BARRIERS TO CHRISTHOOD/40 DAYS IN THE WILDERNESS/
30 PIECES OF SILVER – HERBERT FITCH – JULY 1969
BARRIERS TO CHRISTHOOD
I want you to look with me in this passage to 1st Corinthians 2:9-16, in which Paul says:
“But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.” There is an instant separation between the man of earth whose eye cannot see the things or hear nor can his ear hear the things that have been prepared for him by God. Only those who love God. And so the loving of God is brought out instantly as the prerequisite to hearing what is in the finished kingdom of God to hearing the thoughts of God, to hearing the voice of God and to seeing in your life the things of God. And so he is going to have to tell us more about what loving God really means because I am certain that we all wish to hear and see the things that God has prepared for us.
“But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.” Now we know that in order to see and hear that which is invisible and unheard we must have a spiritual eye and a spiritual ear because only in Spirit are they revealed.
“For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.” We as human beings do not know the Spirit of God within us and only the Spirit of God within us knows who and what we are here to do. So Paul is forcing us to a loosing of the personal sense of self that we may open our inner eyes and develop that mind which was in Christ Jesus, that we may know, see, experience the things of God.
“Now we have received, (speaking of himself) not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.”
“Which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.”
“But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.”
“But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man.” In your spiritual judgment, judgment is made by the spirit within you. Being omniscient it judgeth, it knoweth all things. And finally:
“For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.”
And so Paul is telling us about Christ Consciousness which is aware of, conscious of, the invisible finished kingdom of God on earth. Suppose we were in Paul’s class now and after this preface he has gone just a step further: (I Corn. 3:1-2)
“Now I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ.” That is the condition he found his students in.
“I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able.” Now we have passed the point, which Paul is describing here to his students that they have not passed the point yet where he can speak to them of the meat. You still have to stay with the milk. And you would think, of course, that we have every right to feel at this point that we can go with the meat, and go past the milk because we have had the advantage of Paul’s teaching. We have had the advantage of more incarnations behind us. We have had the advantage of the Joel consciousness lifting the earth. We have had the advantage of the Jesus Christ consciousness lifting the earth. And so today if we are still in the milk we are in the wrong class. We are not going to gain anything together. We are here for the meat. And the meat must be a realization of reality. There really is no place for any pretense in this work at this level. There is no place for you and I to be using words that we do not understand. And there is no reason why at any time we should flinch from truth whether we agree with it or not or even like it or not.
So today is the daying for the meat. You might call it a message of the absolute. Now you know the Infinite Way is not an absolute teaching for this reason:The absolute is the one you come into the experience and not the letter, not the word, not the intellectual idea, not even the principles but the experience of the Presence of God. And so again I repeat, today is a day for the absolute—to experience the presence of God is the meat. And to do it, we must take away many of the veils which we in some form or another permit to remain, not because we want them to remain but because in us is the tempter disguising himself as good, giving us the false persuasion, leading us always to a point where we cannot differentiate between what is and what is not. These veils we must strip. And sometimes it would appear ruthless to do so but you must always stand on the unyielding principle of truth. Nothing else can be acceptable to one who is seeking the Christ Consciousness.
So the first truth we look at is what is stopping me. What is the great barrier that stands between me and Christ Consciousness? Is there one or ten or five and what are they? One of the great barriers which all of us encounter is that we are not ashamed to be called good, but we are ashamed to be called bad. If someone says you are a bad person, your back goes up; if someone says you are a good person, you smile.
“Why calls thou me good said Jesus. There is none good but the Father.” Now this for us is a revolutionary thing to do: to not wish to be called good. But is that really what he is saying, or is this the great principle of impersonalization which Joel gave us? What is he revealing when he rejects being called good? And here you will find the great barrier to Christ Consciousness, which is in all who study their way to spiritual knowledge. There is a person out there who wants to become spiritual. There is a person who wants to draw the Spirit of God to himself and release it in himself so that it may do the will and the power of God in him. And in trying to do this, he has not established the principle that: only God exists. Even Jesus had to step aside. You cannot call me good because if I look at you, you will be personalizing the Christ. You will be seeing a human form and putting a label on it called good. And Jesus was saying, “I don’t want you to see a human form called good or a human form called bad, I want you to see the Invisible Christ that I am.” So there you have your first and possibly the greatest barrier that we all face. We have not come to the point of accepting the invisible Christ as the revelation, which he brought forth. I the Invisible Christ stand before you. You cannot call me bad and you cannot call me good—for if you do, you are speaking from your humanhood. When you are speaking from your Invisible Christ you will not say a word. You will simply know there is One Self and it is I. This is the revelation there is only one good because God is the only Self.
Now you may accept this then and say what do I do next? Now we have to look out. We have to see that this is the Truth of John, Mary, Fred, Harry, Rosalie, everyone we know and see is Invisible God-Self. And therefore we have to translate this world into the Invisible Christ. We have to look out at the faces and the forms, but we have to get on our toes and speak to the Invisible Christ. The barrier here is that we are caught napping (asleep), not on the high watch, chaff-footed; not ready and able to look out and look passed and through the forms.
Now you will find this takes quite a bit of practice to look through the forms; to redeem every form, pronounce this world as the Invisible Christ; to live in his name. And the only way you can live in his name is to accept Invisible Christ as your being, be God-centered, Christ-centered and then let your Christ-center interpret the Invisible Christ of the universe through you.
