What We Believe
The Fundamental Principles of The Society of the Universal Living
Christ
People
who are new to Edna Lister’s “work” often
ask, “What do I say when people ask me what we believe?” And
many “old-timers” are so familiar with what they believe
are the foundation concepts that they give the question no thought.
Edna Miriam has said, “I desire to stir you up, to cause you
to be divinely dissatisfied.” With what? We believe the answer
to that is “thinking” that you “know” the
answers.
For some, those whom she called the “devotional type,” faith
is enough – they believe “just because.” Yet
others, whom she called the “intellectual type,” need “a
reason for the faith that is theirs.” To this she added, “Dogmatic
theologies require acceptance on faith. The emotional approach
satisfies the devotional nature, but leaves intellect hungry for
answers beyond
what some call a blind, unthinking belief. Emotion and intellect
are two approaches to God. All is the One God. One Mind creates
all. One Power, life itself, operates all. One Substance forms
all, and
science itself reveals the process. We can and must know God.”
Our
Creed
Every
class, prayer meeting and worship service of the Society includes
three short sentences, which we have named our “Small
Creed”:
Our Creed is Love. Our Path is Service. Our Goal is God. Since
we say these statements so often, we may seldom stop to ponder
their
full and true meaning. A creed is defined as “a formal
statement of religious belief; a confession of faith, system
of belief, or
principles (from Latin, credo, I believe). So Love is our formal
statement of religious belief. Love is our confession of faith.
Love is our system of belief. Love is the guiding Principle
by which we
live. What is Love? Since such an important question is not
one for which we would wisely seek an answer in the world,
which
lives by
the “truth of appearances,” not the “Truth
of Reality,” here
is a fraction of what the Master and Edna Miriam have said
about Love:
Our
Creed Is Love
Love
is absolute Light expressing as Omnipresence, and relative substance,
which is everywhere evenly available. The
Master
expressed this Principle
when he said, “Lo, I am with you always, even unto
the end of the world.” Omnipresence operates through
the Law of Becoming: God gives substance the power of becoming.
Mind must condition it.
We can never be outside God’s Kingdom is the Law of
Omnipresence, a primary Law based on fundamental Principle.
“ Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all
thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment.
And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”
“ This is my commandment, that ye love one another, as I have loved
you.”
Love is the Law of Creation to bind Creation together as
one. Love is Law’s fulfilling. Love is the all-compelling attractive
power of the universe. Love is the Ruler, Guard, Substance, Action
and Faith of God manifested, deathless, ageless, and abiding.
Love fulfills the whole Law. Love overcomes all hatred
and unkindness. Love burns away all self-erected barriers
and
all self-created
dross of illness, weakness, darkness and self-indulgence.
Love manifests
as life to fill a weakened heart or a weakened intellect.
Love creates the Peace of God above all understanding or
misunderstanding.
Love
is substance to fashion into your creative ideas and desires.
Love is faith to go forth and lift all whom it touches.
Love is Power
to melt and dissolve all hardened hearts and bodies. Love
is Light to burn and shine and to make all paths plain,
and easy
to follow.
Love consumes all unlike unto itself.
Love is an empathetic understanding, each for the other,
and is never bondage. In Love, there is nothing but Love,
and the
greatest
of
all Love’s Laws is to love one another.
Love is your measuring rod. Inventory your love moment
by moment, daily.
Love is the emotion of the Creative Gods.
Love is your true life, your trueness of expression. All
else is born of that final gasp of self’s darkness, which, if it still
has a spark of life left with which to destroy, seeks to take what
it may devour with itself to oblivion. Do not lend your soul to self’s
ways.
Love is an etheric-magnetic current. You must love enough
to conjoin the etheric current descending and the magnetic
current
ascending
in balance, putting you “in tune” with the Power of the
Living God.
You cannot misuse Power when you say “let” in Love and
Joy, but you must combine them in Selflessness, or Power cannot act.
Love opens all doors and Joy’s Power drives Substance through
to fill the mold.
The only way you can overcome is to love God. Every time
you take your mind off God, you sit in the quicksand and
the mess.
So you
do not know it, you just think you know it. When you know
God, you will not think you know anything.
Love is the only Ascension now and evermore.
How can you know Law? To know Law and to abide in the Law
of Love is fulfilling–is true knowing. When you depart from Love, you
have departed from perfect Law and so no longer do you know Law.
When you return to Love, you return to the Law.
