DEVELOPING A CONSCIOUSNESS
Many times I am asked as to what is meant by “developing a consciousness.”
To “develop a consciousness” of anything is to have knowledge of it; to understand it; to KNOW it, and to KNOW that one KNOWS it; to make union with it; to recognize ouronenesswith it; to know that we and the thing desired are a part of each other.
Take for instance some one who has never been taught to sew. He has no knowledge of it and is therefore very clumsy and awkward in the handling of a needle and thread. By persistent training and application the intelligencein the cells of the fingers are taught what to do and when the “consciousness” of how to sew has been developed in them the fingers lose their clumsiness and become nimble and dexterous at the work.
The same is true in learning to play on the piano or other musical instrument; in using a typewriter, sewing machine, etc. In fact when we attempt to do anything for the first time we are always at a disadvantage simply because we have not “developed a consciousness” along that line and so do not recognize our oneness with it.
It is true that some persons learn to do a thing much more quickly than do others and so we have called them “smarter.” But this is a mistake for no one really possesses any more ability than does every other life; some, however, have made better use of their power than have others. This is true both as regards this present life as well as in former incarnations.
Should you who read this be one of those who have been discouraged in the past because you had to work so hard in order to learn how to do things, just remember that you have stored up in you all the great wonderful power of the Universe and can learn to express it harmoniously and constructively along any line you may desire.
The first step to take is torecognizethat this is true; thenrecognizeour union with this universal energy. Our God-self has this recognition in our inner consciousness and we begin to recognize it in the human mind through constantly affirming our oneness with it. We must be just as persistent in doing this as we are when we are learning to sew or to play on the piano, and no matter how many mistakes we may make at first, nor how little we seem to accomplish, we want to keep everlastingly at it.
Many persons have the idea that it is onlynecessary to repeat an affirmation over a few times, or to say it in a half-hearted way and then the results they desire should manifest at once. When they are sick they seem to think that by saying “I am well,” or “I am not sick,” a few times that it ought to cure them and because it doesn’t then they get the idea that there is no power in thought.
When we are sick it is because the recognition of our oneness with health and harmony has not been well developed, and we might as well expect a poorly developed musician to correctly play the masterpieces of Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Wagner, as to expect a poorly developed and inharmonious health consciousness to produce a masterpiece in the way of a perfect physical body.
A poorly developed musician can, with the aid of a good teacher and by persistent practice, learn to play everything which has everbeen written by any of the great masters, and so can one who has a poorly developed and inharmonious health consciousness learn to rebuild his physical body in such perfect health and beauty that it will in truth become a fitting temple in which the living God in each life may dwell.
But before one can become either the great master musician or the perfect creator of a beautiful and harmonious physical body he must “develop a consciousness” of hisonenesswith whichever his ideal may be, whether of music, health, or whatever else he may desire.
Whenever we really want anything our desire always is so strong, powerful and overwhelming that we are willing to pay the price of persistency and application and we go after it with all the energy we can command and work tomakeit come to us. We strain, strive and use every effort within our power, and when wedo succeed in getting it in this way we find the results very unsatisfactory. This is because the world has developed a consciousness of force and uses force (either physical or mental, or both) in obtaining what it wants.
Force creates inharmony and some day the world will learn the great lesson that there isn’t anything, no matter how valuable it may seem to be nor how much we may desire it, for which it is worth paying the price of one moment of inharmony.
We should learn then to do our work of “developing a consciousness” without worry, anxiety, strain, effort, tenseness, friction, for all these thoughts and emotions create inharmony. We should learn not to fight for anything but to build and “develop a consciousness” of our oneness with it, creating it in this manner in our thought world first, recognizing that it is ours NOW (no matter how far awayits materialization may seem to be from us) and then do on the objective plane whatever we think is necessary or advisable to aid us in its materialization, but do this quietly, calmly, and with a power which KNOWS it will succeed. Do it because we love to do it, because it is a “blessed privilege” for us to do it. We should never do anything with a consciousness that it is work or drudgery, for that kind of a consciousness makes the doing of that particular thing a work or drudgery to us.