By
Edna Lister

From the earliest man, ruled by fear, hiding in a cave from his enemies, to the devotee of the highest intellectualism, the turning point in all civilizations has been the unconscious aspiration toward something greater than self. With this unconscious aspiration, urging us to look upward and see the stars for the first time, the faint stirring of conscious intelligence comes into expression within us.

The sleeping soul, the higher creative self, finally roused by Aspiration from its long slumber, slowly opens its eyes, stretches itself and begins its long upward search. The search always ends in the ability to reach above the stars toward a dimly remembered Source from which the soul descended to take on a form of flesh.

Once even dimly conscious of a life beyond the three fundamental urges of nature (eating, sleeping and mating), the soul never ceases to lead us higher and ever higher until it is again living by the three fundamental Soul Principles underlying all life: Desire, Faith and Devotion.

Aspiration is the soul seeking food to stay its hunger for a greater path to follow than the instinctive lower self, a Source that the soul may hold as its own to worship. Instinctive desire is always toward the lower self and its gratification, while soul Desire is always toward a God whom we may worship.

However all Desire comes from the one Creative Impulse that moved forth under God’s desire to create. Desire is the Creative Impulse of God as the life in us, our God-given heritage. We may repress and misuse this Creative Impulse to express, but we cannot kill it, for it is the very Breath of God that must finally return to God, who gave it – it is the Breath of the Creator.

Since desire searches for, finds, then settles upon a Source that it feels is greater than the lower self, faith and devotion wrap their delicate tendrils about it and follow Desire wherever it leads them. Whether it is a stone image or a great, invisible God, an idea – altruistically ideal or blackly false – once our Desire accepts it, we will invest complete Faith and Devotion in it. We follow the source of our desires gladly, though the end may find us wrapped in bitterness and grief.

Aspiration has been the pilot light under Desire through all ages and continues to be so now. The results we gain in life’s expression depend upon which direction our Desire takes initially. If we turn our Desire inward in self gratification through self-indulgence, it will exalt the lower self to the detriment of the soul.

If we turn our Desire upward toward the Source, allowing the Power of the Living God to possess the conscious self, then Desire, entwined by Faith and Devotion, will make us strong enough to conquer any obstacle life places in our path, any lesson that contributes to the growth of our soul.

Three Principles – Desire, Faith and Devotion – form the foundation of every religion, organization and cult on earth. In every activity and expression of life, the three go hand in hand. Desire seeks and finds, while Faith and Devotion follow blindly after. When Desire changes direction, it takes Faith and Devotion right along with it to the new idea, expression or adventure.

We can trace all of life’s difficult problems directly to Desire’s blind following of strange ideas and false gods. Since self-gratification is the greatest of all false gods, it follows that self-satisfaction must become the breeding ground for the four outstanding enemies of soul growth – indifference, lukewarmness, doubt and fear, lower self "termites" boring into the soul’s original God-inherited strength until we collapse under the many strains of world pressures.

Indifference weakens our Desire toward worship of and devotion to a Source outside and higher than the instinctive lower self. Lukewarmness quenches the fires of faith in our heart and loses that crusading, conquering spirit of the soul, which we bore to earth as part of our Divine Inheritance. Working together as a pair, indifference and lukewarmness, when indulged in continuously by the instinctive lower self, imprison all Aspiration for God, without which the soul perishes from lack of nourishment.

Only Aspiration can keep our Desire at the white point of heat. This high white point of heat is the native flame of the soul that finally makes us a Christed One, a Creator in our own right. As a true Creator, the Power of God, which alone enables us to climb back to our Source from the dark land of self, uses us.

The first tiny doubt we allow entrance to the heart opens the way for us to fall prey to fear. Fear, unless conquered, sends us cowering behind the bars of our dark thoughts and mental images, allowing our emotional life to rule us while we continue to rationalize away every native ability until our God-bestowed talents die without us ever using them to progress, either as success in material affairs or in the unfoldment of our soul.

Indifference, lukewarmness, doubt and fear are four noxious weeds that thrive and grow into an impenetrable self-jungle that sets the confines of the one who entertains them and renders that person powerless to act independently. Thinking becomes atrophied, and the soul is dragged back continuously from its highest original devotional expression until it loses the power to reach upward.

