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EBUP66: Your Covenant for Living

Eric Butterworth Unity Podcast #66

Eric Butterworth Sunday Services — Your Covenant for Living

In this talk, Eric Butterworth says “Charles Fillmore, was used to say truth demonstrates itself. It demonstrates itself. You don’t have to make a demonstration. Truth will demonstrate itself, if you make a covenant and keep it. You get yourself in tune and decree that you will keep your contact, your conscious connection, if you keep yourself as August says, synchronize with the divine law.”

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“Commit your way unto the Lord, trust in Him and He will act.” “I will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee.” “Prove me now, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.” “If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatsoever you will and it shall be done unto you.”

These scriptural quotations are unusual, in that they deal with what we are calling The Law of the Covenant. It is a Bible based technique that has become an extreme fundamental in our new insight and truth. The covenant idea is persistently embedded in the teachings of the Hebrew prophets. Very important concept.

It represents a basic psychological attitude that clearly shows a progressive stage in the spiritual development of mankind as a whole. And certainly, it is true, the Hebrew prophets made a great contribution to this. The Assyrian, the Babylonian and the Egyptian religions rested upon the primitive animistic or magic concept of divinity.

And these very same priests that make significant contributions to science, who laid the foundations for mathematics, and astronomy, strangely clung to their religious superstitions. Such religious outlooks assumed the God of Caprice, a God who had to be bought, and cajoled, and fooled if one had the right technique.

And so, there was a wide use of amulets and incantations and ritual performance and omen taking in blind fear, all of which are part of the pattern of such faiths. It could be said that the greatest contribution of the Hebrew prophets to man’s spiritual evolution on this planet was the berith, B-E-R-I-T-H, the berith or the covenant.

The idea of a promise or an agreement between man and God, where the contracting parties act not out of caprice, but out of reason in order. This is a great fundamental in our biblical structure. The berith not only implies an embryo spiritual ideal, but it probably is the fundamental law and order concept and the universe which ultimately gave rise to the world of science and the world of law. World of causation.

Jeremiah, one of the greatest of the Prophets has the vision of God making a covenant with man. And he says, “I will put my law in their inward parts and in their heart while I write it, and I will be their God and they shall be my people.” It was probably the first awareness of the law of consciousness, the law of mind action, the law of cause and effect.

So, life need not be a matter of trembling with fear before some capricious will of God who may bring about all manner of painful happenings for some inscrutable reason of his own. One needs only to know the truth to keep the law. And in that way, he can actually command the results. And this is startling, but this is the concept that we find in the berith. Isaiah has God saying demand concerning the work of my hands, command ye me, command you me.

Now of course, the ideals and the concepts of the prophets did not totally prevail among the people, because the profits like, oh great spiritual thinkers were not really heard entirely by all of their followers. And the Hebrews carried over much of the old idea and continue to deal with the capricious God out there somewhere.

So, the mission of Jesus was basically to recall people to the berith. I think many times Protestants and Christians of all kinds tend to think that Jesus brought an entirely new concept. He really didn’t at all, as we say today about new thought, there’s nothing new in new thought. There was nothing basically new in the teachings of Jesus Christ because he himself was a Jew. He taught most of the concepts of Judaism, although shorn of their outwardisms and their ritual and so forth.

But basically, it was the fundamental truth that the prophets had taught. But the difference was that Jesus was calling attention to the nowness, the isness, the presence of this whole activity. He said, “I came not to destroy the law, but to fulfill it, to make it work, to renew and reconsecrate oneself to this covenant with God, to know that God is written as a law in our inward parts, in our places, to emphasize it, to live in it, to let it express through us and to command the activity of its results.

Jesus stress that the kingdom of impersonal law is within each and every individual. And when the religious leaders condemned Him for putting himself in the place of God, He said, I say you are gods and all of you sons of the most high. And that in itself was a concept right out of the Old Testament. So, the great truth that Jesus stressed is that there is a dynamic spiritual process that works within you constantly, which will work for you as health for your body and peaceful your mind.

Prosperity for your affairs if you work with it. It’s like the scientists telling you about the law of gravity. Now, gravity is a very marvelous, wonderful force that will work for you if you understand it and keep yourself in tune with it. If you walk in balance, gravity will help you to walk because after all, as most of you know, walking is simply falling forward and you stand up, you fall and take a step and take a step.

