Our Foundation Is SPIRIT

Our Foundation Is SPIRIT

 

By

 

Julio C. Rivas, CS

 

 

This Biblical passage has corrected and guided me many times: “This is what the Almighty Lord says: I am going to lay a rock in Zion, a rock that has been tested, a precious cornerstone, a solid foundation. Whoever believes in him will not worry.”  

 

What consistently and reliably takes away worries is not a particular “him,” but the recognition that SPIRIT-GOD is superlative substance, intelligence and power.  This understanding imparts confidence and induces wellness.  It takes us to the heights of infinite GOOD-GOD.

 

            Remarkable spiritual healer and author, M. B. Eddy, explains that GOOD-GOD is “Spirit; omnipotence; omniscience; omnipresence; omni-action.”

 

SPIRIT evolves everything we are.  It makes us blossom with health, intelligence, plentitude and immortality.   We have a SPIRIT-engineered self and it is endowed with immutable goodness. 

 

MIND-SPIRIT is.  It is the “I AM.”  In turn, we are the “I AM’s” divine and thriving action.  We constitute the glorious energy of the infinite EGO.  We are the EGO’s manifestation.  We are the EGO-self, the EGO-man. 

 

Our divine wellness is the result of LOVE-GOD’s excellence.  Our spiritual, ageless and boundless substance cannot be compromised by materiality.  Our divine nature is superior to lack, illness, sin, fear and failure. 

 

          After the ancient Israelites were enslaved by the Babylonians they turned their downfall into a period of spiritual, intellectual and cultural progress. 

 

They chose to learn from the highly developed culture of their Persian captors.  They learned literature, art, engineering, architecture and government.  Their Hebrew literature was edited and re-written in accordance with their new understanding of sophisticated literature. 

 

Three years after Cyrus, king of Persia, conquered Babylon, their hopes and yearnings were answered.  With the Persian emperor’s permission, financing and protection thousands returned to Jerusalem and rebuilt their lives.  In time they rebuilt the city and temple.  

 

They had responded to their downfall by strengthening their spiritual foundation and amplifying their knowledge.  With their lives more anchored to SPIRIT-MIND, they reaped unimaginable progress. 

 

When things are going well and we have a keen awareness of LOVE’s care for us we are grateful for our blessings.  It is right to think and feel this way. 

 

We can also secure more substance by understanding wellness and progress on a more profound, metaphysical level. 

 

SPIRIT-LOVE is ever-active goodness.  So it is not so much that SPIRIT gives us something, but that SPIRIT evolves us as part of its infinite substance and harmonious action.  Hence, we are the unfolding of SPIRIT’s dynamic goodness.  Our non-material essence is SPIRIT-LOVE’s fruitful activity.   

 

I have witnessed the practical efficacy of applying these spiritual insights. When I was the president of a non-profit organization we faced a severe shortage of working capital.  If we did not obtain sufficient funds we would have to shut down within a few months. 

 

We let the need be known.  We also worked on having a stronger spiritual foundation.  Just as the foundation of a skyscraper is dug deep into the ground, we were extending and securing our divine sense of substance. 

 

  As we discerned more of the continual, flourishing forces of SPIRIT, bountiful donations came through.  Within a year we possessed enough funds to endow the organization for more than a decade.  Our spiritual and financial foundation had been fortified. 

 

Our spiritual constitution is integrated into SPIRIT because SPIRIT is ALL-IN-ALL.  Therefore, we are, now and forever, the vigorous and profuse expression of infinite GOOD-GOD.  This realization is our eternal security and our divine thrust. 

 

 

LOVE-Entrepreneurs Are Needed

LOVE-Entrepreneurs Are Needed

By

Julio C. Rivas, CS

 

LOVE-entrepreneurs create dynamic, advancing, inventive and just movements, organizations and social arrangements.  They are needed everywhere: by the fields of education, commerce, government, religion, politics and non-profits. 

LOVE-entrepreneurs access the creative, brilliant energy of infinite MIND, which is the inexhaustible source of intelligent goodness.  This perennial LIFE-FORCE infuses everyone with brilliance, initiative, generosity and audaciousness. 