And so we are looking out now, not from human eyes but from our Christ-center and there are the same forms and faces that always were there, the same animosities, the same lacks, the same limitations, and the same jealousies. But we are saying to ourselves is reality here. And the answer must come: God is here and God is reality, therefore, reality is here. Is truth here, yes, God is here and God is truth so truth is here. If truth and reality are here can their opposites also be here? Can there be any opposite here with God? No, only God is here, only truth is here, only reality is here. And therefore we accept that where God is, where reality is, where truth is nothing of an opposite nature is. And now we are separating the visible from invisible. In our consciousness we are accepting that invisible reality is here. Invisible truth is here. Invisible God is here. And nowhere can they go because, God being infinite, God being omnipresent, all reality and truth is ever invisibly present.
Now we are into one cause—God is the only cause. What can God cause except that which is of God? And all that is of God is perfect. Therefore the perfect cause can only cause the perfect effect. The visible effects are not the perfect effect, therefore, God effect, God cause must be invisible. Cause is here and effect is here; cause is here and manifestation is here—but they are invisible. They are the one perfect cause and the one perfect effect here invisible as reality. We have the invisible kingdom of God as reality; already prepared from the foundations of the world is an invisible finished kingdom of reality and truth manifesting now here invisibly—perfectly—for cause and effect must be one in Spirit. We are revealing our universe; we are looking not to the visible but to the invisible we are sowing only to the Spirit. We are resting in the statement, “that by theirdeeds ye shall know them.” And we are not going to be content merely to speak truth or to hear truth but we are now living in the active awareness of the Presence of God. Here invisibly is both cause and effect. Here invisibly is the perfect manifested kingdom of God. And I must live by that knowledge.
I must now act with the knowledge that the invisible is the presence and reality of God. And because the visible is not the presence and reality of God I must translate the visible; I must transcend the visible; I must live right through the visible as if it were not there. I must sow not to the visible but to the invisible reality. I must see no evil. I must look right through the visible appearance because the conclusion that must be reached is that if God is invisible and the kingdom of God is invisible and all spiritual manifestation is invisible, if reality and truth are invisible, if Christ is invisible; then these visible forms cannot be the reality of God. And I cannot speak to the unreality of God. There is nothing I can say to the unreality that does not bring me into a state of non-reality. I cannot speak to a human form and pretend to myself that I am doing commerce with reality. I must accept the revelation that there is none good but the Father. Which means that there is no reality except in the Father. And therefore the visible human being is not reality.
Now this is a very difficult lesson because it is the meat and not the milk. We have no human race with whom we can do business. And the longer you keep a human race in survival in your consciousness the longer you are dealing with that which has no existence in God. You are dealing with matter. You are dealing with the belief that there is life in matter. You are dealing with an image, which is not the divine image. And so you must translate this image in your consciousness into what it is. And you voice, your direction, your attitude, your purpose, your complete relationship with that which stands before you must be on a different level than the human mind has permitted you to do it. You must address the Invisible Christ where the form appears in spite of the fact that the form is showing forth nothing of the Christ. Silently you address the world with peace. Silently you address the individual with love. Silently you recognize the invisible intelligence and truth and reality of God where the form appears. And you must practice this again and again and again.
You may have left your gift at the altar. You may have left the altar to go and make peace with your fellow man and you may have come back to the altar to present your gift. And you may find you still do not present it; you may have to go back gain. You may have to go back seventy times seven times, until you have neither enemy nor friend who is a human being; until the only one you know is the Christ; the only one you accept is the Christ. And that means you almost have to wear two-faces. The one that smiles and the one that says yes when it means no; the one that turns the other cheek; the one that gives it coat when its vest has been stolen; the one that doesn’t fight an eye for an eye—all because you cannot acknowledge a material presence. You can only acknowledge an Invisible Christ and that is where you are sowing because it is your desire to reap Christ Consciousness you must sow to the Christ. You must be conscious of the Christ to be in Christ Consciousness.
The optimists are thinking we can be in Christ Consciousness without constantly being conscious of the Christ—must be revealed. This is the barrier. We cannot have Christ Consciousness unless we are practicing the consciousness of the Christ. Unless you are looking through what you see in form, size, weight and density; through a face filled with hate, unable to smile and say; neither do I condemn thee right now I am taking you into paradise. I am seeing you as you are. Right now I am redeeming the appearance. Right now I am saying I do not accept the lie, the hate, the cheating, the adultery, the force, the power, the lust; none of this is you. And I say it not out of the goodness of my heart, not out of being a do-gooder, not out of being holier than thou art; but out of the simple fact that all that exists on this earth is He alone who is good. There is no other. I cannot call you evil but neither can I call you good for there is none good but the One Self that is God, the invisible presence that stands before all of us. And then you are resting in the one infinite invisible Self. There is a surrender. You are standing on the unyielding principle—the One Divine Self.
And the appearance is meaningless. You are seeing that the ocean and the wave are one. The wave poses (rises?) out of the ocean and submerges and comes up again but now it is a different wave, it is not the same one that went down. And then it goes up and down again and its another wave but always it is taking its substance from that one ocean. And always it is the ocean expressing itself as a wave. I and thee and thou and me! I and the Father and the Father and me—one. I must accept this for my self and then I must accept it for my neighbor. One infinite invisible Christ and now I have the realization of the One in which I can rest for there is no other power now—no power to be recognized except the One Invisible Power, the One Father. The One Infinite Father is the Father without and the Father within. The ocean and the wave! The Father without, the infinite Father, is also the Father within me as the Infinite Self expressing. That is my name. The Father within you is the infinite Self expressing. And the Father within each one all added up is the Infinite Father. The one ocean expressing as the infinite selfhood’s that appear on this earth. And this we accept because we are sowing: to the Spirit, to the Invisible Truth, to the Invisible Reality. We are resting in Invisible Oneness.