And so, gravity is supporting you. If you don’t keep your balance, you fall on your face. But that’s the covenant. I will keep my balance and the law of gravity will support me. This is the way the whole berith concept works. I know that mind is an ever-supportive process within me to fill me with ideas and substance. If I keep my mind stayed on God, and if I walk in that context and I will forever be supported.

This is a great tool. It’s a fundamental law in the spiritual awareness which Jesus taught, and which essentially it was being taught throughout all the scriptures. “Seek ye first the kingdom,” He says, and all these things shall be added unto you. Jesus said, “The father work us until now and I work.” This again is the berith, this is the covenant. God works in me as a mighty force, creating blessing, fulfilling, loving.

If I keep myself in tune, the Father worked with until now, and I work, I belonged, used an affirmation. It’s been very helpful to me. That sort of applies, this very realization and it goes simply. “God works in me and through me and for me and I work with him in the wisdom and power of spirit.”

God works in me, and through me and for me and I work with him in the wisdom and power of spirit.

This again is the covenant, the realization that the divine process working, but I must work. I must give it a focus. Give it an expression. As Emerson says, “Man is an inlet and may become an outlet to all there is in God.” You could say, God is the inlet and I will be the outlet. I will let it happen through me. I will let my hands be dedicated to the creative process and they will always be creative ideas and substance within me.

So, one effect, you could say that God has made a covenant with each one of us. If we’re going to think of it in a kind of a dualistic anthropomorphic sense for a moment, that God has made a covenant with us to be an ever-available resource of life and love and light and substance and our part is to make a covenant with him.

The covenant to keep in tune, to be receptive to the flowing forth of that God activity. There will never be a cessation of it. As we’re told, “Behold I have loved you with an everlasting love.” This is the divine covenant and therefore you have all the love you need to do all that you require in your life to be loving, to be understanding, to be forgiving, to be creative. If you keep in tune.

Charles and Myrtle Fillmore once came to a point of decision in their lives. Many of you remember this story. If you’ve read some of the annals of unity and its unfoldment. Out of the turmoil of great illness and financial reverses. They had been searching for light and they found the truth as we always do if we search long enough.

And they made a contract together, which they called dedication and covenant. And this little manuscript was unearthed when they were doing some research out at Unity Editorial Library in the mid-40s. It was a formal document signed on December 7th, 1892 just 86 years ago. Many of you would remember the words, but this is what it said.

“We, Charles Fillmore and Myrtle Fillmore husband and wife, hereby dedicate ourselves, our time, our money and all that we have and all that we expect to have to the spirit of truth. It being understood and agreed that said spirit of truth shall render unto us, our equivalent for this dedication and peace of mind, health of body wisdom, understanding, love, life and an abundant supply of all things necessary to meet everyone without our making any of these things. In the presence of the conscious mind of Jesus Christ. This seventh day of December, 1892 signed Charles Fillmore and Myrtle Fillmore.”

A very legalistic document you see. But this amazing document is interesting both because of the deep commitment that is involved and it certainly is there but also the delightful manner in which they fully expected and even demanded the comeback of security in that contract. That’s the covenant process you see. To really believe that that support is the divine creative process within you. It’s the divine will that you can not only expect to receive but you can demand, and claim that receiving, because you are making your contract with that divine resource within you.

I had many transcended hours of study with Charles Fillmore whom we all lovingly called Papa Charlie. And I was strongly influenced by the unique idea of divine law that he articulated. An activity of God that is just as dependable as the rising and setting of the sun. There’s a great deal of talk these days and metaphysical circles about demonstrating, demonstrating the law, demonstrating substance, demonstrating life, making demonstrations.

And it’s a marvelous idea which sometimes is sort of diluted by too much emphasis on materialism but Charles Fillmore, was used to say truth demonstrates itself. It demonstrates itself. You don’t have to make a demonstration. Truth will demonstrate itself, if you make a covenant and keep it. You get yourself in tune and decree that you will keep your contact, your conscious connection, if you keep yourself as August says, synchronize with the divine law.

Truth demonstrates itself. Much of the time we’re trying to make demonstrations. We’re trying to force it through will, and this isn’t the way the law works. You can’t force the law to do anything, but you can let it do what it’s its nature to do if you keep yourself in tune. I firmly believe that somewhere in the discipline consciousness of every great achiever that the world has ever known and every conceivable field there is a personal covenant somewhere that the individual has made along the way in his early life.

