Excerpt from
"Everyman's Search"
by
Rebecca Beard
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Book Description
"Here is a book which is not
merely interesting, but of outstanding significance. I believe that it
is one of the most important books that has ever been written on the
subject
of Spiritual Healing. The writer, an American doctor, shows in her
thesis
the striking influence of the mind over the body. She stresses the
importance
of positive thinking and expectant prayer. The author has herself been
healed of serious heart trouble by a deep faith in God and by prayer --
she is now actively engaged in psycho-somatic healing . . . .This is a
book which should be read by every priest and by any layman who is keen
to help his fellow-men." - Bishop Cuthbert of
Croydon
Rename Your World
Will you consider with me the
possibility of creating a new world
out of scientific knowledge and accumulated faith? Have we not come to
a place where it is necessary to rename and remake our world? Has
mankind
any longer a choice? Isn't it likely that unless we rebuild our world
that
it may be changed for us in a most disastrous way? Then the rebuilding
will have to be done later and with rubble.
Perhaps we would do well to face
some of these questions and think
on these things. Students of the New Testament tell us that this
remaking
and renaming of our world is part of the teachings of Jesus Christ.
There
are tremendous issues at stake, and it is our belief that the Master
would
arouse us from our inertia, and lift us from our indifference, calling
anew with the words He used of old those words of power and positive,
dynamic
force.
We have not yet begun to live the
things that He taught. We have
not yet begun to scratch the surface of the things that He told us were
true. We have not begun to believe the promises that He made. He said,
“Greater things shall ye do if ye abide in me and my words abide in
you.”
Yet we are afraid to step out on that. We are afraid even to mention
it.
We are afraid to say to people, “Believe and hear this dynamic
message.”
Why are we afraid? Of what are we afraid? Afraid that we cannot live up
to the promises or that belief? Afraid of ridicule? Afraid that someone
will say, “It does not work”? Afraid they may say, “They prayed for
this
one and that one and it did not do any good”?
Is that what you fear? Why should
we
fear? Jesus prayed for the lepers
and not all of them were healed permanently. All were healed at the
moment,
but not all remained healed. Do we say that this was because His power
was not great enough in each instance? Did He fail? Did God fail? Did
God's
love not come through to all of them alike? What then does fail? We,
the
children of God, fail.
We must learn to live these
things
that He taught if we are going
to live at all. We shall have to learn how to talk because out of the
mouth
comes our fulfilment or our destruction. The tongue is a powerful
organ.
The heart which in the Old Testament was not called the subconscious
mind
because they did not know that word then, was the source of man’s
conscious
action. Wasn’t it the subconscious mind that was meant when they said,
“Out of the heart the mouth speaketh”? “Keep thy heart with all
diligence
for out of it are the issues of life”? It is that which is in the
subconscious,
deep down in our belief, that comes forth and causes us to act as well
as speak. “By thy words thou shall be condemned; by thy words thou
shalt
be justified.”
It is only when we have trained
and
disciplined the heart or subconscious,
with positive thoughts and actions that our world will become positive
and we can step up on top of the negative things that surround us and
threaten
us with destruction. Only then can we move out into that high place of
knowing which belonged to Jesus Christ.
* * *
These are not easy things to
teach.
People are filled with prejudices--they
have certain teachings against which they have formed a feeling of
dislike.
That is a pity because many of these things are part of our Christian
tradition,
and we should not have lost them. We have allowed ourselves to be
influenced,
and we have learned a language of frustration and negation.
I have a little phrase, “Take a
vacation from negation.” Try it for
a day. See how many times you correct yourself when you make some claim
that is not positive. If we are to abide in the words of Jesus Christ,
and His words are to abide in us, then the words we speak must be
positive
words, for He spoke no negative words. His words were always words of
action.
“Go,” “Behold,” “See,” “Stretch forth thine hand,” “Arise,” “Walk.”
Always
they were dynamic words of power and action. They were never
theoretical.
Never but once did He touch on
anything that was not positive and
it seems as though that incident was either not fully understood or not
correctly reported. I allude to the parable of the fig-tree. Is it
conceivable
that the Master should have destroyed the fig-tree because it bore no
fruit?
