The Law of Grace
March 9, 1965
My Dearest One:
Unfortunately there will always be people who are sick or poor. The poor are always with us — the poor in health, the poor in purse, and the poor in morals. With these, we share our abundance to the best of our ability. More than that we cannot do. We can never give them all they need or want. That is an impossibility, because there is no end to what man needs or wants. Until a person realizes the futility of seeking things, he will not be fulfilled.
Why do we not stop searching for the power of God, stop looking for some thought or some truth that we think will make us well or prosperous, and acknowledge that, of our own selves, we can do nothing. And that nobody has ever discovered a power that destroys his enemies. Let us rest in the realization that all the evil of this world constitutes but a part of the human state, and let it pass: not by pushing or forcing it out, but by just letting it pass.
Nothing is accomplished by struggling physically or mentally, because struggling only increases what seems to be an evil power in our experience. It is you and I who falsely entertain a sense of power, which the thing itself, whatever it is, does not have. That is why no power discovered in the physical, mental, or spiritual realms has ever been sufficient to remove unwanted conditions.
Every time the thought comes into our heads that we need or desire something, the answer must be that man shall not live by bread alone (by effect or creation)but by Spirit, the creator. That must be a continuous realization until we have overcome our desire for anybody or anything that is in the external realm. We have to lose all desire for the visible — in the realization that we live not by that which is visible, but by that which is invisible. Then we shall find that the Infinite Invisible will produce for our experience the persons, things, circumstances, and conditions necessary to our daily life.
In the very same way, every time we are tempted to think of some power — some negative, evil, and erroneous power that is apparently dominating our life, rendering it futile and fruitless — which we want destroyed, let us smile at it as we realize that we need no power with which to overcome this discord. We realize that there is a God, even though we do not know what God is. I cannot know what God is because IT is beyond the utmost comprehension of the human mind. If I could think something that i believed to be God or truth, I would ultimately find that is not IT. And so it would go on unto eternity until we come to the realization that if we can think IT, IT is not that.
How could anyone possibly believe that a thought of God in his mind could be God? That would surely be localizing and making IT finite. Solomon realized fuly that even the magnificent temple he built could not house God. Nothing is great enough to house God. All the world cannot house IT, and yet we build a little house in our minds, or a pigeon coop, and believe that God is there simply because we have changed ITS name to Mind, Life, or Love. We are trying to anchor IT in thought where we think we can hold onto IT. How foolish that is, how impossible it is to build a mentality big enough for that! Why, this whole universe of our world isn't big enough to embrace God, yet the Upanishads say that the Diety is in the acron as well as on the mountain peak.
Let us be satisfied to know that God is, SUGMAD is, and that there is evidence of this in the life all around us — in the law of like begetting like, in the abundance of love that there is in a world (as loveless as this world sometimes seems to be), and in the immeasurable beauty of a world where so much beauty is being destroyed continuously.
What God is we do not know, but there are many ways in which to observe and witness the Isness of God. Not by knowing God, but by seeing the effects of God. We do not know how God functions, but in our own way we have discovered that God operates in silence when thought is stilled. And when the human sense of self is so humble that it really and truly believes that "I can of mine own self do nothing," and then has the patience to wait for God's glory to be revealed.
It is only those who are ready to give up their concepts of God, to stop dreaming, thinking, and outlining, who in that complete surrender can let God, the SUGMAD, reveal ITSELF. By placing one's life in ITS keeping and letting IT do what IT will with it, then there will be descended upon him the gift of grace — that which the power flows through — or rather, the execution of God's will. As mentioned before, power doesn't work when we reach that higher level — only the grace of God.
We can come to this state of receptivity and respond to it only when we are ready. And our readiness comes only when we have experimented with all the different forms of God that the world presents to us — the God of the religious world, the metaphysical God, the God we think we can use, the God that demonstrates things. Every kind of God we try. Only when we come to the end of trying are we ready for this surrender, ready to give up seeking a great power to destroy our enemies or to shower us with gifts. We give up the desire for that kind of God, and we rest in the understanding that God is. ITS grace is our sufficiency — not power, not might. Man shall not live by the outer powers or outer things, but by the Word, the ECK.
Anyone who delves into metaphysics sooner or later loses his faith in material power and material means. Now when he takes the next step of giving up his faith in mental means — mental powers and remedies — he comes to the real God, the SUGMAD, which can be experienced but never known with the mind, and which cannot be used.
So the world can never rise above the idea of using one power or another and move into the realm of no-power until Soul has taken it upon Itself to work with the Law of Grace instead of power. The conflicting reports of power versus grace gave rise to the symbols of God and the Devil in the Middle Ages, and it has hardly been dissolved in the mind of anyone who is trying to find God. But it must be done, and when it is done, only then comes the grace of God into Soul to give all needed things — peace or necessity of body.
More later,
Paul
From the book, Letters to Gail Vol. 3 © 1990 – Sri Paul Twitchell