Sometime when he got a goal of doing certain things in life and had a perception of objects and courses that he was going to follow. Somewhere along the way, he made a covenant. He may not have done it in so many words, but he made a commitment and that his achievement is the result of this. And the achievements have come about quite often in spite of tremendous handicaps, tremendous obstacles, and even bad breaks and misfortune.

People often talk about luck. Well, he was just lucky. In truth, we say, well, it’s not luck, it’s consciousness. But it is consciousness that has given a sharp focus through a strong commitment, a strong covenant, a strong determination that you will keep yourself in tune with the divine law. I love that personal covenant of Walt Whitman. I love the writings of what Whitman.

He says, “Oh, while I live to be the ruler of life and not a slave, to meet life as a powerful conqueror and nothing exterior shall ever take command of me.” Would you like to be able to say that and to believe it? To say that, that’s the truth in your life, that you are the ruler of your life and not a slave, that you master circumstances and you’re never mastered by them, that you will meet life as a conquer, and that nothing, no person, no situation, no weather, no outward evidence of difficulties will ever take command of you.

In a marvelous realization, many years ago, when I was beginning to see some directions in my life and also to begin to sense the need to take responsibility for myself, I made a kind of covenant. I want to talk about it here basically because it’s one that has been modified and upgraded and altered so much that the original probably is not quite the same. Otherwise, I feel it’s something that you need to keep to yourself.

But it was a kind of a high yearning, and obviously I knew or I have come to know that just by making a covenant doesn’t mean that it’s all over with because it’s a goal to hold to and it has to be renewed constantly, you have to continually work to keep yourself in tune with this realization to keep your part of the contract. And anytime you break the contract or fail to keep it, you can just as quickly fall on your face as you’ll fall over if you get off balance when you’re walking with gravity, you see.

In other words, it’s a very important realization to make the covenant and to keep it. And this is the covenant that I made, which is I say has been modified and altered a great deal through the years go something like this. “I am the master of my life and its circumstances. I control my body, my body does not control me. I run my affairs and my affairs do not run me. I respect myself and I treat my mind and my body with this respect. And I pledge myself to begin each and every day of my life with a time of recentering of consciousness in the divine flow within, and I expect a ceaseless flow of health, of abundance, a fulfillment and a continuity of creative ideas.”

And this is a form of a covenant, kind of a bargain that one makes. You say that’s kind of materialistic, talking about making a bargain with God. Charles Fillmore used to say kind of whimsically God loves to be used. People say, you’re just using God. If you’re saying I’m going to do this God, and you do that for me, but God loves to be used basically because we’re not talking about a God who sits up there and is going to get angry if you asked her too much.

We’re talking about that which is the Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom which is within you, and there’s a divine resource and a force that is seeking to express health and peace and abundance through you, if you keep yourself in tune. So you make the covenant full realizing that you’re not asking too much, that you can never ask too much, you can ever demand too much because anything that the consciousness can conceive, you can achieve, if you can believe it and have faith in it, and see it as a part of the unfolding process of your life.

So, you make the covenant and then you expect, you demand the actual manifestation of the fulfillment of your ideals and your dreams. It’s significant that these what the poet calls ‘high yearnings’ always seem to come from high places or at least high moments in consciousness. Significantly, Jesus gave his sermon, the classic Sermon on the Mount. Moses received the 10 commandments on Mount Sinai.

Abraham received his great vision on the Mount, and he was told you remember to look up from where he was and look outward North, South, East, and West, and all the land which thou can see. I will give to thee. This was the covenant of the spirit within him. Margaret Lee Runbeck once wrote, “Maybe we don’t look from high enough up. Maybe we don’t get enough altitude in our consciousness.” It doesn’t mean you all have to pack your bag and leave New York city and go to the mountains somewhere.

It simply means that you come to a high level of consciousness, and it’s always been my feeling that even the biblical researchers who were looking for Mount Sinai to try and find out exactly where Moses received the 10 commandments, maybe looking in the wrong place, because maybe Mount Sinai never really existed. Maybe it was symbolic as so many of the writings in the Old Testament are, of a movement in the consciousness of Moses.

Maybe it was sitting in a desert, maybe he was in the Dead Sea, who knows, but wherever he was, he was at a high level of consciousness. And it was that high level of consciousness that opened the way for this beautiful commitment to look up from where we are, and to enter the Hills of consciousness and commitment in meditation to contemplate as Emerson would refer to it from the highest possible point of view. And to make a commitment to a new way of thinking, a new way of living, new awareness of ourselves in relationship to life.

