The Difference Between Personality and Individuality – Jack B.

Jack Boland has literally changed the lives of thousands of people, and he can help you change yours. The following lessons are designed to give you the information and inspiration you need to make your life what it can be. This program is entitled, Twelve Steps to a Spiritual Experience. And now, Jack Bolan. All of your life you've probably been hearing and reading of mystics and saints. men and women who seem to stand tall and straight as they walk through life head and shoulders above normal people functioning well setting examples speaking wisely moving almost effortlessly through life's unfolding experiences and somehow their experience does not seem to be different than ours, but their reaction to their experience is greatly different than our. These people seem not only to have discovered the success and the joy of living for themselves, but invariably they have a marked influence on the lives of almost everyone that comes in contact with them. And if you have read the words of such a person, or if you have known such a person, almost without exception they do not take credit for their seemingly unusual experience. But they always seem to give credit to a powerful presence that They have the ability to contact on a personal basis. Somehow, to these people, God is an experience, not an idea, but an actual living experience, all that may be not always on a continuing basis, but when they lose it, they know how to reestablish a conscious contact with a power of presence, with another dimension of life that speaks to them in a way that brings a smile to their face and to them there seem to be no tragedies in life. Now, if you believe that these special people exist at all let me confess to you that for a long time in my life I did not believe any of the things that I'm speaking to you this evening. but if you believe it perhaps you have said to yourself why them why them why not me God why not me it's a good question isn't it why them why not me and there is a perfectly good answer to it and the answer is that they have knowingly or unknowingly fulfill the conditions for such a living experience that experience that has been described in all of the great literature of all of the great religions not only of our own tradition but throughout all of recorded history and that experience seems to be available to everyone we've been told that this is available to us and somehow not experiencing it the large numbers of people even in our religions have said all right it must be available then not now but at some future time after we have died and instinctively we know that that is not true because we live in universe of law and it is not capricious it cannot give to one and withhold from another even we the imperfect parents that we are do not do that with our own children no we do not give all to one and withholds from another and in this universe what one has experienced all can if we discover how. So the question is not, can we? But it becomes, how can we ? There must be a way to have this experience, this remarkable experience, that intuitively we have sought. We have sought it in our prayer and yet even in those moments have feared it. Now let me ask you, would you like to discover and become a proficient practitioner of an ancient system that promises to make a mystic of you? Do you believe that you have inherent within your own makeup, within your old mind, your own nature, the possibility of mysticism? Or do you believe that you are only human destined to merely a physical expression? Is that what you believe? But would you like to try, as an experiment for a period of time, the practicing of a system that might absolutely amaze you at the results it can produce to your own satisfaction in the laboratory of your own consciousness and of your life? You see, we're not asking anybody to believe anything that they cannot demonstrate in their own experience and i'm talking about a system so powerful that it will change your whole life and and if you follow it feelingly and faithfully nothing in you or around you will be left unchanged and i mean literally nothing and it doesn't matter what your religious background has been or is now or if you have religious inclination at all because the system that I'm talking about does not require you to be religious if you are religious it will change it and if you're not religious it'll change that too as a matter of fact I've seen this system do sometimes more for agnostics or atheists than for religiously inclined people because agnostics and atheists don't have as much religious or spiritual pride. Other kinds, perhaps, but not that kind. But if you have an intense desire to know God, or if you have an intensely deep need that you have tried to fulfill with all your heart and have failed or if you have experienced in a general way the failure of life on this earth and have grown desperate maybe no one knows it but you but in the silence of your own being you have known much desperation then you might be ready for this system of thought. You might be who knows? You see, you might become one of those people that you've been reading about. Or you might be come one of the people whose books you've been reading. It's worth a try, wouldn't you think? It's worth a trial. Yesterday I stopped in a telephone booth to make a call. As I put my dime in I looked at the directory that was folded in its slot, and there written in fresh, bold letters was that one word, help, followed by two exclamation points. Help. Help. and as I completed my call I could imagine the person who stood there in the desperation of their own life surrounded by unmanageable circumstances surrounded by conditions perhaps that even they knew that they had drawn to themselves once again one more time finding themselves back in the same trap or maybe standing there with a smile on their face as I've done and most of you have smiling speaking other words but inside the heart was saying help help me oh help me help all of us need help there's not one person here that does not need help why did you come here tonight if you did not need help you bet I came back to my office and picked up my dictionary again and turned to help mr. Webster said the help is to cooperate effectively with a person to assist it's the furnish aid to contribute strength or means. Perhaps what we call hell is not having received help. Perhaps hell is living in that state of mind that cannot experience help or strength or power or understanding. And do you know that I'm describing to you now the human condition? Because most of the people that need help cannot receive it because if they could receive it, they wouldn't need it because help is instantly available at every point in universe the moment that a person fulfills the conditions for receiving help God by whatever name you would call God has never ever for a moment withheld health power strength healing whatever form that that help might be required in your life or not. So it is not a matter of trying to get a higher power to do something for us. That's not what help is. Help is not an act of coercion wherein that we get something outside ourselves to do something for us no the receiving of help is an individual fulfilling the conditions that permit that help to flow and to move into that person's experience there must be a way and