Was Christ not saying in essence to His disciples, “Look, I will show
you
that this law which we have been studying and which I have been
demonstrating
day after day will work in reverse. It will work for the negative as
well
as for the positive. I can curse this fig-tree and it will die. When we
come back this way tonight it will be dead.” And it was.
Yes, the law will work in
reverse,
just as an automobile will go
backward as well as forward under the same power when the gears are
reversed.
That which you magnify tends to magnify or destroy you. We make our
world
what we name it. We make our life what we name it though some do not
yet
know this. Jessie Rittenhouse puts it,
“I bargained with
life
for a penny,
And life would pay me
no
more,
No matter how I
begged
at evening
When I counted my
scanty
store. . . .
I bargained with life
for a penny,
Only to learn,
dismayed,
That any wage I had
asked of life
Life would have paid.”
We claim what we want and we get
what we claim. When we hear this
for the first time it offends us because it brings the burden of guilt
directly upon ourselves. When men no longer have a personified power of
evil to blame what will they do? If we take the devil out of the
picture
and do no have him there to carry our alibis we will have nothing
behind
which to hide. We have always hidden behind the idea that there is an
evil
power working against the power of good, and because of that other
power
it is impossible for us to be free to live always in the light of God's
Love. Because men have felt that they were subject in some degree to
this
second power it seemed impossible for them always to do the
constructive
thing. Hiding, they were not willing to face the issue.
Today we must return, or perhaps,
come for the first time to the
belief in one power, and that power God, or good. There can be no
other.
We are told throughout the Bible that we should have no other God
before
Him, yet man instinctively brings evil forward and thinks of it in
terms
of equal power with good.
It is true there are inversions
of
good. It is true there are many
things which seem to us to be directly the opposite of good. And they
are.
They are complete inversions of good, but they are still the same power
operating. They are that power working in reverse. We are but seeing
the
negative aspect, as we see the negative and positive expressions of
electricity.
We know there are not two powers just because we see two expressions of
it. We know if we cross the negative pole we will be hurt. The negative
pole represents evil, the opposite of the positive pole, or good. As a
rule we believe it is only when we touch or cross the negative pole, or
evil, that we are hurt. But on reflection we know that if we cross the
positive pole we will be hurt, also, even though the positive pole
represents
good.
I don't suppose there is anything
which brings us such great suffering
as a wilful disregard of Divine guidance when we refuse to move with
the
current of Divine wisdom and deliberately move against that current. We
cross the positive pole and we suffer and it is not evil that has
caused
the suffering. We cannot break God's laws any more than we can break
the
law of gravity when we step out of a second-story window. We disobey
God's
laws, we don't break them. In disobeying them they break us. The things
which befall us are the things which we, not understanding, bring upon
ourselves. One of the things which we have least understood is the
power
of our words. We have bound ourselves by the chains of our own beliefs.
* * *
Think of the things that we say!
Think of the beliefs under which
we labour!
The common belief is that if you
run
into the path of a germ you
are bound to have the infection which that germ produces. Perhaps we
even
go out of our way to meet it on its path, for we say, “We catch” a
cold.
I would not ask you to believe that germs are not real. They are more
real
to many people than God. We have made a god of science to the extent
that
we almost worship the laws of science, and believe in them more firmly
than we believe in the laws of God.
The germs, like the poor, are
always
with us, but the germs are accessories
after the fact. If the germ were the primary offender no one would
escape.
An epidemic would take everyone in its path and no one would be spared.
But that is never true. Even in the Black plague of the Middle Ages not
everyone succumbed. There were always those who were immune. What gave
them that immunity? It was not always those who were blessed with great
physical vitality, for some of the strongest were taken. It is not only
an immunity of the body. Is it not perhaps an immunity of the body
through
the spirit? The immunity lies in the consciousness lifted beyond the
laws
of the material world. It is moving our of a lower dimension into a
higher
dimension in which the laws of the lower dimension no longer apply.
Physical science itself is
bringing
us the answer, and it is the
same answer Jesus gave us. It is the answer which Jesus taught and
lived.
It lies in the discovery of the laws of wave mechanics; the laws of the
sub-atomic world. In speaking of these in his book, The Road to
Reason,
Lecomte du Nuoy writes, “We must establish the continuity between the
two
universes (atomic and sub-atomic) that are still separated; the
universe
of the molecules..... and the underlying universe of electrons,
protons,
and neutrons, indisputable base of the first, but subject to different
laws.”
