Welcome Home Everybody,
“An Insight from Charles Fillmore and My Understanding of It”
Last week I wrote that I would be using insights from our Antecedents of New Thought. This week I have chosen Unity’s cofounder Charles Fillmore.
“I am now in the Presence of pure Being and immersed in the Holy Spirit of life, love and wisdom.
I acknowledge Thy presence and power, O blessed Spirit. In thy divine wisdom now erase my mortal limitations, and from Thy pure substance of love bring into my world, according to Thy perfect law.” (Chapter two of JESUS CHRIST HEALS.)
That is a lovely statement and if taken at face value it seems like something good. But these things ought to be taken at more than face value. You can be sure that if Charles Fillmore is passing along a prayer to us, he knows what the words mean to him. He knows what “presence”, “Being”, “Holy Spirit,” and “substance” mean to him, and how and why he is directing these words in his prayer.
If I want to use that prayer, it can be far more effective if I know what the words mean to me. With that being said; early on in my healing there was a prayer that I really resonated with and I didn’t know what it meant. And yet I knew that it was the right prayer for me. My thought was, “God knows what it means and that’s good enough for me.” As I continued to recite that prayer, the words became very clear to me and it remains one of the most effective prayers I use. I’ll cover it in an upcoming week.
Back to Mr. Fillmore’s prayer, “I am now in the presence of pure being…” I am acknowledging my true whereabouts. I’m not talking about the physical room I’m in, or the body that carries me around. My I AM “is in the presence of pure Being.” I am claiming my place to be in the realty that IS life, love, and wisdom. That’s what it means to me as I say those words.
I imagine Mr. Fillmore’s consciousness raising as he says those words because that’s what I see for myself as I pray this prayer. There is no reason for me to pray that prayer unless I have a reasonable faith that I am surrounded by Good. I can’t escape it, even though I might claim the absence of It when I don’t like or forget what I am is because I’m judging life through mistaken perception.
If I don’t have an understanding of God as Love, Life, Wisdom, Substance, Knowledge, Presence and whatever else, that prayer might sound nice but it really wouldn’t have much meaning for me and therefore, how could I live confidently in it? We all need to find the words that work for us to have an unlimited experience of Life, Love, Wisdom and Knowledge. We have to start somewhere but let your goals be to have full confidence in an Infinite Spirit. Invite the Love that you believe in to expand within your consciousness. And then watch the Love that you believe in to expand to greater Love than you had ever known before.
Fantastic,
Rev. Shawn