ourselves that God projected we shall behold its perfect manifestation.
Paul says that we shall attain the glory of the Lord by degrees: "from glory to glory." Jesus said, "In your patience ye shall win your souls." So many of us have visions of the perfect man, as had John on Patmos, and we are so eager to be like him that we get impatient and eagerly grasp at the many
"promising" short cuts into the kingdom.
But we should be constantly reminded that there are no shorter cuts than those taught by Jesus. He said that the kingdom of heaven suffered violence under John the Baptist and the other prophets up to the time of John and that the violent took it by force. Then He called attention to John the Baptist as the reincarnation of Elijah. Of all the old prophets Elijah was the most violent and destructive. He at one time called down the fire of Jehovah and destroyed four hundred of the prophets of Baal. This violent and destructive rise of the power of the word finally reacted upon the cells of Elijah's body and burned them up, and he was taken up into the heavens in a chariot of fire.
It is popularly taught that Elijah is a saint in heaven, but this cannot be true because, as Jesus plainly taught in Matthew 11:14, he appeared again in the earth as John the Baptist. Neither did John get into heaven. He expressed the Elijah spirit by condemning Herod and then having his head cut off by way of reaction to his destructive thought. All this instructs us in the power of our mind to bring peace, harmony, and health into our life by right thinking. All that Jesus taught about man and his mighty mental capacity is being confirmed by modern psychology and by the discoveries of science in the realms invisible. For us it is not only a privilege but an absolute necessity to bring forth that perfection of character and form which was originally imaged in our soul by God-Mind.