There’s one of the characters in the New Testament that I love. It’s a man by the name of Zacchaeus. Do you remember the story of Zacchaeus? This is a marvelous little vignette. Zacchaeus was a man who was, it says, short of stature. Every time I hear that abominable song that they were singing for a while called Short People, I always thought of Zacchaeus. Because Zacchaeus was a short man. It just says he was short of stature, and Jesus was passing by in his community on this day, and Zacchaeus is walking along behind the crowd and he can’t see because all the heads are taller than he is, and he desperately wants to see Jesus.

So, what did he do? He climbed a tree, not delightful. He climbed a tree, very symbolic and yet very important. He had been the symbol of a material centered, resistant, corrupt person who as a tax collector was part of the system, taking advantage of people and doing all sorts of things which probably today we would think of as in the gray area of human operation.

And so, he’d become very wealthy and had all the things he needed, but he lacked a great deal. He lacked a good perception of himself and of life. But he climbed a tree. Remember the story of Henry Ford? That time when Henry Ford asked one of his young executives what he wanted in life. “What do you want most in life?” He said to this young man. The young man, stop for a minute and thought, he said, “All I want is to make $1 million.”

And that was back in the days when $1 million was $1 million. So, the next day, Henry Ford came into the office and handed the young man a package, said, “I’d like you open it.” He opened the package, in it he found a pair of spectacles, but they were kind of different than the usual spectacles. The lenses had been removed and, in their place, there were two big silver dollars.

He was like, “Put those glasses on.” The young man did it. He says, “Now tell me, what do you see?” He laughed. He says, “Well, of course, I can’t see anything Mr. Ford, all I see is these fool’s celery of Hillburn dollars.” And Henry Ford said, “And that will always be your problem young man, a mighty fine lesson in living.”

Well, this is the kind of thing that Zacchaeus was trying to rise above. He wanted to be able to see above the crowd, which he meant. He wanted to be able to see from a higher level and materiality, which had been all they’d seen in life, which had blocked him from seeing the reality of life, which is symbolic in the sense of Jesus passing by. And there’s probably a little of Zacchaeus in all of us. There are probably many times when we feel within ourselves subtly short of stature.

Not that we’re physically short though that may be true too, but basically because we do not have the satisfaction of knowing that we can really see what life is all about, because we can’t see above the crowds, the crowds of all the limited thoughts which we are being elbowed and jostled by. So, reaching for worldly success at any price. Preoccupation with non-essentials, leaving us with little time for important things like Zacchaeus, we struggle to see above the crowd.

But you see, you’ve got to hand it to Zacchaeus. He saw his problem and he did something about it. So, there he was sitting up in his tree looking down with a marvelous view of Jesus passing by. And Jesus probably like all great spiritual giants had a kind of a perception beyond the normal. And so, he stopped under that tree and he looked up and he saw Zacchaeus there. And he said, “Zacchaeus, make haste come down because today I must abide in your house.”

He was going to honor him by coming to lunch. What an amazing demonstration. Maybe this reflects the beautiful passage. “Behold, I stand at the door and knock, and if any man will open up, I will come in and sup with him and he with me.” But this is the principle you see, no matter where you are in consciousness, all you have to do is look up symbolically climb a tree and find the new experience. And what this essentially means is that you make a covenant with the divine law, that you commit yourself to keep in tune and knowing that the law was support you.

You know that you can be the outlet and you can be the expression, and you will have fine health and guidance all along the way. In Lloyd C. Douglas’s beautiful book, The Robe. You may recall where Marcella’s one of the characters is talking to Miriam about Zacchaeus, and she’s asking, “What happened? What on earth did Jesus say to the man during this hour? How did he change so much?”

Because, she tells how he came out of his house after dining with Jesus and he stood there before people who are around, who are watching this whole scene because they’d come to see Jesus and they’re still waiting for him to come out. And how’s that guy stood before these people, many of whom he had defrauded, many of whom he had misused. And he humbly told them that he was going to give half of all he owns to feed the poor and make full restitution to people that he’d defrauded.

So, Marcella, asks Miriam, “But what had happened, what did Jesus say to the man?” Miriam said, “Nobody knows. Maybe he didn’t say anything. Perhaps he just looked Zacchaeus square in the eyes until the man saw reflected there the image of the person that he was meant to be.” Symbolically when we look at ourselves from a little higher level of consciousness, let me climb a tree in other words.

