Second Lesson

...good report; if there is any virtue, and if there is any praise, think about these things.” The author is quoting Philippians 4:8 from the Bible, emphasizing the importance of positive focus.

We can each learn how to turn our conscious mind toward the Universal Mind, or the Spirit within us. We can, through practice, learn how to make this everyday, chaotic, carnal mind carnal mind original: "carnal mind"; refers to the "fleshly" or worldly mind that is preoccupied with material things rather than spiritual truths. be still—to actually stop thinking—and let the Mind which is God (all Wisdom, all Love) think in us and out through us.

Imagine, if you will, a great reservoir, out of which lead innumerable small streams or channels. At its farther end, each channel opens into a small fountain. This fountain is not only being continually filled and replenished from the reservoir, but is itself a radiating center from which it gives out in all directions that which it receives, so that all who come within its radius are refreshed and blessed.

That is exactly our relation to God. Each one of us is a radiating center. Each one, no matter how small or ignorant, is the little fountain at the far end of the channel, the other end of which opens out into all there is in God. This fountain represents our free will, or individuality, as separate from the Great Reservoir—God—and yet as one with Him in that we are constantly fed and renewed from Him; and that without Him we are nothing.

Each one of us, no matter how insignificant we

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Thinking

may be to the world, may receive from God unlimited good of whatever kind we desire, and radiate it to all around us. But remember, we must radiate if we would receive more. Stagnation is death.

Oh, I want the simplest mind to grasp this idea: that the very wisdom of God—the love, the life, the power, which is God—is ready and waiting with a longing impulse to flow out through us in an unlimited degree! When it flows in an unusual degree through these intellects, people exclaim, “What a wonderful mind!” When it flows through these hearts, it is the love which melts all bitterness, envy, selfishness, and jealousy before it; when it flows through our bodies as life, no disease can withstand its onward march.

We do not have to beg God any more than we have to beg the sun to shine. The sun shines because it is a law of its being to shine, and it cannot help it. In the same way, God cannot help pouring into us unlimited wisdom, life, power, and all good, because to give is a law of His being. Nothing can hinder Him except our own free will. The sun may shine ever so brightly, but if we have—through stubbornness or ignorance—placed ourselves, or been placed by our ancestors original: "progenitors"; meaning parents or ancestors who may have passed down certain habits or environments. in the far corner of a damp, dark cellar, we do not get either joy or comfort from its shining; then, to us, the sun never shines.

Vocabulary: Universal Mind, Spirit, God, Reservoir, radiating center, free will, individuality, Thinking