We must conquer these, and all such enemies of the soul. How?

Aspiration is the pilot light that ignites Desire and sends it seeking. In conquering enemies of the soul, we must use Aspiration to ignite Desire to ascend upward only. This conquering must be part of a plan that consciously directs and controls the path Desire travels. Self desire is forever at the mercy of fate, blown this way and that by every wind. Soul Desire moves untouched on a planned path through the winds of earth.

Acceptance, Surrender and Becoming are three steps in soul conquering. When we understand the Laws governing them, and form them into a plan for living, the Flame of Desire will ascend higher hour by hour. They spell the complete conquering of the instinctive lower self and will eventually lift up every impulse of self-indulgence until the lower self is united with and becomes one with the soul.

I accept. What must I accept?

The hardest fact of all to accept (against which the lower self struggles with all its might) is that each of us is responsible for everything that comes into our life. Both the good and the less-good are direct results of our own conscious or unconscious creating.

We can discover what lessons we came to earth to learn only by understanding the reason for our less-good creations. To accept full responsibility for creating a less-good, to change from indifferent and lukewarm ways of creating, allows Aspiration to soar high above old ways, for we have well-learned one of earth’s many lessons. When a less-good visits us repeatedly until we grow tired of being at its mercy, it is the soul crying "move up!"

Every lesson we learn opens a new Law, which we must then apply to our whole life. We must accept each new Law enough to become part of our plan for conquering, though we may not understand immediately how to apply the new Law to our conquering. With every new Law, we continue to search the lower self for flaws that allow soul-enemies to enter and delude us into forgetting that we have begun to conquer the lower self.

The second step is surrender, but surrender to what?

To understand fully what surrender means, we must lift misuse of Law, another lower self idea. In the past, man thought that God created him to use the Law, a misconception that has led to all kinds of misuse of God’s Power. It leads directly to the use of force and false thinking that we can make the Law work for us.

We cannot make the Law do anything by using words. Law is already perfect. Perfect Law already desires perfection in all its creations more than anyone can desire. When we change our conception of our relation to Law, our life begins to change and our creations will all be Good.

God desired to create. He created man in His own image and likeness for perfect Law to use in His perfect way. Once we accept this idea, Light divinely impels us to surrender to be used by the Power of God. It is a joy to become the servant of all the Power of God.

As the servants of all perfect Power, we know that Power can use us only as mouthpieces, as instruments through which it moves to do its perfect work. We know that Spirit will put the words of perfect direction and guidance upon our lips while we let the Power do the work of creating through us. Faithfully and confidently we stand, working out our salvation, while waiting upon the Law. To "wait upon" means to serve.

The third step in our plan for conquering is becoming. Becoming what?

Step by slow step, through acceptance and surrender, we finally learn our lessons and the Law to apply in each situation. When we apply Law automatically, we can apply it unconsciously, for we have "become" the expression of that Law.

Each time we become a new Law, we are nearer that original "image of and likeness" of our Creator. Each acceptance and surrender to greater responsibility shows in our outer expression of inherent Godlike attributes and qualities.

We know this process of becoming as Ascension of the Soul, and it carries the very cells of the physical body upward with it until the body takes on a translucent quality. This is the true secret of Eternal Youth, the fount of youth within the soul.

When we move our Acceptance, Surrender and Becoming upward, from a process into an act of conquering, Desire merges with the full vibration of the Faith of God Principle, taking Devotion upward to Joy, its highest peak of expression. While conquering is still a process, we usually have to apply conscious thinking before we can move up in consciousness.

When conquering becomes an act, no thought is necessary, for only one Desire is left in the lower self, to move up. Backward looks no longer pull us down because we have lifted self gratification from the lower self.

Now the three Principles of Soul – Desire, Faith and Devotion – have again become indissolubly the one great pure Creative Impulse, and have moved in and taken up their abode within our higher creative center as the I AM.

