Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Gate of the
Year
By Freedom Barry
To
NEVILLE
THE YEAR
January …………………………. 20
February …………………………. 24
March …………………………. 29
April …………………………. 33
May …………………………. 38
June …………………………. 43
July …………………………. 48
August …………………………. 53
September …………………………. 58
October …………………………. 63
November …………………………. 68
December …………………………. 72
Author's Note
Each of the articles comprising the several chapters of this volume was
throughout California. The intent was to attend to the needs of the field on a
more frequent basis than was possible through occasional lectures and classes.
the subject.
The present volume touches on all basic issues but does so in a more
expanded and less formal way. Either book will further elucidate the other.
Each chapter was written in a single sitting and as the immediate result
F.B.
"And I said to the man
Give me a light
The very fact that the story of this remarkable birth has endured nearly
two thousand years, continuing to capture the undiminished interest of
Christians and non-Christians alike, is a rather persuasive argument that this
narrative has a far more substantial significance for every individual, whatever
his time in history, than the recording and retelling of an historical event could
possibly contain.
If the Bible has revealed anything at all to us, surely the most fundamental
disclosures are these: (1) that God, or Cause, is I AM; that this conviction of
actually having identity is the one originating core, from which is shaped every
identification, and therefore every outwardly interpreted situation and
condition; (2) that Christ means the active functioning of this causation in the
affairs of men; hence the term Christian, intended to characterize one who
actively lives as the embodiment of spiritual creativity; (3) that the word Jesus is
the anglicized Iesous, the Greek translation of Jehoshua, which is the Hebrew term
for Jehovah saves; (4) and since the word Jehovah is the Hebrew name of I AM, we
arrive once again at the point where we began--the conviction of actually having
identity.
13
The brief foregoing analysis should explain very simply the Christian's
claim that Jesus Christ is God on earth. The whole basis for disagreement rests in
whether, in making that claim, we mean that Jesus Christ was God on earth, or
that Jesus Christ is God on earth.
"Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin
shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel."
Isaiah 7:14
Bear in mind, the book of Isaiah is the vision "which he saw concerning
Judah and Jerusalem"; that Judah refers to God's activity , and that Jerusalem refers
to God's dwelling. Inasmuch as God dwells as your conviction of actually being,
and acts as your conscious direction of this indwelling presence, Isaiah's vision of
the eternal spiritual sign relates to all men of all times--to you and to me.
But we are given a sign, not an historical occasion. This sign is the virgin,
your spiritual consciousness, uninstructed by any external evidence, conceiving
your spiritual identity to be your savior and your deliverer, bearing the results of
such disciplined practice, and calling this the proof of Immanuel, or God with us.
Here let me present the account of the nativity from the Gospel according
to St. Matthew, with an accompanying paraphrase based on the foregoing
premise:
14
When in your development, your spiritual consciousness embraces this
expanded idea of salvation, before the idea is fully realized, you recognize
there exists a relation between visible effects and your own faculty of
perception.
Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a
publick example, was minded to put her away privily.
But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord
appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not
to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the
Holy Ghost.
And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus: for he
shall save his people from their sins.
And your expanding spiritual consciousness shall give visible proof of its
capacity to save you from failing to fulfill your ideals.
Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the
Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold a virgin shall be with child, and shall
bring forth a son, and shall call his name Emmanuel, which being
interpreted is, God with us.
All this is written in Gospel accounts to reiterate that the vision of the
prophet is an eternal spiritual verity, occurring at a certain stage in the
development of every individual, that he may discover this seed that is in
himself which matures into the conviction of Emmanuel, or "God with
us."
Isaiah's vision tells what must happen; the Gospel accounts tell how it
happens. Let me ask two penetrating questions. Why does the Jew insist this
vision of the Hebrew prophet has not been fulfilled yet?
15
Why does the Christian insist this vision was fulfilled once? The answer to
both questions is the same: Because the New Testament narrative has been
taught as an historical physical event that occurred solely in one person, rather
than as the eternal spiritual sign that must occur in each individual.
The almost universal appeal of the story of the virgin birth is accounted
for when you discover "…in the volume of the book it is written of me." (Ps. 40:7)
Then you join the company of those who have already divined this miracle of
salvation, and you sing with them:
And this is the name of the SON that is born in you! Then you will know why it
is that
Because, having made that peace with the Self of you, you are occupying the
throne of David, which is another way of saying that Love is enthroned in your
heart, ruling the administration of your affairs.
The writer of the Gospel according to St. Mark, well knowing the built-in
human tendency to single out someone else to bear the responsibility for its
salvation, warned:
"And then if any man shall say to you, Lo, here is Christ: or, lo, he is there;
believe him not.."
16
understood their relation to the spiritual experience they signify:
17
THE YEAR
JANUARY
The holiday observances are over, and another new year stands
unblemished before you, quite like a slate which has been washed clean with
new resolve. How will you face the unfurling of this new year?
Will you be found responding to events as they occur in the world which
surrounds you, cowering fearfully before some, rejoicing triumphantly over
others, nevertheless reacting to all of them, whatever their character? Or will you
be analyzing these outward appearances, discovering the mental attitudes and
moods which underlie them, and then diligently tracing the way in which your
own feelings has been shaped into those very attitudes on any number of
occasions, thereby contributing to the animation of them into external
conditions?
Your answer to these questions will establish for you at the outset whether
you may regard yourself as the victor or the victim of the circumstances that will
arise in your environment. I am sure that no one, not even the most embittered
defeatist, would continue to identify himself as a helpless victim, if he knew his
innate capacity to exert the absolutely unlimited freedom of choice which is
everyone's fundamental birthright.
