When you find God, you find the Power within YOU!
Every time I see Elizabeth Smart, the now 21-year-old Mormon from
Salt Lake City, Utah, who was kidnapped at age 14 in June 2002 and held in captivity by a wanderer and his wife for nine months, I think ONLY of the Grace of GOD!
This little woman demonstrates to me more than anyone at this time,
the Spirit of God active in and through our lives and that IS the POWER
within US.
Smart should be huddled and cuddled somewhere in a corner by the
Mormon community, since her frightening ordeal of being kidnapped
at knifepoint from her own bedroom...her own home...the one place in the Universe
that should be the safest for us.
But what is she doing, instead?
She is out and BOLDLY expressing her POWER to BE and to EXIST and to show that GOD lives!
"For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline" (II Timothy 1:7, NLT)
Now that is LIVING through Spirit!
An example we should follow, if we want to MASTER this walk through this experience we're having on the Earthly plane.
Everytime life wants to get me crouched over and broken down,
I grab "Discover the Power Within YOU," a classic by Eric Butterworth.
I don't know about you, but there are many versions of "truth" we
can hear from many sources.
To me, Buttterworth's TRUTH is the ONLY one I need to hear and FEEL in
my Soul, when life would cast me down.
(Yes and, of course, the Bible! No sweeter words than Romans 8:28:"All things work together for Good." or "...greater is he who is in me than he that is in the world." 1 John 4:4)
I tell you... it is Butterworth's Power Within that gets me moving my feet and raising my fists and gritting my teeth in determination and perseverance.
As a matter of fact, when I read Butterworth, I don't have any emotion...but
Peace!
Out goes the DOUBT, out goes the FEAR, out goes the "NO can do!"
I LOVE THIS BOOK!!!
Here's why from the FIRST 50 pages ALONE of this 233 page manuscript:
"Jesus discovered His own divinity, His unique relationship with the Infinite. He discovered that through faith, he could open doors into the inexhaustible Mind of God..." Page 9
"This factor was the Christ consciousness. The unfoldment of this consciousness by Jesus made Him God incarnate, because Christ is the Mind of God individualized. We cannot separate Jesus Christ from God or tell where man leaves off and God begins in him.
"To say that we are men as Jesus was a man is not exactly true, because He had dropped that personal consciousness by which we separate ourselves from our true God self...He became consciously one with the absolute principle of Being." (Page 9).
"'Christ' is not a person. It is not Jesus. Christ is a degree of stature that Jesus attained, but a degree of potential stature that dwells in every man. Paul said, "Christ in you, the hope of glory." Col.1:27) (Page 12)
"I have heard people rejoice n the fact that they have found a religion that is 'broad-minded,' by which they mean a religion that takes them as they are...But religion that does not promote transformation is no religion at all."
"There is only one way under the sun by which man can achieve his 'Mt. Olumpus'--that is to say, achieve the realization and the unfoldment of his own innate divinity (salvation, in the truest sense of the wrod)---and that is by bringing about a radical and permanent change for the better in his own consciousness." Page 12
"Our humanity is but the degree to which we have given expression to our divinity. We are human in expression but divine in creation and limitless in potentiality."
"To repent means to open the yes of spiritual perception and see life in a new dimension, to see hidden realities behind every appearance, to resolve to face toward our Mt. Olympus and make every step we take go in that direction." Page 19
"Man must be born anew, if he is going to achieve a meaningful realization of his own divinity and of the Kingdom of God within him." Page 23
"He [Jesus] healed and helped and transformed people by the power of their own higher nature, and not by any special power of His own." Page 24
"Many people find comfort and strength and inspiration in emotional acceptance of Jesus as their 'Personal Saviour.' And this is good. There is much to be gained by a deeper inner feeling of fellowship with the Master. For we do not want to infer here that the Fundamentalist or evangelical Christian is wrong. He is laying hold of Jesus at a very vital and helpful point."
"But our thesis here is that this is not the high level of consciousness that Jesus had in mind when He said, 'Follow me.'