there is a way for every human being for every being for ever part of creation to receive that which is its own special need as defined by one's own being, one's old mind, one's inner identity. The way. The way how the way and the way goes way back how that word that i use tao is chinese word most of you are familiar with it and it means the uniting first principle from which all existence and all change in the universe springs the unconditioned unnameable source of all reality that transcends being and non-being by standing above and beyond all distinction you see the help that you and I seek that everyone in the human condition seeks must be from above and above does not mean from afar perhaps we thought that above meant out there somewhere and it does not mean out there it means from another vibration help for 110 volts is not the addition of another 110 volts if you add 110 volts to an electrical line that has 110 volts, you still only have 110. If I help you and you help me and that's all the help we have, we don't have any help. We're right back where we started. We still have each other. That's not health. Health must come from above from a higher vibration. So health for 110 is 220. Now, you plug 220 into 110 and it goes up to 220. Another power, a higher power has come into being. So we will not find help at our own level out there straight ahead. It must come from another direction. Tao means the eternal order of the universe. The eternal order the universe we live in a universe that has an order that is simply magnificent or divine but if we look at our own lives sometimes we don't behold that order isn't that strange how if you look through a telescope or a microscope into infinity in both directions you will find a progressive order a continuing order you have to find a human being to find this order in the universe now that eternal order has existed and somehow we must find the way to have it come down into our experience and here again is the way the way to that experience Tao means the principles that govern each separate category of existence in this divinely ordered universe there are certain universal laws that govern each category of existence. But if you and I are living in a certain category of existence and have stepped out of those principles or out of these laws, then we will experience disorder. Not the order that is there. Tao means cosmic reason. There is a cosmic reason A divine intelligence, a superintelligence, personal, powerful and responsive and experienceable. And that's very important, experienceable if we can fulfill the conditions for that experience. And this divinely ordered universe, intelligently responding to the needs of man, has through all generations, through all segments of man's unfolding, has brought the way again and again into life. the way for you and for me forever persuasion since man has been having his experience on this earth to find that which our heart seeks and that experience that we will grow increasingly more restless until we experience now this way Tao has was not only revealed to the ancient Chinese it's quite evident in the Old Testament and the New Testament especially in the Sermon on the Mount in the book of James a notable example of the outline for religious retreatants as given by the Jesuit order of priests is town how has appeared and reappeared and a generation ago once again it appeared in the form of a movement that consisted at one time in the 1920s and 30s of several hundred thousand people scattered around the earth in what was known as the Oxford group movement that many of you are familiar with and this began with with an experience, a spiritual experience that happened to a man by the name of Frank Buckman who was a Presbyterian missionary in China in 1910. This man was there saving the heathen he fought and said. And in the midst of his experience of saving some other people he was saved from what he believed. These are his words not mine. He had an experience then wherein that the nature of man and the nature of, of the universe and the Nature of God and the eternality of things and the unity of all life was revealed to him. And not only was it revealed to Him but the way was given to him to help other people to experience this magnificent unfolding that was his and he gave up the ministry as he then understood it went back to his native england and began to teach on a one-to-one basis and in small groups that were known as cells and he taught people from all around the world and one of whom was dr sam shoemaker an episcopal priest who those of you who are episcop aliens have known by reputation if not personally and have loved and i had the marvelous opportunity to know in a small way Dr. Sam Dr. Shoemaker had an experience as a result of Tao or the six tenets of the Oxford movement of the way that within his own ministry he had an experienced that changed his life and he became the leader of what developed as the Oxford Movement in this country but in 1921 Frank Buckman lecturing at Oxford University the series of lectures caught fire at that university and spread around the world and in the years that followed became known as the Oxford Movement and hundreds of thousands of men and women had dramatic experiences and healings that were, in many instances, miraculous in nature recovering from diseases and from conditions that were of the same kind that are described in the Bible and in other works of a similar nature. The six tenets of the Oxford movement. In the 1930s, the Oxford movement became involved in inner politics, began to be disrupted within itself and fell apart momentarily. It appeared in 1938 as moral rearmament. You're familiar with that. But there was a part, a faction of the Oxford group movement that continued to exist. and you know that group as Alcoholics Anonymous in a certain sense there is no Alcoholics Anonymous it is the continuation of the old Oxford movement but the alcoholics are the drunks of the Oxford movement and remember that part of the way was that a person had to be desperate before they could practice these tenets why because unless one is desperate they will want their conditions to change their lives to change but not me God I'm doing pretty good thank you lay something on me from the outside but don't touch anything in here where I live but if a person is about to lose their life because of a cancer in the body or a cancer in the mind they've been a failure and can't admit it this is not always necessary if one can fulfill the conditions living from what one would call success in the world it will still work at any rate the alcoholics in the Oxford movement had started writing some new literature for themselves because the the movement was rather religiously oriented with the religious language that the drunks couldn't stand and so they were writing a book that was to be called you'll never guess what he was supposed to be calling the way out the way they found out that there were 12 other books in the library of congress with that name and they didn't want to be the 13th i guess they were superstitious and so someone came up with alcoholics anonymous not anonymity meaning we don't want you to know who we are but anonymous one of the spiritual principles was that when you had your own awakening your own experience your own miracle your own conscious contact with god you had to go find someone with