Be Still and Know I Am God

“Be Still and Know That I AM God”
DISCOVERING OURSELVES GNOTHI SEAUTON –
“know thyself” above the temple of Apollo. When the wise king Solomon said, “As a man thinketh within himself, so is he,” he pointed to the vital truth that a man is constantly being moulded and shaped by the mental attitudes that he holds. Each of us is constantly shaping and moulding his or her destiny, though we rationalize our state and station in life as being the result of inevitable events over which we have no control. The truth is that the experiences of life are important only in the attitudes we form about them.

Fundamental in our study of life is a right understanding about this something we call God. We must begin to turn away from the old concept we call God who is personal and sits in the heavens somewhere, to think of God as universal, as a principle, as love, substance. Life, power, – the essence of all that comes forth inexperience. We want to think of god not as in a particular locality or as a personality, but as a force that is omnipresent. In considering such an approach to God you may feel that you have lost the sense of presence. “They have taken away my Lord”, said one who came to find Jesus. The personal God with which you experience fellowship and communion may seem to be lost. But this is not necessarily so when you get the whole picture.

God is infinite mind, and man is an idea in mind. This idea is an activity in God, a part of God; it is no less than God. But this idea is a self contained idea out of mind that is endowed with the power for unfoldment and expression. The idea forever remains one with mind and forever has a close communion with mind. Thus man, as an expression of mind, is endowed with something of God which goes with him in all experience and has nothing to do but to work for his highest good. It is that something which Jesus referred to as “the father in me that doeth the work.” It is that something in us that is close, ever personal, ever nurturing, ever loving. It is God imminent and active in man; God who knows our needs and whose pleasure it is to fill these needs in all ways. God is the principle. Christ is the ideal of the principle as it is brought into creation. Man is that creation on his way to its way to the perfect expression of the Christ. So in a way, this is the Trinity. We have mind: God, the universal; Idea: God the father principle; Expression: man in the unfolding expression of God

But it is important to know that man is not just the third person in the Trinity. Man is whole; man is being in miniature and all the powers of God are available to him. Man is the very activity of God expressing itself as man. Charles Fillmore says: “Man can never discern more than “a segment of the circle in which he moves, although his powers and capacities are susceptible of infinite expansion. He discovers a faculty within himself and cultivates it until it opens out into a universe of correlated faculties. The further he goes into mind the wider its horizon, until he is forced to acknowledge that he is not the personal, limited being that he appears, but rather the focus of an infinite idea. That idea contains within itself inexhaustible possibilities. These possibilities are projected into mans consciousness as an image is reflected in a mirror, and thus man is the most important factor in creation. He is the will of God individualized. “Fillmore goes on, “You are just as fully the son of God as was Jesus or any other Christ-like man who ever existed. The “I AM” is the same in all men and all women; it is without limit in its capacity to express the potentialities of God.”

The point is that man is forever answering the question, “Who am I?” by the manner of speech. He is saying, “I am this and that and the other.” If he says, “I am weak and tired,” he is using his potential of spiritual power by dragging it in the dust. If he says, “I am the Christ, the son of the living God,” he is harnessing this Divine force within him and lifting himself to his highest potentiality. When the potential “I” is coupled with the all-sufficiency in God, it becomes the “I AM” which is the very name of God and the nature of mans true son-of-God self. So when Jesus said, “Before Abraham was, I am,” He was not being facetious or ungrammatical; He was simply stating the truth that “I am the eternal son of God,” and that this idea was the spiritual power in the life of Abraham even as it was in his own life and experience. When he said, “I am the way, the truth, and the light,” He actually was saying, “I AM” is the way, the truth, the light. This is the great realization that “I AM” is the way for you and me. So we want to get away from the consciousness of, “I wish,” “I hope,” “I cant,” and dwell in the “I AM”, securing a new facet of being. Couple this “I AM” with whatever it is that you seek to manifest in your life and you harness yourself to tremendous power: “I am success,” “I am life.” “I am wholeness.” “I am love.”

Remember, Fillmore says that you are “the focus of an infinite idea”. This is a marvellous thought. The electric light bulb, in a way, is a focus of electrical energy producing light. But men knew about electricity for a long time before they knew how to properly focus its potential. Man has known about spiritual things for a long time but without realizing how to give focus to his own innate spiritual power. Jesus said, “Ye are the light of the world, let your light shine.” There is the same need in man of producing the focus for transforming the power of God into tangible and visible light and wisdom as there has been in harnessing the great forces of the world.

God created man as a perfect idea in mind and that idea is being projected as an image upon the screen of the soul of nature. Mans role is to duplicate this process and to put this image of the Divine idea into the projector of his own consciousness. If you are showing films or slides and suddenly you get a blurred image on the screen you know that your picture is out of focus, so you adjust the focus until it becomes clear. The film picture was all right, but the projector was out of focus. The focus, you see, is our thought preoccupation. What are we seeing? How are we judging ourselves and others? “Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind,” by getting your mind in focus, by recognising consciously your oneness with God.

It is a great day in a mans life when he really begins to discover himself. You see, a person may own attractive land for years without knowing its true value. And then he may suddenly strike oil on it; he may take water from the land; he may quarry stone to build buildings; he may cut down trees and use them for lumber. All the natural resources may be there, but first he has to discover and use them. Beneath the surface of every man there is a latent capacity greater than he has ever yet discovered. One discovery leads to another, until man finds the deep wealth of his many possibilities

You can go to this infinite mind as you go to a library for information. This is the key to the control of every circumstance, the solution to every problem, the satisfaction of every right desire: “Be still and know that I am God.” One reason for our lack of focus and our lack of effectiveness is that we look for good fortune for happiness and for security in the world around us. To us, the light within is the light intended to aid us in the search for something we have yet to find in the world. But it is not in the world, it is in yourself. Walt Whitman said, “I ask not good fortune; I myself am good fortune.” Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is within.”

Within ourselves is the potential to become all that in our heart of hearts we desire. Our tendency is to become centred in things, in outer conditions and circumstances. As the poet said, “We live too close to the circumference of our being.” When our thoughts are centred in money and things and sense-consciousness, we think that we are merely using life, using substance, using ideas, rather than being the expression or the focus of life and substance and intelligence.

You can discover yourself, and discover a new dimension to your life when you realize your oneness with the infinite process and know that the kingdom of God is within you and all potentiality is yours. Live each day as if you had within you all that you need and seek in that day to give expression to that allness-by the way you think, by the faith that you express, by the way in which you relate to life, and by the way in which you constantly turn to the Almighty. Return within yourself, to relate yourself in oneness with God. “Be still and know that I am God” 🙏