A created effect has no freedom of choice; you do have. Does not this
recognition immediately liberate your sense of selfhood from the helplessness of
a created effect? A clear-cut understanding of that which is you and that which is
yours provides a basis for exercising an ever-increasing dominion over
circumstances.
In the first chapter you discovered Jesus Christ to be your actual selfhood,
that consciously living presence of spiritual creativity. This realization is "the
light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world." This understanding of
selfhood is the foundation on which you freely build all definitions.
Could Jesus Christ have been one person who was introduced into the
20
unfolding panorama of historical events at the year of One A.D., and still be the
only foundation laid? If Jesus Christ had been the one personal appearance of
God on earth, what had been the foundation of the persons and events
comprising the history of the thousands of years B.C.?
Divine logic insists that Jesus Christ is the individual's living consciously
as spiritual causation; and this is indeed the "foundation that is laid." Further
fortification for this insistence is found by reading the foregoing reference in its
context:
And this is, mercifully, the nature of life: that whatever our manifested
works may be, we are free to alter them, because they are only transitory
shapings we make of the one changeless substance--our conviction of actually
being.
21
of blame may cushion one's own conscience with a temporary solace, but
effective absolution comes from squarely facing one's own accountability.
In line with this premise, let us all resolve to be watchful of the negative
atmospheres we inhabit, for, unless we deliberately vacate them they burst into
visible circumstances which we might be reluctant to admit to be our
contribution.
In a speech near the end of one of his plays, T.S. Elliot has his leading man
sum up, in one statement, the meaning of what two of the other characters have
been talking about:
For my part, those two ideas fit together admirably, and are pointedly
relevant to the theme of this first Letter of the new year: Every moment is a fresh
beginning for the one who understands his identity as the life which keeps on.
Does this not provide the answer to our original question, "How will you
face the unfurling of this new year?" By keeping on, shaping your feeling of being
ever more wisely as these new beginnings appear.
22
FEBRUARY
When I was a boy in the fourth grade, the music instructor taught a song
which was intended to instill in us a patriotic reverence for George Washington
and Abraham Lincoln as the two outstanding Americans, born in the month of
February, who distinguished themselves in the service of their country, thereby
establishing examples which might profitably be emulated by all American
youth. The song began:
"In February there were born two heroes great and good;
They loved their country, and they lived and died as heroes
should."
At the fourth grade level, the tonic had its effect, and if I consistently
failed to duplicate their heroic deeds of greatness, I came out of that class with a
reverence which bordered on worship; so much so that, years later, I was
temporarily offended at the enormous contrast between the moods in which
these two great men were depicted in the murals of the Statehouse in Harrisburg,
Pennsylvania.
On the other hand, Lincoln was shown as a bent, sorrowful, and brooding
man, almost completely enveloped in dark, threatening clouds; the whole mood
was permeated with the flavor of well-nigh hopeless despair.
At first I wondered why the artist had made such an immense difference
between "my" heroes, but after considerable reflection on their different
functions in the unfolding history of America, I perceived, from that vivid
example, the gulf which exists between conceiving an ideal, and maintaining it.
24
established order long ago. Negotiators fail to realize that peace comes to the
individual; it comes with his discovery that his conviction of having identity--his
feeling of actually being--is the cause and substance of any and every conceivable
concept. The one who makes this discovery enthrones this spiritual identity as
his only authority, and from then on he witnesses the shaping of outward
conditions as the precise likenesses of his sustained attitudes and moods.
Cease looking to anyone "else" for authority to act. Lincoln could not look
25
to Washington, nor even to one of his own time, for authority to take the course
that he alone could feel he must take in order to preserve the union. As you rise
from fourth-grade patterns of worshiping idols and trying to emulate "them,"
and reverently live the Godhood which is your identity, you become free from
that state presented in the Old Testament as the "Law of Moses" and
characterized by the language of "thou shalt not"; then you cease looking to
others to save you, or to manufacture the condition of peace for you over the
conference tables of the world. As long as you cast about on the outside for
authority, you will find someone to wield it, and as a consequence you will find
yourself subservient to that one.
God, as infinite Cause, presents Himself as Man, not for the purpose of
duplication or imitation, but for the animation of creation. Sooner or later, all
must desist from the arrogance of claiming an identity apart from the awareness of
being, and reverently acknowledge this life of ours to be the living (awakening) of
26
"the Life divine." As we do this, the joy of living characterizes our days, and the
spontaneity of our acts, freed from a burdensome sense of dutiful living, will
leave in our trail a more lasting benefit.
"A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light
which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre
of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses with-
out notice his thought, because it is his."
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
"There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the
conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that
he must take himself for better or worse as his portion; that though
the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can
come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground
which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is
new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can
do, nor does he know until he has tried."
27
MARCH
Ever since mid-February, when Ash Wednesday introduced the season of
Lent, orthodox Christians have been preparing, by means of a relatively rigid
self-denial, for the annual commemoration of the events of Holy Week.
Is it not a pity that the word spiritual is generally associated with religious
practices, and that your spiritual education should be considered the
responsibility of the churches, and not your own? To me the word spiritual
implies fundamental character, and has the unlimited scope of all-inclusiveness,
referring to every department of life.