Make a commitment to getting in tune with the divine law to a much deeper level than we’ve ever done before. We begin to see ourselves in the mirror of truth. We begin to catch the vision of the Christ self or the person that we can be. Zacchaeus made a contract in which he decided to remake his life in the context of giving. It’s a beautiful lesson. Of course, Zacchaeus represents that in each of us that yearns to make life count.

This is why I say there’s a little something of Zacchaeus in all of us. He had all that one can possibly have, and yet within his heart he knew that he had not achieved all that he could possibly achieve as a person, so he climbed a tree. He made a covenant with life. Now note that Zacchaeus realized his shortness of stature. He realized that he was not as tall as he would like to be spiritually.

Without this self-honest admission. I work with truth may well be involved primarily in little aims and seeking to demonstrate over this, and to demonstrate that possession on this Bible and so forth. These things come to us until we decide I need to see a little higher. I need to climb a tree. Without this self-honest admission. I work with truth may well be superficial, may well be with little aims and we become simply a little person trying to do little things with spiritual realization.

Zacchaeus wanted to see above the crowd, so he climbed a tree. He wanted to take hold of the truth from a higher level, a higher perception. You wanted to see the greatness of life. He wasn’t satisfied with simply making demonstrations. He wanted to be a demonstration. And it is at this point where we begin to see that the only true happiness basically is in growing, in giving, in serving, and making ourselves a channel for the outflow of great good.

So, I’m going to say that you have not lived a perfect day, even though you’ve earned a great deal of money unless you have done something for someone who will never be able to repay you. That’s the kind of idealistic talk that many people say, “Well, that’s ridiculous. In this day and age, you can’t do that.” But it’s a very important realization. It’s certainly important and right that we demonstrate the things that we need, that we have in our life the fulfillment of our right desires. But we should never forget that each of us is a channel for the expression of something.

That’s why Jesus says you are the light of the world. Let your light shine, not just so that you can see your own pathway, but so then you can be part of the light of the world itself. It’s idealism, of course it is. All the great mystic teachers have been idealistic in this way, but also, it’s good common sense because it’s only when you begin to be involved in a serving capacity, and in a loving way in making the world a little better place in which to live.

It’s only then that you can know real happiness, and real fulfillment. No one is ever really happy unless he’s giving himself away. It is when you begin to think, give instead of get, that for the first time, you become free, for the first time you really know what it means to be a human being. Because when the first incident in your life, when you begin to sense that the importance of life is not getting as much as you can, but giving yourself away. It is then that you find that you get into the flow, which becomes a healing and restoring force in your life and you feel clean and good and you feel healthy and your life is full and rich.

So, we suggest with a very deep and sincere motivation that each of us should, and perhaps this day we might ponder and make a covenant for ourselves, a covenant for life. In which we will make a new dedication, dedicate our heart, our mind, our hands, our talents to a whole new kind of expression, to expect a return of all that may be required to make full and complete living for us, but also and beyond that to get the full satisfaction of being a radiant expression of the infinite process flowing through us.

Walter Russel was an architect, a sculpture, a physicist and philosopher, and one of the most remarkable men of our times. Once said, “If you’re alone enough to get thoroughly acquainted with yourself, you will hear whisperings from the universal source of all consciousness, which will show you the way. And you will find that you know things which you never knew before. Knowledge is yours for the asking, you have but to plug into it.” That’s the important thing.

The creative process is always with us. The divine flow is always present. Our part is to turn it on, and keep it on. To plug into it and keep the conduct, keep ourselves synchronized, keep ourselves at one and that’s the covenant. You have nothing, whatever to do with putting the divine law within you. No prayer, no affirmation, no treatment is going to make God look with favor upon you.

You see, and it’s important that we understand that. There’s no way that you can get God to love you, or if as I say so often, there’s no way to get God to forgive you. Because God is totally in completely in support of you because you are the self-livingness of his very nature. There’s no way that God can ever be separated from you. This divine force can ever remove itself from you. So, your commitment is not to try to get God to do his part any more than it would make any sense at all to get down on her knees and beg that gravity will do its part. That’s already done.

As Jeremiah says, “I will put my law in your inward parts,” and you could almost figuratively say God has said, or nature has said, or the forces of the universe has said, I will give gravity to you as your support, if you will keep your balance, if you will keep in tune. This is the berith. This is the covenant. The law is there. The support is there. The creative mind is always working within you. You don’t have to do anything to make creative mind work, but you’ve got to get in tune and you’ve got to rise above the crowd.