When we become Law, and Desire is one with Faith and Devotion, we rejoice because we release the soul’s fundamental Devotion only in worshiping a Source greater than that portion of the soul contained within the body. Such high Devotion is the source of all praise, and can no more avoid rejoicing hour by hour than a bird can fail to beat its wings upon the air. Devotion, moving forth on the Wings of Joy, is an expression of the Flame of Life itself.

We have aspired poorly indeed unless our Aspiration has increased our Faith in and Devotion to a Universal Source of All Life. We run down like an unwound clock unless we allow our Aspiration to soar upward. Faith and Devotion can ascend no higher than Aspiration allows Desire to beam its powerful rays.

Our great inheritance as Creators becomes steadfast and Godlike under all conditions only when we have surrendered fully to be possessed by the Faith of God. The Faith of God possesses us when we have ascended through Devotion and gained a comprehension of what constant God-consciousness means. Under Ascension, we move from the creature up through the Son of Man stage, into the Son of God stage and onward and upward into the powers of a Creator.

Nonresistance is the Principle of Faith in perfect action. To comprehend this fully, one must accept the powerful expression of perfect Peace as a divine attribute in man. We must accept Peace as part of a great Principle rather than as a state we gain through long struggles with the lower self.

Seeking to control the soul’s detrimental enemies, impatience and irritation, will never work. No one ever has or will ever gain lasting peace through self-control. Banked fires will forever burst into flame under trying circumstances to betray us into unseemly speech or actions.

When we allow the soul to take over and the Faith of God possesses us, we move up into the "I AM" Higher Creative Center where Poise reigns supreme. As Power descends, it mates with the Queen of Poise, and they name their twin daughters Peace and Patience. With no further struggle, except to allow the Faith of God to possess us continuously, our expression becomes peaceful and patience-full, since we enfold the parents within the great mantle of Nonresistance.

Our Soul Ascension demands of each of us that we learn to comprehend that which we think we know. Unless we comprehend exactly what our God-given attributes, qualities and powers of the soul mean when we surrender ourselves to be possessed by the Faith of God, we cannot hold fast to our Faith of God with any continuity of conquering.

The first three Emanations of Creation, called the "River of Life flowing from the Throne of God," contain every potential possibility of creation with all its manifold combinations. The River of Life is a vibration continuous in action, flowing and circling back again to its Source, carrying everything along with it, including man.

When we are possessed and used by the Faith of God, we return to our Source with this mighty stream of life. As it flows through our body’s cells, it cleanses and purifies every organ and part. We also know this Stream of Life as the Christ Principle and as that "Mind that was also in Christ Jesus."

It takes great fortitude, backed by a burning Desire for God, to raise Ascension of the soul from being a long, drawn-out process and struggle into an act that holds fast to its expression from the higher creative center of I AM. We must completely give up lower self indulgences without having to think about it first. We must use that one instant in every situation to move up, with never a backward look or thought.

Instant conquering means accepting that any disappointment stems from a demand made upon another. It means giving up expecting anything from another. We save ourselves countless hurts and griefs by never again indulging in such expectations and demands, since we usually expect something another has no conscious idea of wanting to give.

Always taking the blame for everything that comes to us, never blaming another for anything, requires the greatest possible fortitude. Above all, it takes this great fortitude to call down upon our lives the Name of God on earth: Good.

As we face the need to rid our consciousness of old ways of thinking and feeling, we discover that the world has taught us erroneously about the Law of Nonresistance. They taught us that to be nonresistant meant to sit and wait passively for whatever fate sent us. They told us that it was the "will of God" for us to be unhappy, ill or impoverished. They taught us that if something was fun to do, and we indulged ourselves in a good time, we were shut out of the Kingdom of God.

If the Law of Nonresistance as taught by Jesus the Christ was the weak and puerile thing interpreted for us by those who were supposed to know, it would have been wiped from the minds of men long since. Instead, Nonresistance has become the most powerful expression in the world today. The cry of "peace for all men" is no longer a puny cry, but is a shout, loud and long.

When we understand our own responsibility for our lives, we understand what Jesus meant when he said, "Turn the other cheek also." Today we recognize and accept our own responsibility in all matters. If we are stupid enough to allow ourselves to get in a position where someone wants to slap our cheek, we turn the other gladly just to impress upon our consciousness the lesson involved.