a similar problem and share it with them you had to put it back into the earth back into life had to give it back you could not keep it unless you gave it away and you did this anonymously giving all credit to god taking no credit for oneself because the ego had to die. All credit going to God. Now, running through all of the systems, I'm only mentioning a few ways in which Tao has appeared. But running through each system that has appeared to man throughout history, throughout the history of man, is the same basic structuring, almost as though you can overlay one on top of the other. The systems are the same. The words are sometimes somewhat different, but the principles are the same. And always the first basic principle or idea is that man at his own level always fails. It does not appear that he will fail, nor does it appear that he should from his position. But it is inevitable. Man cannot go farther than where he is, from where he is. Somewhere in his unfolding, he must change from believing that he is merely a physical being to beginning to believe that he has more than that, perhaps even a spiritual being. And the only thing that will convince him of this, that will prove this to him, is his own experience. each one must prove to himself by his or her own living experience that they cannot manage their own law and until this happens we are not teachable or we can learn many things but we cannot learn Tao or the way until we have failed or at least have comprehended this first principle we cannot be helped help will not come help cannot move from above into our experience except that this basic principle be there now there will be others that must be inlaid on top of it you see until we approve this to ourselves we believe that help will come to us in the form of money check from home love work something external a rearrangement of our outer situation oh god fix it fix it fix it they will not see help as being an interchange on their part they will see help is something done for them not as something that they must cooperate with or even do for themselves you probably don't read the funny papers i do and this morning i read gil ford he's the coach and for the last six weeks of the baseball season in high school he's been having trouble with one of the young men on his team left fielder who gets crocked and one time a fly ball was hit to him in left field and he just stood there and it went right over his head and the coach looked at him and thought what in the world is going on at any rate he finally got kicked off the team and then last week he was caught driving drunk none of you ever had anything like that happen to you and now his girlfriend is bringing him to the coach and not thinking that there was anywhere else to take him. And she said, we thought you might be able to help. And the coach said, I can't help him, Jackie. I don't think anybody can until he decides to help himself. Until he decides to help yourself. And you see, until you and I until a person makes that decision we'll not be able to see that we ourselves must fulfill the conditions of being helped in fact that is the help that's the only help that can happen to us and tau is the way to receive help it's what we must do so that help can happen help happens instantly when we provide the conditions and the first condition is one of insight it's the admission of personal powerlessness and my friend this requires a deep insight that is not known in the normal mind the normal psychology or the normal human condition only a few people on earth have this insight as a matter of fact this is absolutely contrary to the psychology that we as human beings build and create for ourselves you see life teaches the reverse idea that you can do it buster and if you don't do it there's no one else going to do it for you and there is a certain yes to that oh yes that's not totally wrong because I must go out and live my life as though I can do all the while knowing that I cannot do always in spiritual principles there is the paradox, the double-edged sword. Would you like to hear the greatest story of all time about this key insight? You're familiar with it. As a matter of fact, it's written about you. They call it the prodigal child or son in the Bible, but it's really you and me that it's talking about. And remember what happened to that young person? Well, he took his substance, he took that which was his and decided to go out there and do it himself because he knew he could. He could do it better than the old man. And he set out to do it, and he did it. You know where he was when he came to himself? In a pig pen. A Jewish boy and a pig pen. And he wasn't even eating with the pigs, friends. He ate what they left. Now that's called hitting the bottom, I'll tell you. And no man gave him anything. Meaning he discovered that there was no help at the human level. It was not there. That the answers that he needed were not to be found from man from conditions he'd had the money it was given to him and he was gone he'd sought it in other little things that we won't mention but the story will tell you what they were hadn't found it there where was he going to find it and then he came to himself came to himself and remembered in his father's house meaning this other dimension this higher vibration the super consciousness that which was above that which he had left never leaving but that which she had discarded or that what she had said does not exist that's what leaving means he went into a far country doesn't mean that he took a boat he went into a psychology that by the very nature of its own self was a failure psychology that's the human condition now he came to himself and he admitted that he was powerless that he is not going to find where he had been and this insight is a kind of honesty again that's not experienced in man so-called normal condition because we want to hide this we don't even want to admit this to ourselves, not at all. No way. A beautiful thing happened. He became willing to rise up out of the conditions and return to his Father. You see, we want help to come to us right where we are. We want help that comes down into the problem as we sit there suffering in the problem. We don't want to be changed. Help come to me. It's like being in your automobile stuck in the snow with your wheels spinning and your windows rolled up and the heater on, and you want help to come in the form of someone driving up and getting out of their car and walking over to your window and knocking on it, and then you roll it down a little bit and help says, gosh, you're stuck, aren't you? Would you like for me to take my tow rope and you sit comfortably where you are. Now don't you move. My feet are freezing and I'm going to wrap this rope around your bumper and I'm going to pull you out. Isn't that sweet? That's not help because I promise you we've had that kind of help and the thing that pulls us out is what we have to get help from later. The kind of health that we have sought has been another layer of trouble and to that another layer of travel because we have saw help at 110 volts which is where we have been and And there is no help at that level. Help must come from above, and help must come from the willingness to be changed within oneself based on the awareness of one's inability and the willingness to have help come in whatever form. Help does not mean that we assign