The two worlds of which Jesus
spoke,
one visible and the other invisible,
are subject to different laws. “Blessed are the ears,” wrote Thomas
à
Kempis, “that hear the pulses of the Divine whisper and give no heed to
the many whisperings of the world.”
Some of us are no longer
disturbed
by the idea of infection because
we know there is a higher law of immunity than lower one of infection.
We do not deny the law, but we deny that we need to come under it. We
are
not dealing with negatives. We are dealing with positives, and
therefore
have no fear. Having been a doctor of medicine and knowing the fixity
of
general conviction about the power of germs, it amazes me to see how
rapidly
the world is accepting new light on this subject. We do not repudiate
the
laws of hygiene. We obey them, but we call upon a higher law for our
immunity
from them.
To claim something for yourself
that
you do not want seems to be
the height of human folly. If one wishes, for instance, to be strong,
why
neutralize that desire day after day by affirming weakness? I borrow
this
paragraph from the book of a friend,
"One girl in particular I
remember--a lovely personality--yet
one who chose to grow in instead of out. In the ever narrowing circle
of
her thought, she became as a record, over and over repeating almost
automatically
the same phrases ‘I can’t,’ ‘Not strong enough,’ ‘Life is so
difficult,’
‘The Doctor says,’ ‘l never could,’ ‘Mother always told me,’ ‘I have
done
all I could.’
“It is distressing to watch
anyone
succumb to the dictates of the
imprisoned ego. The constant repetition of destructive phrases leads to
exaggeration, to a strengthening of trouble, and usually to greater
difficulties.
We may long to sweep away these impediments, but the sad thing is that
another can seldom sweep them away or lift them out of a life with any
enduring effect. The owner must cast them out herself as she awakens to
the value of life with its possibilities of achievement.”
Thomas à Kempis wrote,
“Know
that the love of self doth hurt
thee more than anything else in the world. With it everywhere thou
shalt
bear a cross. If thou seekest thine own will and pleasure thou shalt
never
be quiet nor free from care, for in everything something shall be
wanting.”
What were the demons that Jesus
always spoke about, and ordered to
come out of people? Do you think they were disembodied spirits that had
come in and possessed them? Whether disembodied spirits or obsessions
they
were very real. When you correlate His attitude towards disease with
His
command to the demons you begin to have an inkling of what those demons
might have been.
It is fascinating to study His
attitude toward disease. When He went
to Simon Peter’s home and the wife's mother lay with fever, He rebuked
the fever. He did not rebuke the woman. His attitude was something like
this, “How dare you be here?” “How dare you come into this body?” “You
are out of place. You do not belong here.”
In this same way He commanded the
demons to come out of them and
never enter them again. Was it a demon of belief in a power which could
hold a child of God in bondage that he rebuked? Was it this which he
commanded
to “come out”? Did He not say that He wanted to show us the truth that
would make us free? He not only lived it, but He died for it. What was
this truth? Was it not the truth of the existence of one illimitable
power,
greater than all others? This power was certainly the power of love,
and
He taught us that if we abide in that love, speaking the words of love,
then everything about us would swing into the harmony and rhythm of
life.
When you speak only words of
accord,
harmony and love, then the power
of Divine love flows through you constantly, renewing you. As we give
more
and more of ourselves we become more deeply immersed in the universal
life,
and we are constantly renewed as was the milk in the pitcher which the
herdswoman set before the gods of Olympus as they walked upon the
earth.
Each time they drank from the pitcher it was refilled. It is when we
speak
words of disharmony, discord, hate and resentment that the strength and
vitality go out of us.
We need to watch and pray, and
watch
what we pray. We need to watch
what we say even when we are not praying. Most of us have learned not
to
hate or be resentful. We have learned not to be angry or hold envy. But
we have not yet learned to say positive words about ourselves and our
world.
We have not yet learned that it is unwise to claim things we do not
want.
“But,” you say, “I cannot lie to
myself. If I have a pain I have
a pain.” That is true. But it is true, also, that you need not lie to
yourself.
You can tell the truth to yourself, and the truth is that as long as
you
claim the pain or the limitation of weakness it is not likely that any
power can overcome or help you to overcome it.
