Guide Booklet: Spiritual Understanding
Chapters 13, 14, 15, 16.
In Chapter 14, Myrtle Fillmore emphasizes that the way to grow in spiritual understanding is to “become as a little child and let the universal spirit of good teach you.” Spiritual things cannot be explained with the intellect. “Listen to the stillness within your own soul.”
However, we need not wait impatiently for all spiritual understanding; even a slight spiritual perception gives us mighty power to heal and uplift ourselves and others. By the same token, we must not regard immediate accomplishments and achievements, however fine they may be, as the ultimate. Healing physical ills, gaining new prosperity, and so forth are only steps toward the ultimate unfoldment of the Christ power within us. With our partial understanding we can begin to correct the errors which mortal thought has perpetrated through the ages; with full understanding we shall do away with all error—sin, sickness, sorrow, and death. Always the choice is up to us: our own willingness to find spiritual understanding determines the rate of our growth and the measure of our achievement.
Myrtle Fillmore suggests an affirmation that we may hold to help us realize the Christ consciousness:
“God’s perfect idea in me is now building a perfect body, and I am satisfied.”
If we will take this affirmation into the silence, we will begin to put to use the inner power that will make it possible for us to become like Jesus Christ.
This perfect, inner knowing will help us to overcome any lingering doubt or fear that we cannot accomplish what we want to accomplish. But, says Myrtle Fillmore: “If you would overcome all your enemies and find your freedom, you must be true to your one defense. There is only one Power and one Presence—the Good. . . . The power of darkness will vanish before it.”
Chapter 17 emphasizes the importance of concentration on spiritual accomplishments and desires. As long as we “give one part of our minds to one thing and another,” we know unrest, and unrest results in error. Unrest may be expressed as appetite or ambition, neither of which is to be condemned.
Bad habits are indications of inner hungers and desires. We can learn to deal with such habits by making the individual aware of the Truth of his being, and showing him how he is unknowingly making wrong use of his life and substance. The first step is to give up worry and withdraw all condemnation. Then we can let love fill our minds and hearts and flow out to all concerned.
Complete these statements:
- I recognize the things that try my faith as (page 75)
- I attract the Christ love by the magnet of (page 74)
- I go into the silence by (page 87)
- If I seem to go back to old habits, after a glorious spiritual experience, I am not discouraged, because (page 84)
- I realize that spiritual understanding is simply (page 81)
- I grow in spiritual understanding by (page 79)
- I need never fear, if (page 92)