Fear of failure is irrelevant to a LOVE-propelled attitude.  MIND induces experimental, risk-taking and searching attitudes.  Setbacks for risk-takers only serve to free the mind further. 

As long as we employ failure in an educational way, causing us to adjust and pivot, then it promotes success.  We can tell ourselves this: “I embrace failure because it breeds the knowledge and experience necessary for outstanding victories.” 

The economy of LOVE-MIND is a vigorous, boundless, teeming, fruitful, intelligent energy-field.  As LOVE-entrepreneurs we are drawing on MIND’s productive and courageous ideas, and planting “seeds” in LOVE’s fecund “fields” of possibilities.  

 Recessions, depressions, unemployment, and excesses by business and government are the outcome of ignorant, greedy, selfish and fearful behavior.  LIFE-wisdom educates and directs us toward generous and enlightened pathways.   

LOVE emboldens us to forge new paths through “wildernesses” of untried ideas, and to be shapers of new economies. 

Our innate LOVE-energy is the key to a rewarding and successful future for us and the world. 

We Are Impelled by Mind

We Are Impelled by Mind

 

By

 

Julio C. Rivas, CS

 

 

With so many economic troubles around the world deep thinkers need to challenge the limiting, greedy, materialistic premises that influence economic behavior.  For sustainable, inclusive and dynamic progress to occur it is essential that economic materialism be elided by spiritual concepts and their intelligent implementation.

 

Metaphysical spirituality negates the false material concepts of limited resources and of man as a selfish mortal who needs to sweat and toil throughout his life. 

 

In this passage the inspired Psalmist tells us of Spirit's abundant giving: "... thou givest them they gather: thou openest thine hand, they are filled with good" (Ps. 104:28). 

 

Early 20th century metaphysical thinker, M. B. Eddy, adds, "Soul has infinite resources with which to bless mankind, and happiness would be more readily attained and would be more secure in our keeping, if sought in Soul" (S&H 60:29-31).  And on another page she writes, "In the scientific relation of God to man, we find that whatever blesses one blesses all, as Jesus showed with the loaves and the fishes, -- Spirit, not matter, being the source of supply" (S&H 206:15).

 

How freeing it is to know that infinite Spirit, and not limited matter, fuels man's wealth and progress.  And it is just as liberating to know that man is not a toiling, selfish mortal, but Mind's blessed, spiritual likeness (as we read in the first chapter of Genesis). 

 

We are Mind's heir, so our spiritual constitution reflects the unstoppable abundance of Mind's successful ideas and attributes. 

 

Of course world conditions and perceptions disagree with spiritual reality because they are based on a counterfeit premise.  Due to spiritual ignorance many behave selfishly while fighting for a share of finite, material resources.  This false premise also argues that if there is a God to help man, it is one who acts within the constraints of a material universe and according to fickle motives that we cannot understand. 

 

 

Actually, the universe and man are the spiritual, outstanding oeuvre of infinite Mind-God, and this Mind is the center and totality of all existence.  Mind is also divine Love, who maintains the omnipresence of good and imparts infinite supply to us. 

 

We are Love’s spiritual expression, and we include inexhaustible health and bounty.  We are the product of Mind's own conscious knowing of completeness and satisfied existence.  As ideas of Mind, we thrive in Mind's divine economy, wherein health, life and substance are perpetual and vigorous. 

 

Referring to this spiritual interrelationship, M. B. Eddy adds, "Mind, supreme over all its formations and governing them all, is the central sun of its own systems of ideas, the life and light of its own vast creation; and man is tributary to divine Mind" (S&H 209:5-8).

 

To the degree that we understand the dynamic and overflowing economy of Mind, we are able to conquer limitation and suffering in the human economy.  This happens because spiritual cognition changes our perceptions, motives and behavior. 

 

Even a glimpse of the cascading goodness which Love imparts to us elides selfish and materialistic pursuits.  Vulgar consumerism is replaced by a satisfaction in spirituality.  Greed and domination yield to intelligent, inclusive and generous comportment. 

 

We want a Truth-enlightened consciousness.  It demonstrates success by engaging in intelligent and productive activity that reaches and benefits many.  It expresses both divine wisdom and love. 