If you do not want the negative
you
must claim the positive. The
positive is always stronger. When we fully understand the power of
words
we shall speak no more words of discord and disease, but speak only
words
of health and harmony. The law of harmony is the law of love, and the
law
of love is the law of God. The light will always overcome darkness. The
darkness can never put out the light. Words create anew. Words of
harmony
bind together and unite in strength. Words of discord undo connections,
disintergrate and tend to destroy. We must choose which we would use,
the
creative or the destructive law. We must choose this day whom we shall
serve. We must choose this day which world we would create for
ourselves,
the one described in the first chapter of Genesis, or the one described
in the second chapter.
You own a garden so
wondrously fair,
Even God's angels
would
envy you there!
Its pastures are
green,
its waters are still,
You lie down beside
them
and drink to your fill.
Here are love and
peace
and abiding joy,
With all of God's
substance for you to employ.
Where is this garden
so
wondrously fair?
You say, “If it is
mine,
why am I not there?
I live in a world
that
is ugly and bare.
If I own such a
garden
why am I not there?”
What about the question, “Perhaps
it
is God's will for me to suffer?”
If you believe it is God's will
that
you must suffer to be disciplined,
then that is true for you. But if you really believe that it is the
will
of God for you to suffer, what right have you to go to the doctor
constantly?
Have you thought about this? Do you want to seek help to cure you or
ease
the pain when you think that it is God's will that you should suffer
it?
Are you not seeking to disobey God's will if this is what you believe?
There are people who believe they
must be poor in order to be saintly.
Even such a remarkable woman as Muriel Lester gave up a beautiful home
to live in poverty in the East End of London because she felt it was a
necessary step for her. Kagawa, similarly, thought it a spiritual
necessity
that he live in the slums and share the lives of the wretchedly poor.
For
the few these things may be necessary, but for the many it is not
necessarily
true.
When we learn that in our
Heavenly
Father's house there is an abundance
of everything we no longer seek to clutch our possessions and they no
longer
have the power to possess us. Then we become stewards of things. They
are
no longer our masters and we can use them freely. We take, receive and
give, and that is right, for in that way no one is bound, no one is
held,
and we have no fear either of lack of money or the burden of it.
Similarly disease has no power
over
us except the power which we
give it. Are you sure that disease comes to us from God? God knows no
iniquity.
God knows no inharmony. God is love, kindness, tenderness,
understanding
and compassion. The Master said, “If ye then being evil, know how to
give
good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is
in heaven give good things to them that ask Him?"
God is all life. How could life
ever
create anything less than itself?
There is abundant life. This universe is full of life. The primordial
stuff
of the universe itself is life. What then shuts us off from life? Can
it
be our negative affirmations and beliefs? Many years ago Herbert
Spencer
knew that “man is ever in the presence of an infinite and eternal
energy
from which all things proceed”.
In the middle of the garden of
Eden
God placed the tree life from
which man could eat all that he wished, but he was forbidden to eat of
the tree of the knowledge of good and evil lest he die. And the serpent
told he would not surely die. And he didn't. It only deprived him of
the
fullness of life.
Try always to say, “In the name
of
Jesus Christ and in the power
of His love I can do anything.” St.Paul said, "Of myself I can do
nothing, but in Christ I can do all things.” Was not Paul at times too
busy building churches and establishing a great organisation that he
neglected
to go back to the source of his power and touch again that Infinite
life
that would have kept him steady and in perfect health? When he was
forced
to stop and take to his bed, he would then come back in spirit to that
which he knew and the Christ spirit would renew him. We are told that
he
would arise from his sick bed and continue his tasks to the amazement
of
all.
Tomorrow, if someone should ask,
“How are you?” would you be willing
to say, “I am strong in Christ and in the power of His might?” And
could
you believe it? Most Christians art so pussyfooted it is quite pitiful.
They wouldn’t want to make such a statement.
Yet here we stand with the
greatest
power in the world and the greatest
promises that could be given to man. Here we stand with a future before
us filled with the things which eye hath not seen nor ear heard; things
already prepared for them that love God, and we hesitate because we
think
someone might think us queer. Try for one day to see only positive
things.
Try not to make one single claim that does not ring with the positive
note
of Jesus’ own words, and others shall see in you a new radiance, and it
will manifest in your body.