I am convinced that the Bible records, not historical events, but symbols
which illustrate the landmarks everyone encounters in the inescapable process of
awakening spiritually; that it is the textbook which reveals fundamental Selfhood
of the individual, and not an instrument for the conversion of the irreligious to
some form of sectarian worship.
Thinking from this viewpoint, let us now free the symbols of Lent and
Holy Week from the restricted perspective of an observance of a two-thousand-
year-old miscarriage of justice, and consider them in terms of practical value to
you.
The Hebrew prophet Isaiah wrote of "the voice of him that crieth in the
wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a
highway for our God." Here is the perfect introduction to the meaning of Lent, a
period of preparation for a higher spiritual order. Yours is the voice that appeals
in the wilderness (the unconquered areas of the mind) for a clearing in the path
of deliverance.
The writer of the Gospel according to St. Matthew makes use of this same
symbol, depicting it as "John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judaea,
and saying, Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. For this is he that
was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah, saying, The voice of one crying in the
wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight."
29
earn divinity must yield to the individual's discovery of it as his own identity, and
this is the ministry of Jesus: the revelation that "I am the way, the Truth, and the
Life; no man cometh unto the Father (discovers cause) but by ME (living
consciously as spiritual being).
The original Greet metanoeo, translated repent, means "to think differently."
To clear the way mentally for a spiritual discovery provides a broader benefit
than merely to fast physically in conformity to an accepted custom. The
injunction to "Deny self and follow ME" is spiritual direction to look within for
your identity.
The events of Holy Week, so encrusted with religious ritual, glow with
practical value for the one who discovers their more advanced meanings as
illustrations of the milestones he attains in his spiritual awakening. As you free
your sense of your Self from that of a limited person, and accept it as the invisible
conviction of being that furnishes the personal definitions of Itself, you are actually
experiencing Holy Week; you resurrect your concept of identity out of the area of
frustrating effort, to the conviction, "I am the light of the world."
Palm Sunday is illumined with a new practicality when you read Matthew
21:8-16 in this light:
30
necessity of accepting peace at any price; functioning con-
sciously as spiritual causation, you establish peace by
experiencing it.
The next four chapters in the narrative present parables which urge
spiritual Self-reliance; the intent is sufficiently clear that "those who run may
read."
At the Last Supper, bread (the literal interpretation of the Word) is broken
(analyzed) and fed (as sustenance) to the disciples (disciplined attributes of
attention); also, the cup of wine (inspiration, the life's blood of higher meaning) is
recommended for the remission of sins (the reward of satisfying achievement).
The Greek word, paradidomi, which is translated betray in the English New
Testament, means "to surrender, yield up, entrust, transmit, recommend." After
the Last Supper, Jesus (your own spiritual identity) is surrendered, yielded up,
entrusted, transmitted, recommended to the chief priests (old established concepts of
identity). Judas, the betrayer, is your capacity to reveal the whereabouts of
Selfhood, and should be cultivated rather than branded as malicious and wicked.
31
viction of being is molded into the conviction of being something, this affixation is
entombed and "a great stone" is rolled against the door of the sepulchre,
symbolizing the freedom from distraction necessary to mature the conviction, "I
AM HE." The stone illustrates the denseness which literal-mindedness cannot
penetrate, but which spiritual identity can "roll away"; and when you reach this
wicket in your spiritual development, every fiber of your being will exclaim, "He
is risen!"
32
APRIL
"Happiness is in action, and every power is intended
for action; human happiness, therefore, can only be
complete as all the powers have their full and legiti-
mate play."
But your discovery of power in its essence and eternal availability would
be of no practical benefit if it were to be left lying fallow and not exercised and
disciplined for its "full legitimate play."
34
of divinity, not a passive absorption into a state Absolute. Here is the mystery of
the cross, the emblem of God living as man, illustrating the human and divine
coincidence of one Being. Living consciously as spiritual causation, you are free to
experience the conceivable contents of eternity in a time-space display of them.
Perhaps you have wished for a long time to express some artistic bent, but
have not acted to fulfill that desire for any number of what may have seemed to
you good reasons. You may have felt your degree of talent was insufficient to
warrant the necessary expenditure of effort. You may feel your opportunity is
past, that you should have done all that as a child, and that it is now too late.
You may even feel that such a discussion has no place in a chapter dedicated to
the art of spiritual awakening. But have we not established that your spiritual
identity is the divine Being? "For it is God which worketh in you both to will and
to do of his good pleasure." (Phil. 2:13)
35
Truly, it is the same Spirit, the same essence or conviction of being, that
accomplishes all that is done in all that appear to do it. Then what should be
your attitude, from the point of view of this teaching, in whatever you
undertake?
A very frail and elderly man, whose life was dedicated to his art of
building keyboard instruments, revealed quite inadvertently to a friend one day
the secret of his special quality; he said, "I face every day as though it might be
my last, and every painstaking detail of the day as though I had all eternity."
If this attitude were to characterize every secular effort you make, would
not the spirit of perfection permeate all your achievements? And would not the
dedication you consciously lavish on your activities, exercising your attention
with such discipline, necessarily develop and awaken this power "which
worketh in you"?
Taken in this light, how could any endeavor seem not worth the effort, or
any opportunity to have come too late? Those arguments appear valid only
when you permit your identifications of your Self to pass for your identity. With
your spiritual identity awakened to its intrinsic power, and remembering that
"every power is intended for action," begin directing this force deliberately to
activate the ideals that are eternally conceivable, requiring only the occupancy of
your conviction of being to give them the literal appearance of being your
condition.