"We must being to see Jesus as the great discoverer of the innate Divinitity of Man, the supreme revealer of the truth about man, the pioneer and the way-shower in the quest for self-realization and self unfoldment...
"...You must still make the great decision to affirm your unity with the Infinite. You must still believe that I AM , and then work tirelessly to act the part. You must claim your freedom, realizing that it does not mean doing what youlike, but becoming what you should." Page 25
"Jesus had a unique concept of God. To Him, God was not an objective of worship but a Presence dwelling in us, a force surrounding us, and a Principle by which we live. It is not too much to say that anyone who catches the idea of Jesus' concept will find himself caught up in a new consciousness that will change his whole life. He will never be the same again. " Page 27
"The true self of you, the Christ, the spiritual man, is the individualization of God. You are the Presence of God at the point where you are."
"You are an individualized part, but the whole is always in the part." Page 33
"Jesus taught, 'I and the Father are one.'...not two, but one. The Father in me is me on a higher dimension of living." Page 34
"...Perhaps you are disturbed because you have been leaning on a God of the intellect, a God preached about interminably, but a God whose presence you have never really felt. Thus, disturbing as the idea may seem, God is dead to you, if you are asleep to the activity of the Presence in you. If, like the Prodigal Son, you are living in the 'far country' of superficial and materialistic living, then to all intent and purpose there is no power beyond the human in you, there is no infinite potential, and prayer is ridiculous....
"...But when you come to yourself, when you wake up, when suddenly you come alive to the wihin of you, the depths of you, then God is very real to you---not a person separate from you, but as an added dimension of you, as a living presence ever with you." Page 37
"You are beloved of God---simply because you are the activity of God living itself out into expression as you. God loves you because God is love and thus live is your true nature." Page 38
"Remember God is in you as the ocean is in the wave. There is no possible way in which the wave can be separated from the ocean, and there is no way in which you can be separated from God. ..." Page 39
"Christ is not a person, but a principle. Christ is a level of the particularization of God in man...
"The difference between Jesus and each of us is not of inherent spiritual capacity, but a difference in the demonstration of it....However, we must realize that the principle of the Divinity of Man must extend to Pilate and judas and a modern Hitler and Eichmann, or else it is not really a principle at all. Every man is a spiritual being. Every man is innately good. Every man is a potential Christ. But only a few know this, and an even fewer number succeed in expressing any marked degree of the perfection of the Christ indwelling.
"It is not that we want to depreciate Jesus. We couldn't do that if we wanted to. We are not pulling Him down to our level, but showing that we can be lifted up to His level.
"Jesus heart went out to people becuase he could see that they were not living up to the best within them.
"Jesus saw the divinity in people, and He challenged all men to see the good, the God-self, in all people with whom they associated." Page 45-46
"You can be helaed, no matter who you are or what you ahve been or done, ifyou make the contact with the 'same light that lighteth every man coming into the world'--simply because you are, after all, a child of God. it is as simple as that. And this is the key to the potential dynamics of Christianity." Page 47
"Whatever challenges you are facing, whatever desires you may harbor, even where fulfillment seems to be a human impossibility---remember the principle of divinity. See yourself in terms of what you can be....
"Challenge yourself to keep thinking such thoughts until they become second nature to you for that is exactly what the Christ is within you is." Page 48-49
"From the standpoint of your divinity, you can be a perfect, healthy, confident, radiant expression of the living god....
"Affirm for yourself: 'I am a spiritual being. I am whole and free. I am confident and capable. I am the master of my life." Page 50.
And so, it is.
Then, from the last page, 233, Butterworth gives you a final nudge:
"No matter where you are on the ladder of life, no matter what you may be experiencing, no matter how many heartaches you have had or how many conflicts you have right now---there is more in you, there is a divinity in you, the Kingdom of God is within you..."
Did she, or did she not, demonstrate the "POWER WITHIN YOU!?"
Namaste',
Che'
NOTE: Eric Butterworth was a Unity Minister and had a thriving church, Unity Center of New York City, until his death in April 2003. He was 86 years old, having been born in 1916. I was privileged to listen to him speak in person in the early 1990s. What an experience!
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