The early Christians had shining
faces filled with wonder and glory.
They dared not walk abroad in the day for fear of being picked out from
the crowd and sent to the arena. Where has that glory gone? Why have we
lost it? Who has taken it? Who has robbed us of our heritage? No one
but
ourselves. We are the thieves and the robbers. We are the guilty ones.
Oh, beloved, as never before let
us
pray in these days of the world’s
need for the courage and strength to speak words of command, backed by
the love and authority of Christ. We have nothing of ourselves. For did
He not say of Himself He could do nothing that it was the Father who
worked
through Him? So in that name, and in that authority, and with the power
of the Holy Spirit behind us, we should be able to say to men and
women,
“Arise and walk,” “Stretch forth thy hand and be whole.”
Did He not imply there was
nothing
gone, destroyed, neither dead
in that body? Remember the physical body will not tolerate anything in
it which is dead, not even a splinter. The body will get it out.
Anything
you eat that doesn't belong must come out immediately. The body may,
under
extreme conditions, encase the foreign matter in a wall or sac so that
it cannot be free in the blood-stream to cause trouble, but the living
body will not allow anything dead to remain in it. So do not believe
that
you have dead nerves, dead cells or dead anything. They may be dormant
but they are not dead. They may be only five per cent. awake, but they
are alive, and because they are alive they can be more alive.
With the touch of the divine life
moving through the cells they come
into quickened life. Did He not give us authority to say to these
dormant
cells, as He said to Jairus' daughter, “Come alive,” “Come awake,” for
they are not dead but sleeping?
When a crooked back straightens,
when seemingly paralysed muscles
suddenly take on new strength, either through prayer, the spoken word,
or the healing hand, we see God's power manifesting. When we see a
woman
with a paralysed arm held tightly to her side suddenly able to lift it
above her head we know the power of belief which had bound her was
broken
by the faith and conviction of those who were praying for her. These
are
not miracles in the sense of breaking a law; they are the operation of
a higher law which has long waited our recognition and use.
Paraphrase Coue’s formula and
repeat
over and over, “Day by day in
every way, in the power of the Christ, I am stronger and stronger.”
Day by day you can rebuild your
body. Every cell in your body except
the sex and brain cells are replaced every year of your life. Why,
then,
are they always renewed in the same pattern? Because you do not change
the pattern. Why not make a new frame of reference? Make a picture of
what
you desire and keep it before you, seeing nothing else, for we are
“transformed
by the renewing of our minds”.
Annette Kellerman was told she
was
crippled for life and could never
do what normal girls do because of a curved spine. She put a picture
before
her of Annette Kellerman doing all sorts of athletic and acrobatic
stunts,
and her body built itself into that picture until she became the
world's
champion swimmer with one of the most beautiful bodies the world has
ever
seen. Nothing can stand in the way of the human will backed by God's
will
when used for constructive purposes toward greater and greater life!
One stands before us with arms
outstretched. He begs “Come unto Me
and learn of Me.” “I will teach you. I will show you all things,” “Let
My words abide in you.” If we obey that call then our words must not
be,
“I am afraid,” “I don't think I can,” “I don't see how.” Too many of us
are like the man in Luke vi.6. We sit with a shrivelled right arm
forgetting
that if we stretch it forth in the Master’s work it will be made whole.
We are afraid to step out, not
realizing that no matter how weak
or shrivelled that arm may be, once it is stretched forth in His
service
His power will make it strong. None are ever ready for His ministry in
the sense of being adequate. We would never go out if we waited until
we
were fully prepared. We are so full of imperfections we could not. But
we are all made adequate when we go out in the name and nature of
Christ.
It does not take perfection. Jesus took Simon the unstable, Simon the
mercurial,
Simon the impulsive, and renamed him Peter, the Rock.
Let Him rename you! Let Him show
you
how to rename your condition!
He can, and He will.
* * *
The things I
have
written here are embedded in my life
and experience. Through them has come a knowledge and a certainty of
tremendous
healing power available to us today as in the days when Jesus of
Nazareth
walked the earth. I say them because of the things I have witnessed.
They
are the reason why I have written this chapter and this book. R.B.
Available for immediate download, the
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"Everyman's Search" by
Rebecca Beard
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