In pursuing this course, be reminded often that the human is the divine,
asleep to its own divinity; that humanity is not an echo of divinity, nor a different
substance counterfeiting the divine nature. The central seal of Christianity is the
cross--Cause presenting and interpreting Itself as effect. Try not to lean so far in
one direction that you flounder in a theoretical and frozen Absolute (which is
supposed to be incapable of perceiving a world it at the same time permits to
exist for you!), or so far in the other direction that all objective appearances are
devoid of divine causation.
Around two hundred years ago, William Blake saw this divine and
human coincidence, the true cross of Christianity, the Word (meaning) made
flesh, when he wrote:
36
"Suit the action to the word and the word to the action."
Even before the Christian era began, the same advice was urged by one
who knew what it was to search for truth:
37
MAY
Whoever teaches the process of spiritual awakening is certain to
encounter one question more often than any other, and that is, "What happens to
us when we die?"
The stumbling block in the way of the acceptance of these promises lies in
the failure to comprehend what it is that constitutes the identity of the individual.
If you identify yourself merely as a human personality in the form of a physical
body, with a mentality and an emotional system as the principal components, it
is no small wonder that you may have thought it improbable that immortal or
eternal life is really yours. However, if you understand that these identifications
are interpretations, made by the invisible conviction of being which you are, then
you can come to grips with this problem, because it is to your spiritual identity
that the promises of immortality are addressed.
To illustrate: you once identified yourself as a child who was ten; after
considerable development, you changed your identification of yourself to that of
a seventeen-year-old adolescent. What became of the ten-year-old? You, the
identity, did not die, nor did the child die, because you were the only actual life
which that identification ever had. However, death, as it is spiritually
understood, did occur, and has continued to occur, each time the identifier
(which you are) has ceased maintaining certain identifications of its Self in order
to present different ones.
39
cannot be earned, but must always be awakened. This pattern of individual
awakening is brilliantly dramatized in an account that is familiar to all readers of
Old Testament stories.
With the use of Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, which gives
the original meanings of the key Hebrew words that have been translated into
English in the versions commonly used by English-speaking people everywhere,
read now a more intimate and practical meaning which lurks beneath the surface
of the well-known allegory:
"And he lighted upon a certain place, and tarried there all night, because
the sun was set; and he took of the stones of that place, and put them for
his pillows, and lay down in that place to sleep."
"And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of
it reached to heaven; and behold the angels of God ascending and
descending on it."
"And the Lord stood above it and said, Behold I am with thee, and will
keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into
this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have
spoken to thee of."
40
This revelation, so fantastic to the one who has had only a
personal sense of himself, flowers into the understanding and
acceptance of the promise of immortality: Identity does not
forsake its identifications until it is awake as its Self, until it is
"brought again into this land."
"And Jacob vowed a vow, saying, If God will be with me, and will keep
me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put
on, So that I come again to my father's house in peace; then shall the Lord
be my God; and this stone, which I have set for a pillar, shall be God's
house."
From this pillar, this monumental waymark in your experience, you live
the drama of life, aware of its redemptive value, recognizing in each new
pinnacle of deliverance your survival of another identification.
One's first brush with this teaching is likely to leave the impression that
too much is claimed by insisting that the identity of the individual is the divine
Being which IS; and yet it is this very point on which the promises of eternal life
become totally acceptable or are discounted altogether as the doctrinal double-
talk of theology.
"And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, Surely the Lord is in this
place, and I knew it not. And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is
this place! This is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of
heaven."
Even though the demands seem well beyond your present capacity
to achieve, divine logic compels the recognition that this is indeed the way,
so you (as Jacob) will "set it up for a pillar and pour oil on
the top of it." You will be dedicated to this highest ideal--maintaining
the spiritual meaning of Life!
41
On the thirtieth of this month, our country observes Memorial Day, a
national holiday designated to offer the tribute of memory to those called dead.
As your spiritual awakening proceeds, you will develop firmer convictions
regarding life and what it means to be the life (identifier) of all living
(identifications). Death will not be to you the destruction or end of life, but the
cessation of a particular identification made by the Identity which has been the
only living thing all along.
When you accept this fundamental premise of being eternal life, your
previous concepts of life and death will be shattered, and you will understand
the higher meaning of these familiar words: "See ye not all these stones (theories
which worldly erudition has built)? Verily I say unto you, there will not be left
here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down." Identifications do
not survive the experience of awakening from such interpreting, but identifier
does!
The Gospel of John presents Jesus as God Himself (as Life itself), and the
entreaty that the reader relate to this central character is constant. When the
point has been made that "no man cometh to the Father but by ME," there comes
the sharp reminder, "If ye had known ME, ye should have known my Father
also; henceforth ye know him and hath seen him."
42
JUNE
"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood
as a child, I thought as a child, but when I became a
man, I put away childish things." (I Cor. 13:11)
Every year at this time, young persons by the hundreds of thousands pass
that pivotal point in their lives when they graduate from the years of gathering
theories and venture into the world of "hard, cold facts," where they are obliged
to press their accepted theories into practice.
The rebuffs that greet the young graduate are symbolic of all
development; they do not stop when the first encounter has been hurdled, for the
simple reason that obstacles are the out-pictured interpretations of our ignorance
of what lies ahead. Therefore, nothing short of total awakening can prevent a
continued deliverance to further stretches of wilderness, a term employed in
scripture to indicate the unconquered areas of the mind.