to the creator of the universe our own idea of what help is. Because if we're still on that basis we won't be helped. comes when we say, okay, whatever. Change me. And this is a posture of the mind. A posture of the mind that when it first happens is a complete shock that almost paralyzes when one finds that of themselves they are powerless. Now there's a strange feature about Tao or the way that intellect refuses to understand and that is that the way out cannot be learned it cannot be memorized it cannot be stored up for future use why because it must be experienced now help must be experience or the way must be experienced health must always happen now and the reason is that help of the kind that we're seeking and talking about is always based on spiritual principles that cannot be learned but only practiced or demonstrated or experienced. We must put on that principle. And remember that we read that Tao is the principle that governs each separate category of existence. And what are these principles, where we are in existence? If you will look at the sheet that I gave you, don't look now. You can see it later. The principles of help are in the examples that I give you. The six tenets of the Oxford Movement and from those have sprung the 12 steps of AA and there are other variations of these universal laws that have been demonstrated. and the first one is the admission that we are powerless over conditions that we cannot change our own lives. The second, we come to believe that an unlimited power can establish a new order in our lives. We come to believing. It's not believing that God exists. That's coming to believe that a whole new order can be established in my experience. This may sound like a very innocuous set of principles but as these weeks unfold, my friends, you'll begin to see that it will separate the men from the boys. That everyone is not willing to put on these ideas in their mind. We make a decision to place our will and our lives under God's direction. We believe God is receptive to our surrender. We take a searching, fearless, and honest examination of our minds. We admit to God to ourselves and to another human being, to another human being? Wow. What we have discovered about our law. We now become entirely ready to have God remove all our defects. We humbly ask him to heal us. We make a list of all persons whose lives we have influenced negatively and become willing to make amends to each of them. We proceed to make direct amends to each person wherever possible, remembering that we cannot get well at the expense of another. We continue to observe ourselves and when we are wrong, promptly admit it. We seek through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, desiring only God's direction for our lives and the understanding and strength to follow his will for us. And having had a spiritual experience or awakening as the result of these steps, I promise you that if you will follow feelingly and diligently the practicing, the experiencing of these ideas, you will have such an experience that will be tangible and real to you. And having this experience we freely share what we have found and we continue to practice these principles in all of our affairs. The way is an exciting, life-changing, miracle-producing experience. You, each one of us here, can experience those things that the mystics have described. Until we gather together for our next lesson, let me give each of us an assignment. It must be an experience, not just an intellectual exercise that must come first. And this assignment is to begin to be aware of the powerlessness of your human condition. Someone who is a metaphysician said to me today, I find it difficult to say I am powerless, that the I am is powerless. The I am in us is not powerless. It's the ego that says it is that is powerless, that small self, that limited self, that self of the human condition, that earthy self begin to observe the powerlessness of that cell begin to get a feeling for it observe yourself observe yourself as you go home tonight in traffic or after you leave here the first person that says something to you that you really don't like. Observe the powerlessness of yourself to control your reaction. Begin to observe yourself. Make a list of all of the things that exist in your outer world over which you are really powerless, but with which you have been trying to demonstrate control, especially people. are there any people that you've been trying to manage that you're trying to fix make a list of all the people that you are trying to fix and become aware that you have not fixed them yet and if you'll ask them they'll tell you you aren't going to either that's powerlessness but admit it recognize it become aware of it and then look at your own inner life begin to observe how little power you have to carry out the next thing that you assign to yourself decide tomorrow morning that you're going on a diet that you are going to stop smoking cigarettes that you only going to have two cocktails before dinner or whatever it is look at what you need to do and notice how powerless you are to do it from the human condition. Begin to get this feeling of honesty, insight. Begin to look at yourself. Look away from your outer conditions and look at one's own self. Begin to see how mechanical you are that next Tuesday is like last Tuesday, if it is. Is it? Think about it. What is it that you're afraid of? The next time someone says something about you that you think is unfair, notice how long it takes you to stop thinking about it. See how long he keeps you awake that night and how long you have to talk to yourself to stop the feeling of, well, I'll get even with them. Begin to observe yourself, and it's absolutely fascinating. This is not a negative practice at all. You see, the problem is never the problem. Our reaction to the problem is the problem, but our reaction can also become the solution, And the first principle, the first step of Tao of the Way is the joyful admission of our personal powerlessness. And if you and I can get an idea of this, a feeling for this, then to this we will add the next principle. And then the power comes. An unlimited power. A mighty power. A mighty tower is our God. and so it is it is an intelligent power it will speak to any mind that will listen it will not speak into our ideas because it is above our ideas it speaks to us when we are willing to go beyond our ideas are you willing to go beyond your ideas very good speak God thy servant here sometimes someone comes up to me and tells me how good it is that when they come to a class or a service at Unity that they don't have to believe what they hear. Doesn't that make you feel good? Makes me feel good. You don't need to believe it. You don' t have to belive what you hear me say. Each one of us here is reaching beyond our limited concepts of things. We will never find what we're looking for in concepts, in ideas. We must get beyond our thinking into the reality of existence. And this is possible. It's possible for you to go far beyond that place that your thinking has carried you to this moment or in any moment of your life. And in these 12 weeks, these 12 classes of which this is the second, we are going to be exploring a system of thought that will produce in all who will receive it a predetermined result and that result is your own conscious contact with god the only way that we