The Creative Process in the IndividualTroward, T. (Thomas)
Religion
The Creative Process in the Individual
Troward, T. (Thomas)
New Thought
But all this is logically based upon our recognition of the Personalness of
God and of the relation of our individual personality to this Eternal and
Infinite Personality, and the result of this is Worship--not an attempt to
"butter up" the Almighty and get Him into good temper, but the reverent
contemplation of what this Personality must be in Itself; and when we see
it to be that Life, Love, Beauty, etc., of which I spoke at the beginning
of this book we shall learn to love Him for what He IS, and our prayer will
be "Give me more of Thyself." If we realize the great truth that the
Kingdom of Heaven is _within_ us, that it is the Kingdom of the innermost
of our own being and of all creation, and if we realize that this innermost
is the place of the Originating Power where Time and Space do not exist and
therefore antecedent to all conditions, then we shall see the true meaning
of Worship. It is the perception of the Innermost Spirit as eternally
subsisting independently of all conditioned manifestation, so that in the
true worship our consciousness is removed from the outer sphere of
existence to the innermost center of unconditioned being. There we find the
Eternal Being of God pure and simple, and we stand reverently in this
Supreme Presence knowing that it is the Source of our own being, and wrapt
in the contemplation of This, the conditioned is seen to flow out from It.
Perceiving this the conditioned passes out of our consideration, for it is
seen not to be the Eternal Reality--we have reached that level of
consciousness where Time and Space remain no longer. Yet the reverence
which the vision of this Supreme Center of all Being cannot fail to inspire
is coupled with a sense of feeling quite at home with It. This is because
as the Center of _all_ Being it is the center of our own being also. It is
one-with-ourselves. It is recognizing Itself from our own center of
consciousness; so that here we have got back to that Self-contemplation of
Spirit which is the first movement of the Creating Power, only now this
Self-contemplation is the action of the All-Originating Spirit upon Itself
from the center of our own consciousness. So this worship in the Temple of
the Innermost is at once reverent adoration and familiar intercourse--not
the familiarity that breeds contempt, but a familiarity producing Love,
because as it increases we see more clearly the true Life of the Spirit as
the continual interaction of Love and Beauty, and the Spirit's recognition
of ourselves as an integral portion of Its own Life. This is not an
unpractical dreamy speculation but has a very practical bearing. Death will
some day cease to be, for the simple reason that Life alone can be the
enduring principle; but we have not yet reached this point in our
evolution. Whether any in this generation will reach it I cannot say; but
for the rank and file of us the death of the body seems to be by far the
more probable event.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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