"God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the
ground from whence he was taken." (Gen. 3;23)
44
"…it had been better for us to serve the Egyptians, than that we
should die in the wilderness." (Ex. 14:12)
The urge is to turn around, as frightened animals might, and run back
across the same old familiar roads at the first sight of the enormity of the
wilderness. But is it ever better to serve ignorance, prejudice, superstition, and
frozen tradition? Continuing in that path you are dead in the unconquered areas
of the mind. How can you prevent this "eternal sleep?" By awakening. The
awakening process provides the only sure-footed entrance into the New
Jerusalem.
Do you think this process demands too much, that it is too late for the old
dogs of the traditional course to learn the new tricks of imaginative living?
Remember who you really are. Trace this pattern of awakening from sight to
insight as it is set forth in the Book of Job. Following the graduation from
innocence, the same cry goes up:
Every direction but the only accurate one! Your use of sight as the
photographic reception of appearances will never yield a dominion over those
appearances. But when your powers of recognition have developed the insight of
vision, the actual perception of causation, you discern that:
Your own divinity, your feeling of being, is the substance of the attitude-
shapes which, if they become habitual, you interpret as the solid conditions of
your environment.
With this insight you bridge the transition, or "graduation," and the
passing from innocence loses its sting. No longer will you complain about what
is not coming your way, because you will then be oriented toward fulfilling your
purpose. Now you know who it is that treads in your steps as your very
walking; none other than God himself.
45
"Behold, I have refined thee, but not with silver (knowledge);
I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction (experience).
For mine own sake, even for mine own sake, will I do it; for
how should my name be polluted? And I will not give my
glory to another." (Isa. 48:10, 11)
So you see, you are not something besides "ME!" "I AM you!"
The burden of proof rests on your own ME, before which "thou shalt have
no other gods (concepts of causation)." Living consciously from this standpoint,
you continually expand your degree of spiritual awakening and, as outwardly
interpreted, you genuinely enrich society with your unique contribution to life.
The model of this process is illustrated with telling effect in the often-cited
parable of the sower and the seed. What may have escaped the notice of many is
the purpose outlined in the very first sentence, namely, that the sower went forth
to sow! Before the maturing results of experience have made their impact, the
spiritually innocent quite generally believe they have come into this life to reap;
and reap they surely will, but not in a really meaningful way until they plumb
the depths of the soil which are symbolized in this old story. It is I AM, the
conviction of having identity, that has sown itself as this conviction of being you,
and this living presence awakens its native divinity by fathoming these degrees
of deepness.
46
Some fell upon stony places (the superior attitude of the
intellectually complacent), where they had not much earth: and
forthwith they sprung up because they had no deepness of earth:
and when the sun (illuminating experience) was up, they were
scorched; and because they had no root (conscious spiritual foun-
dation), they withered away.
47
JULY
Surely everyone, at some time or another, feels driven by compulsion to
break through some cramping limitation and achieve a freer functioning in
circumstances more native to his taste and talent.
If you have felt the spur of this symptom and have subdued it in face of
the barriers which are, to all appearances, impenetrable, you may be encouraged
by tracing the pattern of emergence from restriction to unqualified freedom.
The necessity, as old as time, is for the spiritual identity of the individual
to awaken from its sleep, in which it has interpreted itself in terms of literal,
physical limitation.
"Howbeit, that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is
natural; and afterward that which is spiritual… And as we have
borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of
the heavenly." (I Cor. 15:46, 49)
In the Old Testament, the "natural" and "spiritual" poles of the individual's
functioning are generally depicted as "brothers" with sharply contrasted natures.
As the external, or physical sense appears first, this viewpoint is called the "elder
son," and because the spiritual view is hidden from the natural, it is called the
"inner," or "second son."
To illustrate: Cain was "a tiller of the ground," while his brother Abel was
"a keeper of the sheep." Jabal was "the father of such as have cattle. And his
brother's name was Jubal: he was the father of all such as handle the harp." Then
there were Esau and Jacob, the twins that struggled within Rebekah before they
were born. The Lord had told Rebekah that two manner of people should be
born, and that "the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the
elder shall serve the younger." As they grew up, Esau was "a cunning hunter, a
man of the field," while Jacob was "the smooth-skinned lad."
49
Why did the second son always manage to be blessed above the elder?
Why, even over Joseph's protest, did his father, Jacob, pronounce the blessing on
his younger son, Ephraim, instead of Menasseh, the firstborn? Because all these
pairs of brothers indicate the opposite standpoints each individual may take.
Every member of every generation is obliged to burst through the fetters of his
own interpreting as "the natural man," and declare the independence of his
spiritual identity. The story of the blessing of Joseph's sons pointedly dramatizes
this spiritual essential:
"And when Joseph saw that his father laid his right hand upon
the head of Ephraim, it displeased him: and he held up his father's
hand, to remove it from Ephraim's head unto Menasseh's head.
And Joseph said unto his father, Not so, my father: for this is the
firstborn; put thy right hand upon his head. And his father
refused, and said, I know it, my son, I know it: he also shall become
a people, and he also shall be great: but truly his younger brother
shall be greater than he, and his seed shall become a multitude of
nations." (Gen. 48:17-19)
Using the original meaning of the Hebrew names in the foregoing text,
you should be able to adapt the intent very productively to your own case. Jacob
is the capacity to supplant; Joseph is the capacity to augment; Menasseh means
"causing to forget," and Ephraim is defined as "fruitfulness."