We gladly accept that cheek-slapping comes because we are in either the wrong place, not minding our own business, or we have said or done the wrong thing. We may have said the right thing at the wrong time or in the wrong tone of voice or used the wrong words.

Nowhere is it written that we must return to the same person or the same situation to be slapped again just to prove that we live by the Law of Nonresistance. Surely common sense dictates that we should know enough to stay out of such a mess, learning the lesson involved by conquering the lower self that caused it, realizing that by the Faith of God we can learn anything in one lesson, if our Desire to conquer self really is burning.

When we accept that the Law of Nonresistance is the most dynamic, positive action of the Faith of God, it becomes our strong fortress into which we may retreat from any earth storm. Nonresistance makes us impervious to the "darts of the enemy" from the outside.

When the Faith of God rules our life, it wipes out all lesser desires and we can rejoice while declaring all our creations "good." Now we need not argue with anyone. We have no desire to challenge anyone’s opinions and prejudices, and gladly leave everyone free to follow his own small circle of opinions and prejudices or any other planned path of action.

To be nonresistant does not mean we must give up living by our own idea of God’s Principles, our own convictions or that we must allow others to push us around.

We might define the Law of Nonresistance this way: Being possessed by the full Faith of God to stand nonresistant, making no excuse for our standing, while the Power moves through us – to stand still, unmoved within and immovable without, while agreeing with the other fellow that his own directed path and plan of life are good and very good for him to follow.

To say, "Yes, you are right," does not mean "Yes, I shall follow you in your way." It only means that we agree with him that he has found his own right plan of life and pathway to follow. We never need to explain. We need no further speech, for the Law of Nonresistance is based upon "Let your communications be, Yea, yea; nay, nay" which we interpret as a direct command of Law to stand quietly in the heart of the Golden Silence, granting all others the right to do the same.

When we accomplish this, the Law of Nonresistance becomes a strong cable of Light through which the Faith of God moves, untouched and untouchable. It becomes the Divine Rod of Power upon which Aspiration is drawn ever higher toward the Source. The pilot light of Aspiration becomes the Eternal Flame of Desire, burning as a consuming fire that forever absorbs all darkness.

We are all witnesses to one outstanding fact, strong and mighty before the Law: Truth alone can stand the test of time. Evil darkness of any kind, given time enough, must fall lifeless to the ground, the victim of its own bloated, overbearing weight.

Therefore, when anyone pits darkness against the full outpouring of the Faith of God, he has no chance to create. Darkness must be absorbed into the Light. When darkness meets the unmoving wall erected by the completely gentle but dynamic and positive Faith of God, held within its protective sheath of impenetrable substance, it falls lifeless and is absorbed by the Eternal Flame.

To accept and surrender to the protective sheath of Nonresistance is the most marvelous experience of which we are capable. It becomes an unspeakable glory, which once known, we seek with all of our heart and soul. We "hunger and thirst after" it until no giving up of lower self indulgences is too great a price to pay for its possession.

When the Faith of God becomes the ruling passion of man’s heart and soul, the twin Pillars of Flame, Honor and Loyalty to God, support him on either side. These Golden Eternal Flames shine forth upon a weary world, giant torches lighting the way for Truth to lead all Creation back to its Source. The Faith of God cannot be set aside by anything the world might produce against it in darkness. Man has never conquered it, and never can conquer it by any action he can try.

When we have truly surrendered for the Faith of God to possess us, urges emanating from the lower self cannot disturb or move us, nor can we bear to look backward for an instant. The Faith of God is constant, and in it we find our own constancy and our own unalterable confidence in God.

The Faith of God now claims our exclusive devotion. The Faith of God now challenges us to proclaim our complete surrender to become its servant forever.

We now know that the Faith of God possesses us because we find ourselves rejoicing about having found our Source. In our steadfast rejoicing, we find that we have become One with God and that we stand undaunted and silent, worshiping God in the Golden Silence of all Glory.

The Faith of God is unconquered and forever unconquerable.