 

Spiritual wealth-sense is humble toward Mind-Truth because it is certain of its continuous and interminable providing.  This manner of reasoning hears and obeys the "still, small voice" that rescued the prophet Elijah.  It not only leads away from failure and impending danger, but bursts forward with inventive ingenuity. 

 

Mind-Love generates the vision, courage, contacts and resources necessary for the success of a new venture, new technology, new products and services, or a new profession. 

 

We know that people around the globe are increasingly interdependent because of modern trade, transportation and communication systems.  By expressing Mind’s ingenuity and intelligence we instill excellence into our economic activities and produce more benefits for everyone. 

 

Our world is not so much a locality within a material universe, as it is a state of consciousness that can express Mind’s boundless ingenuity and resources, and Love’s generosity. 

 

Mind has endowed us with the spiritual acuity that impels advancement in our personal lives, as it does in our local communities, our nation and everywhere in the world.    

 

 

Divine GOOD Is Absolute Reality

Divine GOOD Is Absolute Reality

 

91^st Psalm: “Because thou hast made the LORD, who is my refuge, even the Most High, thy habitation, there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.”

Eddy: “The power of God brings deliverance to the captive.  No power can withstand divine Love.” 

Suffering, sickly, sinful and limited materiality never touches or corrupts our SOUL-like selfhood.  We are one with the reality of SOUL’s comprehensiveness.  We are SOUL’s incorporeal, whole and perpetual ideas. The 38-year invalidism of the man at the pool of Bethesda never affected his perfect self in SOUL.  Jesus brought this fact to his thought.  He accepted it and was healed.  The others at the pool rejected the spiritual illumination that Jesus brought to them.  Ever-active Christ is revealing to us our superlative, spiritual self.  We can accept it and experience its sanative effects. 

Be Love’s Transformation-Agent

Be Love’s Transformation-Agent

 

By

 

Julio C. Rivas, CS

 

 

            Christ Jesus often told people to repent, which meant to undergo a spiritual transformation.  On those occasions when he said “sin no more” to those he had healed, he wanted to impress on them the importance of not retrograding to their old ways.

 

Christ Jesus was a change agent.  When he declares that "it is the spirit that quickeneth” and the “flesh profiteth nothing," he means that healing, success and progress are the result of altering one’s way of thinking and behaving.  He moved people out of their ignorant, fearful and mistaken ways to a new place of spiritual, intelligent thinking and living. 

 

           Outstanding metaphysician and healer, M. B. Eddy, writes that for effective change "What we most need is the prayer of fervent desire for growth in grace, expressed in patience, meekness, love and good deeds."  Her statement echoes the Apostle Paul’s emphasis on grace as the primary determinant of a person’s character and of his/her ability to achieve great good. 

 

There is surface change and then there is deep, meaningful change.  Because grace comes from boundless Love-God our expression of it demonstrates excellence of thought and character. 

 

Honest self-reflection is essential for grace-induced change.  Most of us can recall discordant human relationships that did not improve until we eliminated pride, envy, resentment, revenge and hatred.  There are also those other instances when much effort and money has been expended to improve a business or social condition, and the end result was failure, because corrosive attitudes, such as greed, pride and dishonesty, were driving the effort.     

 

It helps to know that we are not mere physical mortals trying to improve ourselves and effect purposeful change around us.  We can draw on Mind-God, who is infinite wisdom and love, and on what Mind imparts to us.  Our spiritual essence, which is the outcome of Mind, is composed of infinite, divine qualities.  Grace, intelligence, health, courage and might represent some of our innate, spiritual qualities. 

 

Soul-God shapes our incorporeal, divine nature.  When we identify ourselves as Soul’s expressions of infinite, celestial qualities, we experience internal transformation.  Integrity, wisdom, intelligence, creativity and boldness are some of the many qualities that are made evident in our humanity.  

 

Christ is a term that describes the divine nature of Jesus, but it also describes Soul’s ever-active influence in our human affairs.  When we accept its influence it can alter us.  Our admittance of Soul’s grace-filled intelligence can correct apparently adamant and insurmountable situations. 

 

This Biblical statement communicates the superlative authority of divine Intelligence-God: “he is in one mind, and who can turn him? and what his soul desireth, even that he doeth."