World history saw America break away from the established kingdom of
England and declare its independence; almost daily you read newspaper
accounts of internal strife and struggle, the birth-pangs which attend the
prologue to national independence. Whether interpreted individually,
nationally, or on a worldwide scale, the activity is the same: spiritual
independence is being awakened and asserted.
What do you suppose is the meaning of the frantic competition in the race
50
to conquer outer space? Is it anything other than the same urge, this time
interpreted on a planetary scale? Do you think these incidents occur only at
isolated intervals in history? This urge rises in each one who walks the earth,
who ever has walked it, or who ever will walk it--and not only the earth. The
conviction of being, which is your life and identity, is growing over the wall that
literal interpreting calls the circumference of existence, and is revealing no limit
to that which is.
Sooner or later, you are obliged to make this same recognition, and when
you do, it may be that you will not change your name, but you will surely
change your values. You will begin to forsake the opinions you clutched so
rigidly as your trademarks in the past, and will dare to forge ahead with
confidence into altitudes of thought of which you never have dreamed. And this
is when your Father (spiritual identity) sends you "legions of angels to deliver
you," an abundance of fresh ideas to explore, elevating you beyond the pressures
inherent in literal interpreting.
Th Pilgrims left their homeland when the free exercise of their religious
conviction was curtailed by the authority of the Crown, and dared to venture
into the unknown with implicit confidence in the assertion of their spiritual
independence. Out of this bold act of living faith grew the concept of religious
freedom, the actual cornerstone of this great nation "that grows over the wall." In
their zeal to promote this ideal of individual freedom, they organized churches,
which provided a sense of security in numbers; but they failed to recognize this
reliance as the formation of a new shell which would corrode as it solidified, and
ultimately impose the same restrictions on individual spiritual freedom which
they had hoped to obliterate in their dare-all act of bravery.
And this is the great lesson of Life. The rise and fall of ideologies, the
dictatorial parade of personal importance, the obsession to be remembered as the
best in history: these are all illustrations, negatively interpreted, of the one
eternal activity, the freeing of spiritual identity from its limiting literal
identifications.
51
Do not be afraid of spiritual acrophobia! You will not lose your balance
on dizzy heights unless you are deifying your identifications of yourself as your
Self. The danger comes from basking in someone else's theories instead of your
own spiritual experience.
"No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings."
---William Blake
52
AUGUST
August is the month when mankind's attention becomes diverted to
seeking pleasurable ways and means for spending holidays from its routine
employment, and it has occurred to me that God is interpreting His presence as
man for the purpose of experience, rather than entertainment.
As long as man regards himself as just one among billions of God's good
and bad children, he will not only be seeking to receive constantly, he will be
needing to receive constantly; he will mistakenly interpret the fundamental urge
to awaken his spiritual identity as the necessity for relief from any expressive
activity whatever, and this is what sends him in fruitless pursuit of pleasure.
This unproductive expenditure of energy also accounts for the fact that so many
return exhausted from their vacations, almost welcoming as a restorative the
humdrum routine from which they so lately required respite.
When you fully realize that your actual Self is the Source of all creative
expression, you will be free from the tedium that necessarily attends the opposite
concept of yourself as one of the effects of this Source.
54
"Abide in ME (your conviction of having identity), and I
(this spiritual original) in (as the reality of) you. As the
branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine;
no more can ye (your identification of Self) except ye abide
in ME.
Now, "hear the conclusion of the whole matter" regarding the condition
imposed if you are to realize success in whatever you undertake:
Here is the secret of all truly creative activity, and therefore of all truly
satisfying results. Now, with this standpoint in sharp focus as your position in
life, re-orient your thoughts about leisure, which is defined as "Time available for
some particular purpose." Certainly this definition does not imply idle drifting,
or surcease from all action; instead, it sounds a bugle-call to some purposeful
activity that differs from the routine.
55
The project I am about to recommend will not in any sense interfere with
your vacation schedule, no matter what you may have planned, because, to be at
all productive, it must be begun in the quiet region of your spiritual depth, and
then extended consciously into all that you do in the interpretative levels of your
being--moral, mental, and physical. So you see, leisure is required when you
initiate this operation!
For lack of a better term, I shall call this procedure your "resurrection of
the patriarchs." Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph represent far more than the
names of four illustrious ancestors of an ancient race of people. The spiritual
meaning of these names is revealed in the nature of the characteristics which
comprise their parts in the genesis of the drama of Life as it is unfolded in the
book of Genesis.
The circumstances attending the story of Abraham called forth the general
tenor of fidelity to, or faith in, divine direction. Your disciplined exercise of
fidelity to your spiritual identity gives birth to another capacity, Isaac.
The name Isaac is literally translated, " to laugh." An abiding joy is the
identifying characteristic of this patriarch, and when you can do whatever you
do with the joy of knowing"… it is God which worketh in (as) you both to will
and to do of his good pleasure," you then bear Isaac's successor, Jacob, the
supplanter.
The spiritual activity of molding your feeling of being into an ideal that is
not objectively apparent, always develops this capacity to supplant undesirable
situations with satisfactory solutions. When you have activated this Jacob of
your own character, you are then in a position to bring Joseph alive.
No matter what adverse conditions were heaped upon Joseph in the story
of his long career, in every detail he rose, not only to the occasion, but far and
away beyond it, and eventually was the appointed overseer of all the Pharoah's
supplies and treasury. Joseph is your capacity to augment, to expand, to extend.
Paralleling these four capacities with the spiritual, moral, mental, and
physical levels of your being, you can see the necessity of consciously activating
them. When these four "patriarchs" are awakened as integral parts of your own
character, they comprise what William Blake termed the "four quarters of the
human soul."