Our Love of God is greater than any other phase of earthly
love can ever be! Only when we find it, hold it and express
it, can
we properly
evaluate our earthly loves, or express enough compassion
to really love, not “in spite of” but just
because “I love
you!” It’s such a wonderful feeling and such
a joy. No hurts or problems can interfere with this inner
flowing joy.
Our
Path Is Service
Our
Creed is Love. Our Path is Service. Our Goal is God. Since we say
these statements so often, we may seldom
stop to ponder
their
full and true meaning. A path is defined as “a
trodden track or way, made for a particular purpose,
a course of action or conduct.” Our
just and merciful God has always sent us Messiahs, to
whom He has given ample skills to blaze the mystical
pathways of ascension unto
His heights. So, to us, Service is the route by which
we may each safely travel back to God, who is our Source.
Our path of Service
was made for us, for the particular purpose of our ascension.
Service is how we may define our proper course of action,
and our personal
conduct. What IS Service? The world defines service as
the occupation or duties of a servant, acts of devotion
to God, a religious rite,
or an act of assistance or benefit to another or others.
Since we wisely seek an answer in the “Truth of
Reality,” here
is a fraction of what the Master and Edna Miriam have
said about Service:
A true servant always stands ready to be used by Power,
alive and alert to the need to release Power, praising
in joy to
become the
Law of the Love of God, embodied and serving on earth.
You are the servant of all Power. No weakness or indecision
resides in Power, yet its servants must find a way
around instead of
hurting another.
First, you must recognize the need to become a servant
of all Power.
See God in every opportunity of service and move up.
Jealousy, revenge or condemnation means one is not
yet ready to serve.
Search well your soul and heart for weaknesses. All
you can do is spew what is in the mind and heart. If
it needs
to
come out,
God
always sends one with a knife to open the little self’s festering
sore. The one who is in need is never in love with the servant of
God’s knife.
Let the Lights shine on you as revelation to place
you in new Lights for greater service.
Once you start to “save” one or a million, the work of
saving continues no matter what they do until Light completely saves
them. This is our service. To be “saved’ is but the first
step, not a complete healing of the self way. Those saved from annihilation
must work out their self, which means stepping up, falling down,
repenting, climbing back, aiding, undoing, repenting, learning.
The Light is all that is. When you give enough, you
become the Light, but you must give self completely
in worship
of Light
as the only
glory. Forget self in worship of and service to the
Light. Then you shine.
The secret of the Law of Joy is to serve God, and love
man!
Let the Law use you to its own glory and more Glory
will pour on you, for Law ever seeks a new means of
serving
God. Law
serves only God, not man. Perfect Law will use him
who lends himself
as
a servant
of God to express the fullness of all life perfectly.
He who hath ears, let him hear and do.
If you have consecrated yourself to service, and desire
to do something about a situation, you may find yourself
suddenly
saying
something
shocking, which is how God drives in a wedge of Light.
Ascend on it and declare it good instantly.
Inner vision is opened only while you are serving selflessly
and doing!
The one who makes the greatest gains is the one who
offers the greatest, selfless, sacrificial service.
A good steward in God’s house is alert and ever watchful over
the Father’s business.
We must love whatever service we must give, where we
are, to be emancipated into God’s perfect place for us.
“ I am now a perfect servant of my Lord and Master. His Power moves
through me and my service glorifies his name.”
The Master knows when you have jumped the hurdle and
cast off the past because you are aglow with Light,
serving the world,
not self,
all self is lifted and you give it no thought. You
then radiate Light.
Hold fast to this declaration: “I shall from this hour move
on my Path step by step, fulfilling my mission. Every hour shall
release the Power to erase past transgressions of Law and open new
lines to fulfillment of God’s high bestowed destiny for me
in His service. I am His Son (Daughter), used by His Glory, filled
with His Power, a finished, fulfilled and completed miracle.”
The world’s base metals turn into gold for you, not on demand
but because you are serving the universes. You must fervently desire
to serve God and humanity in Unconquerable Faith to do anything. “God,
please put me in the place you want for me.” Don’t put
a price tag on your service, just love God.
The way of exaltation is the way of service, day and
night, alive and alight, never alone.
The Power of the living God is using you and you shall
have miracles in your life when you can hold your mind
constantly
on the Light,
when you do not allow your emotional life to interfere
with the Holy Ghost moving through you, when you do
not forget
who you
are or whom
you serve.
You do not receive credits for service on the demands
you make of others.
We are only as great as our capacity to serve. We descended
to serve. As soon as we want to be served or ministered
to, our
Guards bring
us up “short.”
We are free of bondage to “little me” emotions only as
servants of the Father. Let’s listen to the boys upstairs instead
of the “little me” below. When we follow God’s
blueprint for us, our designs for living fall into their proper places.