can ever understand anything is to have an experience of it and certainly that's true with spiritual things all that we can understand about god is what we have experienced nothing more than that counts that's a very powerful promise that i just gave you that this is a system that will provide a predetermined result your own conscious contact with god i'm absolutely convinced that it is an exact promise providing you are willing to fulfill the conditions for that experience and those conditions will be exacting they will not be intellectual the smartest one here will probably go to the foot of the class you see the spiritual life is not a theory it must be lived we must live it. It cannot be learned in the manner that we have been moving through our limited outer educational system. It can only be lived. One must live it spiritual principles only live in us the moment that we are living them. You learn about this system by living it and Tonight we'll be talking about it, or at least a part of it, but that's only a very poor substitute for living it. Each one must go out into his or her own life and change that life by practicing these principles where you live in all of your affairs. But stop and think for a moment. Isn't the thing that probably turns you off the most about religion, the religion that you knew in the past, the fact that too many people were talking about something they weren't living. Talking about something they were not understanding. Many promises, but not much happening or if it was not happening to you. You see this system that we're speaking of here will require some effort as a matter of fact a great effort an effort requiring change on your part and on my part. I promise you that if you will practice it you will be changed. you will never ever be the same again that's a promise one of the greatest thoughts that can dawn on the human consciousness it is a revolutionary thought it is the Virgin thought it is immaculately conceived it cannot be implanted from the outside no seed or sperm from the outside can convince you of it and that's the thought that you and God are one that the spiritual realm of being is your true identity the fantastic thought because we've always believed ourselves separated from the spiritual realm and somehow been trying to get into it like being up to your neck in a swimming pool trying to get into the water you're in it you're in it last week we took into ourselves the first step in the direction of our spiritual experience it was the first movement in consciousness and and this system requires a movement a motion an increasing momentum in the mind of your own being and that first step was the admission of our personal powerlessness and someone came to me after class and said can one not admit one's own powerlessness without saying i am powerless somehow it causes me to cringe to deliberately use the i am in that negative statement and she said i appreciate the principle but object only to the statement and for the benefit of those of you who have been in the metaphysical movement for a long time you know the question that she was asking i am is the name of god in us i am i am notice how that everything in your life that you have said i am to or i will to which means i am has happened have you noticed that go back and look at all of those unpleasant events that occurred in prior to their happening can you see the chain of thought action that took place that which became your bed was your former good that you said i am going to have and you did then you said I wonder how I'll get rid of it what am I going to do now now that I have that which I have said I must have but at any rate in exodus the third chapter the 13th verse when god was sending moses back to give the message of freedom to draw the people out of captivity out of bondage and remember that egypt means the bondage of one's human self that's what egypt is all of us have been in egypt and perhaps in some large measure, we still are there. Not the Egypt of a country, but the Egypt of a consciousness. And so the Lord God was sending Moses back to deliver the people and Moses didn't want to go because Moses, like you and I said, why me, God? You see, Moses had been a failure. Moses had to leave Egypt because he wasn't doing so very well in Egypt. He was run out of Egypt, but something happened to him. He was, his nature was changed. He was born again. He had an experience that lifted him up into another dimension, a fourth dimension of mind. And even from that position, he did not want to go back. He said, in effect, God, do you think that they're going to believe it when I go back and tell them that God sent me? They know me. They know who I am. Do you understand that? Suppose you went home and told your family that God said for them to sell the house or whatever. You see Moses' position? God said tell them I am who I am and say this to the people of Israel I am has sent me to you and this is my name forever and this I am to be remembered throughout all generations I am that I am and there has been established in you and me the same I am-ness within us there is a power greater than ourselves in us, deep within us. Now, when you and I say I am powerless, how can we do this? How can I am say that I am powerful? Let's examine that for a moment because it's a very, very important critical movement of understanding at this point. And remember that no spiritual principle is negative. Nor can the practicing of a spiritual principle ever be negative or produce anything except an outstanding, marvelous, and satisfactory result. The universe is based on law or principle or truth. These words all mean the same thing. And every problem that you and I have ever had has come from our separation in consciousness, our deviation in consciousness from the way the universe conducts its business. We've decided to conduct our business somewhat differently, and it does not work. And the first principle is the turning point of our restoration to our right minds or our true spiritual condition. And that first principle ist he admission of defeat. But it is not the defeat of the inner self. Some of you are familiar with Lessons in Truth. It's a basic unity textbook. And let me read to you from page 72. personality applies to the human part of you the person the external it belongs to the region governed by the intellect your personality may be agreeable or disagreeable to others when you say that you dislike anyone you mean that you just like his personality that exterior something that presents itself from the outside it's the outer changeable man in contradistinction to the inner real man and individuality is the term used to denote the real man the more god comes into visibility through a person the more individualized he becomes remember that god is wisdom intelligence love and power and the more pronounced the manner in which any one of these qualities or all of them comes forth into visibility through aperson the greater his individuality one's individuality that part of one that never changes its identity it's the god of yourself the eternal part of yourself it's that which distinguishes one person from another one's personality may become like that of others with whom one associates individuality never changes i hope that there's some movement in your thought about these ideas there is a self of us an outer self that has no power