56
Faith in and fidelity to your own I AM-ness is the creative core, or
spiritual depth of you. Doing joyously whatever you do, is your moral
interpreting. Supplanting unacceptable concepts with those which are more
desirable, is your mental resolution. Witnessing the expansion in symbols of
these adjustments, is the physical result.
Do you see why such an enterprise requires leisure in which to form the
root of a greater individual dominion, and also why it is that you can enjoy it?
Happy holidays!
57
SEPTEMBER
"I say unto thee, Arise, and take up thy bed,
and go thy way into thine house." (Mark 2:11)
Like the blast of a trumpet, this rousing dictum comes to us all, more than
once in a lifetime, to stir our sleeping divinity from the lethargy inherent in its
dream that the interpretation of Life is the substance of Life.
God is Life, and Life is glorified in living. But this living is an essentially
spiritual experience, hence the terminology, "Arise (ascend consciously to your
essence), and take up thy bed (elevate your sense of the foundation on which you
rest), and go thy way into thine house (continue this course to the dwelling place
of spiritual causation).
59
of 'this world'), and the rest of our enemies (intrusions,
distractions, interruptions), heard that I had builded
the wall (when I had consciously erected the fortress
of my spiritual identity), though at that time I had not
set up the doors upon the gates (although I had not, at
that stage of development, become completely secure
and free from some weak spots, or loopholes, in my
reasoning), that Sanballat sent unto me, saying, Come,
let us meet together (parley with these distractions) in
some one of the villages in the plain of Ono (futility,
where plans come to naught). But they thought to do
me mischief." (Neh. 6:1, 2)
60
This redemptive process is outlined in the Bible as the great Exodus from
Egypt, and you, in vacating the ignorance of what constitutes your Selfhood, are
confronted by this same Red Sea which looks impassable only from the
"beforehand" side of the experience.
Moses ("to draw forth") is your own capacity to marshal the children of
Israel (your straying, undisciplined thoughts) out of Egypt (the abysmal
ignorance of your spiritual identity), through the wilderness (uncharted areas of
experience), to the Promised Land (the "New Jerusalem," or the total realization
that "I AM HE!")
61
the same feeling of being that shaped, in the first instance, as depression, that later
shaped as elation? What, then, was the actual substance of either mood? Where
was the reality of elation while your feeling of being was not in the shape of it?
And where was the reality of depression when your feeling of being had vacated
the shape of it?
Your spiritual identity is the only living thing, and any possibility is "dead
on the sea shore," inactive in the mental alphabet, until this one living Substance
molds its Self into the shape of that possibility. Then, identifying from the
limited perspective of the shape it has taken, the Identifier interprets its
appearance as a solid condition, or a fact.
This is the great lesson all should be learning: "I am the light of the
world!" Your own capacity to perceive is the stuff of which every perception is
formulated. As your recognition of this fundamental truth expands to realization,
you are going "thy way into thine house," and St. Paul's admonition to the
Ephesians comes within the bounds of credibility:
62
OCTOBER
Before your work-a-day routine grows so colorless that you cannot
approach it with healthy enthusiasm, it might be well to assess your attitude
regarding whatever it is that you do, and determine whether or not your sights
are set sufficiently high to carry you beyond the status of being a mere servant of
your job and possessions.
Obsessed by his reasoned theory about the size and shape of the earth,
Christopher Columbus persisted against what must have seemed to him
diabolical opposition, and the results of his relentless pursuit of proof constituted
the first major breakthrough in navigation, opening unlimited opportunities for
commerce, from which world-wide political and economic ramifications were
bound to unfold.
Any number of pioneers in various fields have tasted the same trials and
setbacks that attended the long history of Columbus. The all-important question
confronting each after his triumph has always been, to phrase it in today's
vernacular, "Where do I go from here?"
"If the many become the same as the few when possess'd, More!
More! is the cry of a mistaken soul; less than All cannot satisfy
Man."
64
Whether the identifying being is awake or asleep to what it is that
comprises his identity, the Being is the same. Blake understood this. The writers
of the Bible understood it, too. Take, for example, these few verses:
"…he that sent me is with me: the Father hath not left me
alone." (John 8:29)
"…he that hath seen me hath seen the Father." (John 14:9)
65
and personalities are the interpreted appearances of the shapes your Identity is
presenting, you know that the Identifier (your actual Self) is not being deprived
of, and therefore cannot be required to repeat, any of Its incarnate experiences.
"Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also
the soul of the son is mine." (Ezek. 18:4)
"Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine eyelids look straight
before thee." (Prov. 4:25)
The word translated "eyes" in this proverb, originally carried the meaning
of "fountain." In line with this connotation, direct the expansion of your spiritual
understanding in the same forward line of which Paul spoke in his letter to the
Philippians:
"…this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind,
and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press
toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in
Christ Jesus." (Phil 3:13, 14)
Convinced that the One who is awakening (where you, by saying" I AM,"
are claiming identity) is the Performer of all the parts in the great Life-drama,
your progressively clearer seeing would epitomize a fountain, which pours out
from its central source.
66
The theory of reincarnation is, at best, an attempt to capture the invisible,
indivisible, impersonal life-principle, and subjugate it again to the limitations
from which, by living the life of the individual, it is redeeming itself. In
refutation of the necessity, or even the possibility, of repeated detours in the
process of spiritual awakening, the seventeenth chapter of Matthew deals a
master stroke.