You can help the younger souls on earth. This is both
your duty and responsibility.
“
Whom the Lord loves, He chastens.” Whom the Lord loves, He
depends upon. “He who is least shall be greatest.” He
who becomes the servant of all and takes blame, the Father will find
ready when the world is about to be splintered by evil, for he can
take the Power no one else could take to save a vibration.
You cover a cosmic debt with a cosmic service.
Credits are added to talents with which to appreciate,
apprehend and grow into the new glories of service
to God.
Surrender ever to be a more useful and greater servant
of all Power.
Repine not. We must give every hour’s service freely without
a grudge or blame for the one who demands the service.
Heavenly Councils give no credits for doing your duty.
We receive no credits for playing the role in which
we are cast.
We must
serve beyond duty with no thoughts about credits for
praying, holding,
loving enough or obedience to all Laws.
No task appointed is too hard or long. You have no
right to demand payment for any service, no matter
how long
or hard
to complete.
Every time you fail to do a duty, or commit an inconsideration,
you break a line and must patch it with Love’s Light.
You are doing your duty where you are, which can bring
no greater credits. Only a hair’s breadth separates a proper joy in being
used, receiving and crediting yourself – a delicate sensitivity
to achieve. The only credit to take is in being a perfect instrument.
When you are there, you will look for no credit, just to be used
for the right thing at the right time.
Love every hard duty you assume.
“
Choose this day whom thou wilt serve.” God or self? Choose
whom you will serve, Light or dark of the subsoul.
Freedom from all darkness means to lift and give all
burdens for God to change them into the Light, to love
the service
you give
where you are so that God may emancipate you into His
perfect place for
you.
The now demands your steadfast standing under the Light
as God’s
perfect surrendered servant, permitting God, allowing God to send
forth Power to close the mouths of lions, to cover all transgressions,
including yours.
Your Godlike potential is limitless. You choose when
you will become, whose you are, how completely surrendered
and devotionally
you
will serve.
The song of the joyful servant of all Power: “How wonderful
is my place in the sun. How wonderful is the service I may give the
Father. How wondrous the Light I may draw upon. How wondrous is my
Father. How wondrous are the angelic hosts.”
Be a servant of the Supreme.
“ I am now determined to be the surrendered servant of all new Power
released in glory, that it may use me to the utmost, and in no wise
shall I try to use the full Power of God. I am the servant of all
new Power now.”
“
Here is my heart. Here is my mind. Here is my soul. Again, I surrender
my all to become the servant of all God’s Power.”
Prayer of Service: “Let the Power use me now to its own great
glory. Let the Glory of God use me now to the complete lifting of
all darkness from the whole earth. Let the full Power now make me
its own servant forever and forever. Thus am I now the willing servant
of God Almighty, forever and forever, Amen.”
A Creator, standing as the Servant of All before an
Altar, merely speaks the word to release Light to move
in to
do the perfect
work. No interference is needed or tolerated. Light
is sufficient to
do the whole job. The Law to apply where Light is needed
is always to
prepare the way of the Lord by declaring the object
of prayer declarations “good
and very good!” After that, you may use the proper phrases
to express need, such as, “Let there be Light,” or “Let
thy Light go forth,” or “Oh, God, according to thy loving
kindness.”
The same situations will always arise wherever you
are, whatever you are doing until you serve God only,
and
never see how
others treat you.
Our
Goal Is God
A
goal is defined as “the purpose toward which
an endeavor is directed, an objective.” Since we wisely seek
an answer in the “Truth of Reality,” here is a fraction
of what the Master and Edna Miriam have said about Goals:
Humanity awakens to inspiration of spirit, and aspires
to a goal higher than self. Our goal is to be as
perfect as
our
Father
in Heaven is perfect.
Ascension is returning to our original Source,
so our goal is even greater than our message.
You have no excuse for moving down into the body.
You shall gain the point of Oversoul consciousness
that
you will
never again
descend into your body. This is the goal of your
work.
Your goal is to so fill this outer body with Light
that it almost fades, then be conscious that your
Father enfolds
you with no
separating space. You have asked to become. Now
you must practice being until
you feel His arms enfolding you.
Each is gathering personal experience on a different
mission because you all work under different divisions,
but with
that goal of the
Source before you.
“ This one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and
reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward
the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”
It takes only a few days’ inattention to the goal for dry rot
to start.
The goal of your personal work is to attain Oversoul
consciousness.