but it has believed itself to have and most of our of the time we have been coming from and thinking from and feeling and speaking from that outer self now who cares to admit complete defeat practically no one that i've ever known finds this an easy thing to come by because every natural instinct cries out against the idea of personal powerlessness and the intellect rebels against this concept and why should it not rebel because it has set itself up as our savior and the source of our unfolding good and do you think it wishes to surrender when it is in charge of our being it has the place of prominence and power in our world but it's that very intellect with its limiting ideas that has led us down that road of life that has been nothing but a merry chase into one disaster after another, if we be honest with ourselves. Notice something about the intellect. It deals with the outer world. It's connected with the five senses and most people therefore live merely from the surface of themselves from the surface outward they are outer oriented and outer identified and this self this identity this false personality is called the ego the ego lives in the world and it is of the world but the scriptures say that he that is within you is greater than he that is in the world so our rebirth and you've heard this word all of your life is merely the switching of identity from the outer self to the inner self but this cannot take place there is no way for it to take place until an individual sees that the outer self is a total failure and always one the outer man has no power never has never shall it have and that outer self has no permanent identity the universe has no place for it it will die now for this self to admit defeat is not negative it's one of the most positive and spiritual events that can occur in life and there is no peace nor is there any permanent understanding until this happens as the inner experience of an individual the surrender must occur before a person can enter into their god consciousness or the kingdom of god consciousness or have an awakening to their inner spiritual identity and this is the first step the admission that the outer self can't cut it you can use any language that you want but it is not to be found there there are no answers there only problem it's that self that has been posing as us and it says i am wise i am strong i am loving look at me i'm a nice guy but one day it must admit that it was never any of these things and in that moment of admission or of surrender from that point on it becomes possible to believe that a power greater than ourselves, greater than this self, can restore us to sanity. Oh, did I imply that we weren't sane? Have we been insane? Well, legally, I'm certain that we have not been. But from the standpoint of the order of the universe, relative to our spiritual identity, we have been insane. Man's greatest moment is foolishness to God. Now what is another word for sanity? Order. Order. What is insanity but disorder in the mind? Order is sanity. everywhere that you look in the universe you will find a divine order established there and that order is your real nature and mine and we can put it on any time that we choose to put it one but we must see where our disorder has been coming from we have believed that disorder happened to us from the outside and it happened because we were in a certain relationship but no it was our disorder that arranged that certain relationship did it not this order breeds its own disorder but we can now come to believe that a power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity does this mean that you would like to be restored to some former state or condition or experience would you like to go back to where you were not i would you like to go back to where i was i would not wish that on you then what is it that we're going to be restored to our spiritual condition the divine order of the universe there's a power that can restore us to that if we fulfill the condition and now we have already established the first two conditions one is the admission that we had no order of ourselves. Of ourselves we could do no thing, but there is a power that can restore us to its order. Most people have always believed in a power greater than themselves. There are only a few atheists around and I happen to be a former one of them. You and I have often pondered the nature of this universe, its vastness, its obvious power and that divine order, its predictability the exact time and location of an eclipse of the sun can be predicted a thousand years hence our scientists have learned to land men on the moon within a hundred yards of a predetermined spot closer than that and then to safely retrieve them to bring them back in a splashdown within sighting of a carrier's deck and yet you and I coming from where we come from have trouble finding a neighbor a block away. And how predictable are we? I wonder what time the 10 o'clock train will run tomorrow. Our intellectual heroes, the mathematicians, the chemists, the physicists, the astronomers suggest that these vast forces and laws are in action all around us and the religionists have been saying that a mighty purpose and destiny underlay all of that and that if we believed a certain way usually a way that i could never believe they said if you'll believe this and i can never believe it and if you will be good while you believe it then one day you will experience some of the benefits of being a citizen of this universe not all of them because you will always be a second class citizen some future time never now not now now is for waiting and now is for suffering all that suffering but there have been appearing upon the face of this earth from time to time a different order of men and women who have talked of a spiritual universe a universe that knew neither time nor space nor limitation and that this spiritual universe was governed by a universal spirit or God that was personal to everyone and experienceable to everyone who would fulfill the conditions. And one of the conditions is now, not then. You see, if this spirit is above time as we know time, then it is always now to this spirit and we cannot reach it at some future time. We can only get to it now but this is the opposite of what we've been told. We've always been told you can't get to a now you've got to get to a then and so we have conditioned ourselves into a then consciousness and then never comes. When have you ever had an experience then? Anything you do you do now and if you're not doing it now you don't like it. Now is the time so can you see that the greatest single factor that has prevented us from having the very experience that we have sought has been the idea that God cannot be experienced now but must be experienced at some later time and there is no such time there's no such God God is now God says I am that I am I am as right now God does not say I am going to be when we experience God it will be right now and as long as we're pointing toward the future we will never get there you see we must have this experience on God's terms not ours and that's how we fulfill the conditions but to get back to what these certain special men and women have been saying to us that this spirit's nature is love love beyond the scope of human imagining and we've stood outside that love and wondered where it was have you not looked around and wondered where