 

To superlative Love-Mind everything and everyone expresses its magnificent and bountiful intelligence, health and resources.  To our Mind-enhanced reasoning no dilemma is too difficult to resolve.  Our expression of Mind generates creative and effective answers to long-standing dilemmas.  Its beneficent results are wide-ranging.   

 

            I remember the time when a group of us volunteered to raise funding and establish a nursing care facility in our city.  For many reasons past efforts to do this had failed.  It was not easy for our group and we experienced several setbacks, but we accomplished it within a year. 

 

My friend George was an outstanding transformation-agent in our group.  The nursing facility would not have come to fruition without him.  He relied thoroughly on Love-Mind for everything.  He identified man as Mind’s incorporeal, intelligent and upright reflection.  When we experienced deception, dishonesty, greed and manipulation, he responded with Love’s wisdom.  George brought an arsenal of spiritual qualities with him.  While serving as his right hand man, I saw up close, in multiple, intense negotiations, his expression of grace, intelligence, courage, vision, integrity, patience, and creative problem-solving. 

 

The other transformation-agent was Rube.  She managed the nursing facility for several years.  Under her able and inspirational stewardship marvelous healings occurred at this facility.  Many were healed of incurable, chronic and acute diseases.    Rube was a spiritual force of Love’s grace, strength and intelligence.  She exuded so much of Love’s joy, generosity, vitality and vision that she raised the commitment and abilities of those around her. 

 

By expressing all-intelligent Mind-Love our motives are naturally pure and good.  We are acting out from a Love-impelled basis and this compounds outstanding results.  Brilliant answers to problems — large or small – come forth when we are in tune with divine grace.  In fact, Mind’s right answers surround us and we can discern them spiritually. 

 

Let us take to heart "Thy will be done” – let’s allow ourselves to be Love’s transformation-agents, and then amazing good is attainable. 

 

 

Spiritual Reality Discards Troubles

Spiritual Reality Discards Troubles

 

By

 

Julio C. Rivas, CS

 

 

God is boundless, unconfined Principle. We are its divine effect. Our transcendent reality is that we are incorporeal, perpetual, Soul-designed beings. Everyone’s spiritual self is the emanation of everlasting Love. We are Love-Soul’s magnificent, vigorous and wholesome emanations.

 

This understanding of our actual being echoes Scripture: “I was set up from everlasting … while as yet he had not made the earth … I was by him, as one brought up with him … his delight, rejoicing always before him.”

 

Human science, religion and philosophy mostly describe reality as the history of a physical universe and its material life forms. But it is so liberating and healing to understand reality as the non-material expression of infinite Life-Spirit. Our most rewarding knowledge-adventure is discovering consummate spiritual reality.

 

Outstanding metaphysical healer and insightful theologian, M. B. Eddy, writes that “The Science of Christianity comes with fan in hand” and that it separates fable from fact and gives action to thought.

 

We are often blind to mistaken habits of thought and behavior. But the “fan” of divine Truth alters our humanity. The knowledge of man’s Soul-enforced, spiritual wholeness blows away our fears and material dependencies. It incites mental, character and physical transformation.

 

In Old Testament times a threshing instrument was used to separate the useful grain from the useless debris. Spiritual acuity sharpens our thinking so that we can gather good concepts and scatter the useless ones. Isaiah implies this when he writes, “Behold, I will make you into a new threshing sledge with sharp teeth; You shall thresh the mountains and beat them small, And make the hills like chaff.”

 

The woman, commonly called Mary Magdalene, who entered the wealthy household to seek healing from Jesus permitted his “sharp threshing instrument” of spiritual love and enlightenment to transform her.

 

Jesus employed his understanding of immortal Life to “fan” away the belief of life-and-death in matter when he resurrected his friend Lazarus.

 

Judas was in the presence of the threshing efficacy of Truth-Love day and night but he resisted its transformational effects. Judas witnessed Lazarus’ and others’ resurrections but it did not remove his materialistic disposition.

 

At a celebratory dinner for the resurrected Lazarus, his sister Mary used an expensive plant-derived ointment (called spikenard) to massage Jesus’ feet. She was immensely grateful to Jesus and this act was among the least she could do to communicate her gratitude. But the disciple Judas, who was blinded by greed, criticized Mary for using expensive oil.