“ I will now work out my salvation exactly where I stand today. I stand
one step nearer to my goal. I am now determined to make every move
of my life upward toward my heavenly goal. I am now convinced of
my ability to march day by day toward my highest goal.I put my mind
on the goal, let go of myself and let God!”
Continue on high, one way, one desire, one path,
one goal! Gird your loins, dig in and march toward
your
goal mentally,
emotionally
and
on the outer. Release 1,000% of Power every moment,
always at the white point of heat.
Put aside “lesser things” of the self and focus all your
powers of logic, reasoning, discernment and vision on one goal. Reach
out with your arms and draw the goal to you.
I’ll forever set a too high goal for my soul. I never want
to feel I’ve reached a satisfactory point in my ascension,
compared with where I want to go.
An “up and down” sort of person produces mediocre results
or part-time miracles of perfection and malformed creations. You
must increase your capacity for reaching new goals by going up constantly,
not intermittently.
A goal is an opening, not a door you batter down,
but something you work toward and through. Setting
a goal
is fixing a
place in time-space
to reach without being diverted by circumstances.
It is a target in life, and must be a broadened
and expanded
horizon.
Enlarge
your horizon when you feel squeezed. Double your
efforts toward your goals,
for without that extra effort, your horizons collapse.
Little by little, you add substance to the goal.
To have a new idea for a goal is the first challenge.
The second challenge comes from outer adverse criticism,
and
causes speculation
to reach the horizon for new backing of the original
idea. Occasionally a new goal tears down everything
about itself.
Never let a goal
slip by untried, no matter how silly or fantastic
it may seem, for hidden
within is the seed of life to bring forth a new
idea. Carefully examine each without picking the
seed apart
before planting.
To keep silence
is good. Let each seed mature, and sometimes two
goals will merge to become one flaming ideal goal.
The fulfillment of your visions, the clear Path
before you, reaching your goal, all depends on
the quality
of your desire
to sacrifice
the little self to your soul’s growth.
Your goal is to keep your eye on the Lord until
He is ready to move you to a new position that
will
demand every talent
that
you have.
You don’t leave anything, it just fades and something more
takes its place. When you plan to attain a high goal, days pass,
each with its own success, and you know the time and place will finally
meet.
Much depends on personal decision now. Accept a
higher place, then move toward that goal with all
that is
in you to use.
So do, and
ever greater capacity shall be given unto you.
When the eye is on the goal, you cannot stumble
in the
darkness, for you
face
the Light,
which makes all into “good and very good.”
Declaration
of Unquenchable Love
Our
Declaration of Unquenchable Love, which we read at every worship
service, is a treasure
trove of
insight into the
nature of Love
Divine, yet we usually “read” it
by rote, with little comprehension of its meaty
meaning:
“
Love is a flame and fire that burns ever. Love cannot be quenched.
Love cannot be put out. Love is.” Love is the trans-atomic
super-fusion that God ignited when He said the Word, “Let there
be Light!” Love is not a human-created fire, which can be quenched.
Love is, just as God is, regardless of what any lesser personality
believes.
“
True Love needs no assurances. True Love knows itself and its own.” We
could read this as “True Love needs no assurances because it
knows itself and its own degree and kind.”
“
Love is the fire that enthuses . . . that ever burns higher, always
upward.” Love is heat of enthusiasm, not boredom that sits
in the dead ashes of self with an “Oh, well.” Love must
be self-fueling if it always burns higher, and yes, the answer is
there: “True Love feeds upon itself and not upon the loved
one. Love’s strength lies in its self-sustaining ability.”
“
True Love is the end as well as the beginning.” If trans-atomic
super-fusion (inconceivable heat) created the Big Bang, then “the
end” must be even hotter. What’s your temperature toward
going Home to God?
“
True Love magnifies the one whom it loves. Love asks no favors and
gives all.” You could give all the Love in the universe to
fill others, and never run out or feel drained. “True Love
is never conscious of giving, but like sunshine, shares itself with
all.”
“
Love’s keynote is a deep, abiding devotion to the one who is
loved.” Love’s keynote is Selflessness, a name of the
Begotten Son as Principle.
“
True Love burns steadfastly under all conditions, joy or sorrow,
separation or unity.” Earthy love burns hot to cold, depending
on self’s emotional climate. Steadfastly means fixed, unchangingly
loyal and dedicated.
“
True Love counts no effort too great nor too small, and no task too
hard nor too long.” Love works, finishes the task and never
counts the cost to self.
“ True Love is lifting, opens all doors and is all-compelling in its
power to unite. True Love withstands all separation and lives forever.”