God's love was where is it God if you love me so much why am I suffering so much and we've been told that this spirit is superhuman strength and power omnipotence unlimited power and that this power can be directed into an individual's life when the conditions are fulfilled by that person to have such an experience and this spirit or power is unlimited intelligence omniscience, it doesn't think, it knows. It is all knowledge. And that knowledge and intelligence can and will come into our experience to direct, guide, comfort, correct any condition that exists here is a fantastic idea for you at this very moment the intelligence and power that created and sustains the universe and that is actually running this fantastic universe right now will run your life right now and there's only one reason why it cannot and will not and that is that you do not believe it right now. That's a condition that must be supplied by the human factor. I must supply the idea that this is my power to be experienced now. And I must come to believe that it is the desire of this intelligent, responsive power to do just that for me because its nature, its name is love. its name is love the nature of God is love the spiritual realm of being is your true identity and there is no other true identity remember what the master teacher said see what love the father has given us that we should be called children of God and so we are those are not five words He said, I can do nothing of myself. But the Father who dwells in me does his work. This outer self can do nothing. This limited self. Only the self that is within can perform. But something is required. The child must believe in the parent. The visible must believe in the visible. and it must come to believe because it does not believe. And if it thinks it believes and does not, it cannot have the experience. It deludes itself. You see, there is an old idea that has been running around the human consciousness for hundreds of years, and that idea is I believe in God. And we do not. What we mean when we say that is that we believe that perhaps God exists somewhere, sometime. But we don't believe in God. We have not come to believe that a power greater than ourselves can do anything at all for us right now. But the ones who have come to belief this have had fantastic, dynamic, instantaneous experiences as the result of believing that. The thing that drives us into this belief is usually the distress of our own personal experience. It does not have to be that way. I can learn by another person's distress, if I will. I can come to believe. I can't. I had to do it the other way. This is an idea. You can come and believe in God because of what happened to me. Let's put it that way! i had to experience it let me read to you some of the words of a man who had such an experience and who changed the lives of hundreds of thousands of men and women some of whom are in this gathering at this moment this man is saying no words can tell of the loneliness and despair i found in that bitter morass of self-pity quicksand stretched all around me in all directions i had met my match i had been overwhelmed does anyone have a feeling for that everyone came became resigned to the certainty that i would have to be shut up somewhere or would stumble along to a miserable end how dark it is before the dawn in reality this was the beginning i was soon to be catapulted into what i like to call the fourth dimension of existence i was to know happiness peace and and a usefulness in a way of life that is incredibly more wonderful as time passes and while he was sitting there in his misery contemplating his end by chance by chance an old friend interrupted his thought with a telephone call and the friend came over in a matter-of-fact way he told me how two men had appeared into his life and they told him of a simple religious idea and a practical program of action and it had worked and he had come to pass his experience along to me if I cared to have it I was shocked but interested certainly I was interested I had to be for I was hopeless and then Bill's story goes on to tell that he as a result of the words of his friend there humbly offered himself to God as I then understood him to do with me as he would I placed myself unreservedly under his care and direction I admitted for the first time that of myself I was nothing and that without him I was lost I ruthlessly faced my sins and became willing to have my newfound friend God take them away root and branch he then followed through with the other principles that you and I will be practicing in these weeks and then Bill goes on to say these were revolutionary and drastic proposals but the moment I fully accepted them, the effect was electric. There was a sense of victory followed by such a peace and serenity as I had never known. There was utter confidence. I felt lifted up as though the great clean wind of a mountaintop blew through and through. God comes to most men gradually, but his impact on me was sudden and profound. And for a moment I was alarmed. I called my friend the doctor to ask him if I were still sane. He listened in wonder as I talked, and finally he shook his head saying something has happened to you that I don't understand but you'd better hang on to it anything is better than the way you were and that's the beginning of the story of Bill Wilson who was one of the co-founders of Alcoholics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous was originally to be called not AA but The Way, The Way into a spiritual experience or awakening this man had such an experience at depth and as is the case in all who have it living from that fourth dimension most of the time in it and out of it always seeking to go higher and higher into this experience with the source of all life he found that he could only keep what he gave away he could only retain what he would share with others our assignment this week is a very important assignment I would like for each one of us here to become increasingly aware of the power of God in us and all around us. Begin to think in terms of power. Become aware of power look the word up in the dictionary if you must begin to think of it in a new way. Do not let the word frighten you. If you have fear of the word examine your fear of the Word perhaps you are afraid of power because you have seen power misused perhaps someone in your life at an earlier age controls you through the power of their personality not other individuality because individuality will control you not at all perhaps one of the reasons that we've been separated from the power is that we have been afraid to put on that power and to begin to live from it examine your own thought in your own mind but become increasingly aware of the power of God the power of the universe all around you behold it in nature spend a moment here and there in the evening looking at the sky every star that you see is in our own galaxy we cannot see beyond our own Galaxy and there are about a billion stars in our galaxy. That's a billion suns like our own. There's a fantastic power being generated in our own solar system, our own sun. It's 865,000 miles in diameter and the energy that it is channeling is fantastic. It's one of the smaller suns in our galaxy. It's not one of The Brighter, Stronger Suns at all. And there are more than a billion other suns in our Galaxy. Some power, would you say? How many