The Doré Lectures: Being Sunday addresses at the Doré Gallery, London, given in connection with the Higher Thought CentreTroward, T. (Thomas)
Religion
The Doré Lectures: Being Sunday addresses at the Doré Gallery, London, given in connection with the Higher Thought Centre
Troward, T. (Thomas)
New Thought
Then, if we have grasped the idea of the Spirit as the great
FORMING Power, as stated in the last lecture, we shall seek in it
the fountain-head of Form as well as of Power: and as a logical
deduction from this we shall look to it to give form to our
thoughts and feelings. If the principle is once recognised the
sequence is obvious. The form taken by our outward conditions,
whether of body or circumstance, depends on the form taken by our
thoughts and feelings, and our thoughts and feelings will take
form from that source from which we allow them to receive
suggestion. Accordingly if we allow them to accept their
fundamental suggestions from the relative and limited, they will
assume a corresponding form and transmit them to our external
environment, thus repeating the old order of limitation in a
ceaselessly recurring round. Now our object is to get out of this
circle of limitation, and the only way to do so is to get our
thoughts and feelings moulded into new forms continually
advancing to greater and greater perfection. To meet this
requirement, therefore, there must be a forming power greater
than that of our own unaided conceptions, and this is to be found
in our realization of the Spirit as the Supreme Beauty, or
Wisdom, moulding our thoughts and feelings into shapes
harmoniously adjusted to the fullest expression, in and through
us, of the Livingness which Spirit is in itself.
Now this is nothing more than transferring to the innermost plane
of origination, a principle with which all readers who are "in
the thought" may be presumed to be quite familiar--the principle
of Receptiveness. We all know what is meant by a receptive mental
attitude when applied to healing or telepathy; and does it not
logically follow that the same principle may be applied to the
receiving of life itself from the Supreme Source? What is wanted,
therefore, is to place ourselves in a receptive mental attitude
towards the Universal Spirit with the intention of receiving its
forming influence into our mental substance. It is always the
presence of a definite intention that distinguishes the
intelligent receptive attitude of mind from a merely sponge-like
absorbency, which sucks in any and every influence that may
happen to be floating round: for we must not shut our eyes to the
fact that there are various influences in the mental atmosphere
by which we are surrounded, and some of them of the most
undesirable kind. Clear and definite intention is therefore as
necessary in our receptive attitude as in our active and creative
one; and if our intention is to have our own thoughts and
feelings moulded into such forms as to express those of the
Spirit, then we establish that relation to the Spirit which, by
the conditions of the case, must necessarily lead us to the
conception of new ideals vitalised by a power which will enable
us to bring them into concrete manifestation. It is in this way
that we become differentiating centres of the Divine Thought
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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