67
NOVEMBER
"An enterprise, when fairly once begun, should not
be left till all that ought is won." --Shakespeare
When frustrated aims are left to smolder in the ashes of expediency, they
invariably flare up later on in blazes that are far more difficult to bring under
control than would be the case if they had reached fulfillment in your first
attempt, however Herculean the effort on your part at the time.
Ideals are the eternally conceivable concepts, or shapes, if you will, into
which it is possible for the basic Substance to form Itself. Inasmuch as the basic
Substance is I AM, unless this feeling of being will mold its Self into the feeling of
being the selected ideal, that ideal cannot appear as a condition.
Is there, then, a logical excuse for modifying your original intent by basing
your conclusions on the interpreted obstacles, which obstacles appear there
because the same feeling of being sustains the feeling of being obstructed?
Your ideal has only the substance you give it, and if you would credit it
with reality, you must be the reality of it, just as clay is the substance of the
shapes it takes. Learn not to back down before literal arguments that deny your
success, but continue in your conviction of being your ideal. Then you will
understand
You have only to remain convinced that your spiritual identity is the
actual substance of every interpreted appearance, in order to persist confidently
in maintaining a definition of Self that differs from the one you have been
accepting. The temptation to postpone the occupancy of your ideal until
appearances begin to conform to your desire, can but leave you defining yourself
as someone desiring.
"Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh the
harvest? Behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look
on the fields; for they are white already to harvest." (John 4:35)
70
This is the procedure by which you can truly
And what is "his name?" It is "I AM." Practicing the art of redemption,
you discover your spiritual identity to be your savior from the identifications it
has been presenting.
There is a divine validity behind the law of identical harvests. You are
permitted, in fact, obliged, to reap circumstances which are the literal likenesses
of the concepts, good or bad, that you occupy with conviction. But do you think
it is an unfair oversight on the part of Original Spirit to have allowed the
enforcement of this absolutely irrevocable law? Not if you understand the
interpretative levels of being! The intent of spiritual Causation is not merciless,
but divinely merciful, because the final understanding from the experience of
productivity is to know your Self, the invisible Identifier of all your
identifications, to be the only creator.
71
DECEMBER
With this chapter, your path through the "drama year" comes full circle,
and I hope the fundamental premise, that your conviction of having identity is the
ultimate cause of the appearances you interpret, has been presented so logically that a
more limited concept of individuality is giving way to this expanded view. If
this is the case, then you are in accord with Emerson's observation that
The birth of Jesus Christ is the eternal symbol of the awakening of the
spiritual identity of the individual. From this fulcrum all begin to draw their
circles in the form of conclusions, each one seeming final until penetrated by the
light of a greater illumination.
The forty years spent wandering in the wilderness illustrates that dry,
desolate, and utterly fruitless casting about in externals for the satisfaction of a
hunger that finds satiety only in opening the flood-gates from within, washing
away all hollowness by the outpouring of divine Self-expression.
As long as this ME of you sleeps to its divinity, just so long will it continue
dreaming itself to be your person or personality, the Adam that was made from the
dust of the ground--an effect. Unless that dream of selfhood is pierced by a
higher awakening, you go on tilling the soil from which that concept of self is
constructed, by the sweat of your brow rearranging surfaces with no lasting
results, until the prophesied return to the oblivion of mindless dust seems almost
attractive.
73
but the initiative is individual. The world's disorders as seen are indeed social,
but they are experienced individually. Effective remedial action must, therefore,
be individual, where experience is; then results can appear socially, where evidence
is.
"Look unto ME, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth:
for I am God, and there is none else." (Isa. 45:22)
This injunction for all to "look unto ME" for salvation has been largely
misinterpreted, in the extension of organized religion, to mean that individuals
must recognize and make themselves subservient to a static Perfection called
God. However, the enlightened teaching of Paul reveals the more practical
understanding that God is the Life of manifested appearances, and that salvation
from any appearance is obtained by living as the life and not as the manifested
appearance.
Throughout the Acts of the Apostles, there are repeated exhortations "that
ye should turn from these vanities unto the living God." It is vanity at its
arrogant limit to claim a separate living that is not the divine Life's living, and at
the same time, to pretend to believe that God is All, and the only Life!
74
The miracle in the birth of Jesus is not that it occurred in only one
historically, but that it occurs in all individually. The conjunction of moral, mental,
and literal interpreting establishes a polarity in which this phenomenal spiritual
experience unfolds as the reality of every one:
When temptation offers "all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of
them" in exchange for divine Self-awareness, the one in whom the Savior is
awake will put that deception behind him, because he has discovered why "it is
written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve."
The only truly divine worship is the reverent outpouring of your divinity,
bringing apparent social disorders into adjustment as the inevitable by-product
of this individual, and therefore, fundamentally motivated spiritual living. Your
identity is the life of manifested appearances, and not a mere by-product of Life.
75
About
the
Author…
Freedom Barry was born on a farm in the remote hamlet of East Parsonfield,
Maine. Educated in Boston, he very early in his life displayed a devotion to the
cause of awakening spiritual individuality that has since endeared him to an
ever-increasing audience of students and friends.
Mr. Barry lives on a pine-clad hilltop near a small village where the Santa Lucia
mountains meet the California seacoast. Here he prepares his work as a free-
lance lecturer and teacher of the standpoint he presents in this book.
The genius of the teaching is that it enable students to achieve their own freedom,
rather than enlisting their support of a system or organization.
WINTHROP B. CHANDLER