 

The “fan” of Truth will heal and transform us when we submit to it. A Truth-welcoming attitude, like that of Mary Magdalene and Lazarus’s sister, will permit wonders to take place. Qualities like gratitude, generosity, charity, consecration, inspiration, gentleness and love express Truth-Love and they incite amazing healings.

 

A man’s facial cancer was healed by our understanding of his spiritual wholeness. Our Truth-illumined prayers and conversations accented and accepted his Soul-like beauty and health. The malignant cells were replaced with healthy ones.  Metaphysically speaking, we can say that the cancer-belief was threshed –fanned away – by Love-God’s imperial, divine health.

 

The Gospel of John presents Jesus Christ as being on an ascending path of personal, spiritual growth. His discernment of the spiritually real and his rejection of the materially unreal (his fanning abilities) increased until it culminated in his resurrection and ascension. The raising of Lazarus and of others were steps in his ascending, spiritual development.

 
 

Christ-Truth empowers us with spiritual concepts and drives away material distortions. It proves that Life-Spirit is real and man is its magnificent expression. It also proves that health and plenty are everlasting conditions of Mind, not of matter. And that sickness, lack and sin are impotent and errant views.

 

We can choose to be on a spiritual, life-amplifying path. We can practice our mental threshing abilities each day and gain more spiritual enlightenment.

Truth-empowered Thinking Repudiates Error

Truth-empowered Thinking Repudiates Error

 

By

 

Julio C. Rivas, CS

 

 

Truth’s ideas are our gospel—our spiritual, irreversible good news.  The wonderful news is that Good-God is the preeminent energy, intelligence and substance of being. This understanding overwhelms and cancels evil.  It overthrows material sin and suffering with spiritual goodness. 

 

 Spirit-Truth educates our thought away from materiality’s insipid, restrictive illusions.  Spiritual knowledge discloses our unbounded, celestial self.  We learn that our transcendent make-up flourishes with interminable intelligence, health, love and joy. 

 

 The Bible advises that we get wisdom above all else.  The wisdom of Truth inspires, comforts, succors and regenerates our experience.  It clears away confusions, dilemmas and fears.  The tenderness and fullness of Love-Truth eradicates hurts, loneliness and doubts. 

 

Material conditions are mistaken beliefs trying to have the final say.  They appear obstinate.  But they are just one step away from vanishing because they do not have any sanction from divine Truth.  Mind’s messages communicate infinite health and intelligence, and they resolve ostensibly intractable challenges.

 

It was Jesus’ apprehension of Truth which redeemed many from death, illness and sin.  Spiritual understanding has done the same for people before Jesus’ era and afterwards.  Truth is timeless wisdom and might.  It is the universal remedy.

 

Like all who grasp something of Truth, the apostle Paul was awed by his celestial glimpses.  Referring to Principle-Truth as “Father” -- as the source of everyone’s limitless, incorporeal existence, he describes how the knowledge of superlative Spirit surpasses material epistemic and reconfigures our human lives with spiritual health and plenty. 

 

Paul wrote, “For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, and from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, in order that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, rooted and grounded in love, in order that you may be empowered to grasp with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth,  and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with the fullness of God.”

 

When we let go of a personal, mortal ego and accept our divine self, which infinite Soul-God expresses, we experience an influx of spiritual abilities and means.

 

M. B. Eddy, who was an outstanding theologian and healer, wrote, “The real man being linked by Science to his Maker, mortals need only turn from sin and lose sight of mortal selfhood to find Christ, the real man and his relation to God, and to recognize the divine sonship.”

 

A man with a tumor on his neck requested spiritual guidance, wisdom and prayer.  We talked about many beautiful, spiritual concepts. Our conversations and prayers asserted his celestial wholeness, subsumed by the All-in-all of Love-Spirit.  We saw the tumor as a mortal misconception, as a material illusion, without any Truth-based substance and authority.  We recognized that his human body – specifically his neck --was subject to the corrective effects of understanding his healthy, spiritual sonship. 

 

With our Truth-based prayers we had in effect “bowed our knees before the Father.”  Three days later the tumor had disappeared from his neck. 