galaxies are there in the universe that we can't see with the unaided eye? At least a billion. Galaxies of at least a million stars. Does this begin to release you from your own limitations, if only for a moment? That fantastic power is yours to utilize as your experience if you fulfill the conditions. Very important condition is to come to believe it. Do not believe that you believe it, it's alright that you have not believed it. Come to believe. And then observe yourself in your life as you move through your life today, tomorrow, every day this week and notice that there is practically no place in your life that you believe in the power of God. There are 10,000 powers in your life, but not God. See where you believe power is and then practice becoming aware that this power is available to you. Come to believe that it is yours right now, right now in this split second of eternity. It cannot exist for you at some future time. It does not run on future time now prove me now saith the Lord of hosts it does not say prove me next year when you're wiser or better or when you've read more books from our book room prove me now saith the Lord of hosts and practice believing that you have been actually created by this mighty power so that you can be a channel through whom it flows out into its own divine activity the power that is greater than yourself is in yourself and is actually your higher self and it can restore you to its order its order is universal this order is divine its order is very good. Now notice that I am not saying believe that the power exists. No. Become aware of its existence in as many forms, as many ways as you possibly can. But it is not just that awareness. We are coming to believe that this power can perform its mighty work in us and through us. We're not coming to believe that we're going to shape it. Do you think that you're going to control the power that's greater than yourself? And that when you get it all lined up, you're gonna tell it exactly what you want it to do? That's not what we're practicing. It knows what to do. It knows how to do it. If it can create what we can see with just the unaided eye alone, then certainly it can take charge of the business of running the businessof your life and mine. but I must believe it. I must be leave it until I begin to believe it and then I must leave it until I really think I believe it and then i must believe it and believe it and believe it and then what one day i will start believing it it has to go down down down down down the limit fox tells the story in one of his books about when they found the diamonds in south africa and the yellow clay and they had never ever found that many diamonds anywhere on earth before and they were amazed and overwhelmed at all the diamonds that they had found the deeper they dug the more diamonds they found and they got into the blue clay and the quality of the diamonds the purity of the dragons and and the abundance of the diamonds boggle their mind. And we have to go deeper within ourselves to get down to that place where we really do believe, where believing in a power greater than ourselves becomes a continuing experience. It must be an experience, not an intellectual concept. And this is possible for every one of us, but do not think it will be easy. Oh, what I'm saying sounds so simple. Do not go away with the idea that you heard someone say something about believing in God and you'll come back next Wednesday to class and see what else we're going to do. Practice this principle in your life. Practice it, practice it, practice it. Take it into yourself. Begin to breathe from it and feel from it and love from it. This is a new kind of thinking that produces a fantastic result. You see, the work of God is largely done in the invisible part of our being. It's done in your heart, not that physical organ that pumps blood, but in your thinking and feeling nature. God has always been with you and me. There has never been a moment when you and I are not going to find a place that God is more readily available than God has been in the past. No. But we're going to find an awareness of the availability of that power and it becomes personal for God is with you. And everyone that has had this experience, the experience, the personal experience of the divine intervention of this unlimited power in their lives reports back that it is impossible to put into words what that experience is. It is so high, but they say again and again and again with all the earnestness at our command, we beg of you, we beg of you to seek it with all your heart. Make it first. Put it first and everything else will be added in your life and they report the ecstasy of this experience. The exquisite experience of love flowing through in such a way that the mind can hardly bear it. And things understood that are beyond thinking that cannot be put into the vehicle of words to give to another mind. Do you believe it's possible for you to have such an experience? If you do not, do not go to sleep tonight until you fall asleep trying to believe that this is your experience too. Set aside your old ideas that you are a second-class citizen of the universe and an orphan or maybe a bastard child of God. Because you are not. You never were. your God's own divine expression God is with you and that's the truth and keep that thought with you in the deepest part of your being until it becomes an experience and it will become an experience it's impossible for you to seek it with all your heart and not have it express itself in your life nothing that you can possibly meet on this earth can overpower you if the power of God is working in your behalf and until it is everything that you meet in this life will overpower me will over power you eventually until we have this experience everything that we enter into will ultimately fail or lose its flavor the marriage may not fail in a divorce but it will fail in the quality of its fulfillment and its joy in the dreams dreamed in the beginning. The job may not fail in a sense that one gets fired but one loses their momentum and their direction and the exuberance and the feeling of accomplishment. All things fail thee if thou failest me. Do you believe that? you have within you a divine capacity a divine power to meet every situation joyfully, enthusiastically you really do and that's what we're reaching for a whole new dimension of life not just to barely eke out a living and to trudge miserably down the road of some unhappy destiny that's not what your Heavenly Father has in store for you no we don't have to tell god what his business is but we have to come to believe with all our hearts that his power is ready and eager to move into its divine activity in our experience you are more important than any star in our galaxy you are more important than the whole galaxy but you must believe it feel it I did not say understand it if you will practice this principle this week practice it again and again before the week is over you will know that God's power is with you and knowing that knowing that will change your life and your destiny It will become tangible and real as an actual living demonstration. And you will never be alone again. This system works, but we must practice it where we live. So now let's go back out there where we lived and put on that mind that believes in the power of God as our own personal experience. So it is.