You may have to climb a tree. You may have to get a sense of perception that is above and beyond materialism. Above and beyond the aims that had been very little and very limited in your consciousness, to see yourself in a whole new frame of reference. Climb your own tree of aspiration and commitment. Come to a point where you sense goals more satisfying than material, and they will come, and you’ll be directed towards success and things.

These will follow too, but none of them will become the object of your existence because when they do, then once again you become short of stature. You will climb the hilltop of success, but you will have found a new and more satisfying hill to climb within yourself. And the beautiful part of it, it’s a hill that has no limits. You keep on and on and on. You’re ever on the ascent, climbing higher and higher and higher.

And all along the way, you have that tremendous sense of fulfillment that this really is what life is about. You’ll expect to be provided for and directed, and you can claim it and you should. But beyond that, the greatest goal will be simply to keep on, to keep tuned in, to keep yourself plugged in, as Walter Russell would say, and to keep on with your spiritual unfoldment. So, we suggest that you spend some time, maybe during this very holiday season when so often we can become almost without knowing it, short of stature.

And we get too involved in materialism and too involved in the pressures of gift-giving and greeting card sending. And all of these things, to climb a tree, take time to get still and to get a higher aspiration than the human, than the material and the physical. Try to see yourself in a greater perception, a greater relationship to life as a whole. Make a new covenant for living and for yourself. See yourself in the mirror of truth and then maybe it might help because I think most of us can get focused to our consciousness by doing some writing.

Sketch out your very own dedication and covenant, not particularly something like Charles and Myrtle Fillmore did in 1892, not even like the simple one that I’ve suggested that came to me some years ago. Not particularly like that, that Walt Whitman has expressed, not exactly like those expressed in the Bible. But something that comes out of your own faith, your own commitment, your own realization of the divine force that is within you, and your determination to keep in tune and your expectancy of receiving a continuity of supply and support and health and abundance in your life.

I would suggest that you work on that. It’s kind of a little homework project. But from this point, let’s get still for a moment, and may we now be willing to admit for ourselves, to ourselves, and to a certain extent in terms of our relationship to life in the marketplace, and the pressures of living that we may be just a little bit short of stature. And we have a great determination each of us, figuratively and symbolically to see Jesus passing by.

It’s simply refers to getting an understanding of the spiritual dimension of life. To know the I amness of our own being. We have that great desire or we wouldn’t be here today. So instead of running around here and there, trying somehow to see through the crowd of materialistic thoughts that are focused in our minds. That is symbolically like Zacchaeus, climb a tree, the tree of aspiration.

Where we say, “Perhaps I cannot change things. Perhaps I cannot make the world be different or people all of their attitudes toward me, but I can change myself. I can change the level at which I see them. Maybe I can’t set things right, but I can see them rightly.” So let’s now give thanks that we are steadily and progressively rising higher and higher in thought, to the point where we can see as Emerson would say from the highest point of view, see life, see ourselves, see our relationship to the divine, see the people with whom we work, and see our physical body and all that is a part of our human experience.

See it all from the highest perspective which we’re capable at present, we climb a tree. And can we believe that from this tree top perch, in our moment of conscious awareness, that symbolically Jesus turns and looks up to us, this I am center of our own being, and says, “John, Mary, come down, for I will abide in your house. Behold, I stand at the door and knock, and if any man opens, I will come to him and sup with him and he with me.”

Make that commitment right now, that you will keep this high consciousness, keep the high watch, keep the trust, “I will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee. I will keep him in life and health and wholeness and creativity, whose consciousness is centered within.” Make a little pledge to yourself right now. When you have a few moments, it’s not a case of finding time. It’s a case of making time.

You would take a pencil and a pad of paper, make a covenant for yourself, sort of a symbolic trust, commitment of your relationship to the divine law and your determination to keep in tune and to let it work and work at will. May each of you now from the tree top perch, which in some symbolic way you’ve reached during this hour, take a good look at things, because from this level you will see them a little differently.

So that when you come down from your tree top, and certainly we can’t always live in the high places of consciousness, they will always be there as a resource, as a blessing. As a little place, a little retreat, to which you can from time to time return. And this along with any other specific commitments that may come to you, may be your covenant for living. And so, we just say praise God for the truth that makes us free. Amen.