 

Wondrous, spiritual healings happen every day to thousands of people all over the world.  They represent Mind’s irrepressible and ever-active laws.

 

Humans invent religions, gods, and harsh judgments, but Truth-Love emits infinite grace.  It is universal, timeless and ever-at-hand to illumine, correct, empower and heal. 

 

Spirit-Truth produces and capacitates everyone’s healthy, immortal and matter-free self. 

 

 

 

 

The Power of Illumined Prayer

The Power of Illumined Prayer

 

By

Julio C. Rivas, CS

 

 

In the world today there are millions of people relying daily on the healing might of illumined prayer. This phenomenon is growing exponentially every year.

 

Gross materialism is being challenged and overthrown by the life-changing experiences resulting from matter-negating, Mind-asserting, Truth-based prayer. People’s spiritual awakening is an unstoppable, spiritual force. It betters their personal lives and our world.

 

Every individual’s striving for divine Truth is part of a healing wave of consciousness encircling and transforming the globe. In the final analysis, all is Mind-Truth and its immortal, majestic expressions. Our individual, spiritual journeys make this fact clear and provable for everyone.

 

The mythological Phoenix bird burns its old, decrepit self in a fire in order to be re-born into a new life. Spiritual enlightenment acts like a spiritual fire, burning away anything that stands in the way of our magnificent, Spirit-given life. Materiality’s disease, ignorance and sin are turned into ashes and we rise renewed by the glory of immortal, health-inducing Life.

 

Mind-Truth is forever communicating to our open thought its spiritual enlightenment. It never wanes or stops because spiritual wisdom manifests Love’s incessant, loving care for all.

 

As Jesus Christ explained, sometimes we do not take in Love’s transformational wisdom because materiality is obfuscating our thinking. When our “heart is waxed gross,” our “ears are dull of hearing,” and our eyes “have closed,” we will re-connect with Love by reminding ourselves that our inner, spiritual essence is entwined with Mind.

 

Early 20th century revolutionary, metaphysical thinker, and author M. B. Eddy wrote, “Outside the material sense of things, all is harmony. A wrong sense of God, man, and creation is non-sense, want of sense.” She also wrote that Jesus proved Truth’s healing efficacy for all people, in every age since “…to all mankind and in every hour, divine Love supplies all good.”

 

During Christianity’s initial three centuries, enlightened prayer generated outstanding proofs of the ascendancy of Spirit over matter, of Soul over evil. The Roman authorities sometimes came down hard on the early Christians to abolish them, but they responded with stronger determination and demonstrations of spiritual power.

 

Among the thousands of amazing stories found in the Roman record books is that of a 14-year-old girl, the daughter of a high-ranking Roman official, who refused to give up her Christian beliefs even after being beaten and condemned to death.

 

To make an example of her and to discourage others from joining the ranks of Christianity, they set out to execute her in the city’s central plaza. They tied her down to a flat surface made of cut stone and they gradually lowered a large boulder on her. The girl, feeling thoroughly connected to Love and to her incorporeal, indestructible self, sang loudly of everyone’s sacrosanct existence inside the sovereignty of Spirit-God. The boulder was never able to crush her. In fact, it crumbled into pieces.

 

That day, hundreds more understood the power of illumined prayer. Everywhere in the Roman Empire, examples of Spirit’s ascendancy, like that of this precious girl, were taking place, thereby adding  thousands of new Christian healers.

 

Today, illumined prayer is proving the imperial might of Spirit-Love over human sin and affliction. It is doing this everywhere. We are part of a growing world-force of Truth-illumined thinkers and doers.

Sacrificing Materiality for the Riches of Truth-Spirit

Sacrificing Materiality for the Riches of Truth-Spirit

 

By

 

Julio C. Rivas, C.S.

 

 

What is it that we must sacrifice on the “cross” of spiritual understanding?   We should renounce all concepts that deny our incorporeal, limitless, celestial identity.  Our actual self is the immortal and irrepressible oeuvre of superlative Spirit.  Materiality attempts to blind us to this fact. 

 

The cross is often thought to represent agonizing suffering.  It can be that.  But it also represents spiritual victory over evil.  Jesus submitted to agonizing torture and death – his cross experience – so that he could prove to humanity that we have an indestructible and resplendent life in Spirit-God.  From Jesus we learn that Good-God’s presence in us annihilates evil.

 

There are manifold, negative, matter-premised arguments trying to obscure our perception of infinite Truth.  Conformism to the cultural points of view we were brought up in (religious, scientific, social, political, cultural, and so on) hinder spiritual enlightenment.  Habits, bias and ignorance are the antipode of Truth. 

 

We also have to fight the multifarious weaknesses/sins which attempt to enslave us.  Fear, envy, hatred, jealousy, insecurity, and revenge are some of these.  We can also add self-will, self-justification and self-love. 

 

Sometimes evil makes us doubt the efficacy of our good deeds.  It weakens our confidence in the healing fruitage of our prayers. 

 

Truth liberates, encourages, comforts and inspires.  The smallest insight into eternal Truth triumphs over any spurious, material argument.  We also obtain from Truth indomitable health, intelligence and power.

 

The sacrifices made by admirable, Truth-inspired individuals throughout history are numerous.  Their marvelous accomplishments were made possible by their discovery of Spirit’s limitless substance and efficacy.  They spur us onward.

 

As we put aside a personal, mortal ego – which is only a delusion, we take hold of outstanding, Spirit-given abilities.  We, too, have much more we can accomplish.

 

Spiritual apprehension is triumphant over any difficulty.  Biblical Scripture shows how the Lamb of Love slays the wolf.  This expression is often used in reference to the spiritual purity and might of Christ Jesus.  It also means that our growth in Christ gives us power to slay harmful influences.  God-given wisdom defeats whatever would try to hurt us. 

 

Revolutionary, metaphysical thinker and author, Mary Baker Eddy, defines the “Lamb of God” as “The spiritual idea of Love; self-immolation; innocence and purity; sacrifice.” 

 

Spiritual man is the idea of Love.  Spiritual education extirpates materiality’s insidious concepts.  This is how we prove that we are Love’s incorporeal, excellent expressions. 

 

 

Spiritual enlightenment, which cancels material misconceptions, demonstrates divine power.  When the early Christians are referred to as “martyrs” it is often in the context of the way they suffered for their beliefs.  But the original meaning of “martyrs” was something to admire and emulate.  It recognized that martyrs were witnesses to the supreme might of God-Spirit. 

Eddy describes martyrs as "human links which connect one stage with another in the history of religion" and as "earth's luminaries which serve to cleanse and rarefy the atmosphere of material sense and to permeate humanity with purer ideals.”

 

Sacrifice of materiality eliminates what is harmful and unproductive to make room for our superlative endowments from Mind-God.  Therefore, the “cross” does not have to involve suffering.  It is a spiritual metamorphosis which crowns us with divine riches and victory. 

A Prayer of Gratitude for Love’s Bounty

A Prayer of Gratitude for Love’s Bounty

 

By

 

Julio C. Rivas, CS

 

 

“…O, God, thou hast prepared of thy goodness for the poor.”

“Divine Love is infinite.  Therefore all that really exists is in and of God, and manifests His love” (M. B. Eddy).

All-generating substance, SPIRIT, expresses its wealth of ideas, talents and resources in man.  There is no poverty in MIND-SPIRIT, and we can express the innovative and generous ideas that erase lack with an overflow of success, health, love, companionship and fulfillment.

 

We live for your glory, dear Father-Mother.   We are your manifestations.  From you we derive limitless abilities and resources.  Because of your presence in us, we can accomplish great things. 

 

Failure, limitation, difficulties and disappointment cannot hide, nor stop, the flow of divine goodness into our lives.  Impediments are impotent lies before our Christ-filled thought.  Fear, stress, worry, doubt and lack are erased by divine knowledge and might. 

 

You are pouring joy, health, love, happiness and success upon us.  Your blessings do not stop with us but flow outwardly to improve the world. 

 

We can feel and impart the unstoppable healing power of your spirit and ideas.  It is our privilege and joy to infuse the Christly spirit into everything we do. 

 

We live in Mind’s holy realm.   We live in God, infinite good.   We experience and feel Mind-given confidence, clarity and victory. 

 

Thank you, Father-Mother, God.”