The Impersonal Life

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====== The Inner Life ======
== THE HERALD OF THE NEW AGE | JULY 1937 ==
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==== SPIRITUAL SIGHT AND HEARING ====
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WHEN one begins to identify himself with the Mind of God, and to let the Holy Spirit take possession of him, he will begin to experience a transformation of his nature which will surprise even himself. He will begin to serve his fellowman, and to take joy in the success of others whom he would not have noticed before. He will even deny himself pleasures or luxuries so others, not so fortunate, may have their necessities relieved. He will feel strange stirrings of pity and compassion for beasts, insects, and other creatures which he never felt before. He will, in time, suffer with those that suffer, and rejoice with those that are joyful, and he will do so through his newly awakened sympathy with all of God’s creations of which he knows he is an infinitely small part.

As he goes on serving his fellow man, forgetting himself in loving service of the Christ, his intuition will develop so that he will know, without a reason for knowing, many things which are hidden from the five ordinary senses; he may begin to see shadowy forms near him, and to hear voices that are inaudible to the ordinary “avenues of knowledge.” He will be like one who enters a strange garden, and he will have to learn to know and use the unaccustomed things that are then presented to him.

If he has trained himself to be so honest that he will even call back a street-car conductor who has forgotten to collect his fare, and if he has trained himself to be a careful and kindly observer of objects and people, these new senses will be as reliable as those he has always been using. To a most remarkable degree do the unseen forces about him reflect his own mental attitude to the rest of his world. The author of “Water Babies,” understood all this when he had Tom visited by Mrs. “Do as You Would Be Done By,” and Mrs. “Be-done-by-as-you-did.” This sort of thing holds very true in the spiritual and mental world. Some people call it reaction.

A woman who had consecrated her life to the service of humanity, and who had worked for years ministering to the needs of the poor and friendless, had grown into the habit of listening for the appeals of those about her.

All her life she had had a great fear and hate of spiders. From her childhood, she had hunted them out and killed them, and the more she killed, the more they seemed to multiply wherever she lived. They seemed to drop from the air, and to scurry across her room whenever she was sitting quietly or with her friends. Spiders of all kinds and sizes, the poisonous and the non-poisonous kinds, were over-running her home. Of all God’s creations they were the only ones she feared and hated. Even snakes and mice were looked upon with kindly compassion, but no spiders.

One day she was working in her flower garden, forking up the stiff clay in which her roses were planted. A jab of the fork loosened a huge clod of hard clay which fell over to one side against the fence. Letting it lie there, she kept on digging with her face close to the earth. As she did so, she became aware of a tiny voice, insistent but very faint, which seemed close by. It made her think of the fairy stories she had read when she was a child. Now she had at other times heard voices asking for help, but they had always been those of persons. Never did she imagine that she could hear an animal or an insect speak. She laid down her fork and listened. She looked about her but nothing could be seen. She resumed her work, this time closer to the clod. The voice was louder. It was saying, “Take this off of me. I am hurt. Oh, help me, I suffer so!”

“Am I crazy?” said the woman. Am I imagining things? That voice comes from the clod.” So saying, she turned the clod over. There lay a large brown spider, with one leg crushed. It scrambled to its feet and ran limping away. She let it go, it was the first spider she had ever spared. Much she marveled over the occurrence. By thought, prayer, and experiment, she finally solved the mystery.

In her own particular case, the spiritual perception of truth was being given her by means of illustrations of the things she had been accustomed to all her life. The Spirit always speaks to us in terms or symbols which we can best understand. Only in this way could she be brought to see her own cruelty. She ceased to kill the spiders, recognizing that they too were creatures or children of the All-Father. In a short time all the spiders had disappeared from her home. She has never been bothered with them since that day.

She reasoned, “If I can hear the spiritual cry of the spiders, they could hear my own mental attitude toward them.” After that she commanded them not to annoy her on pain of punishment. She did this wholly by mental attitude. Sometimes she would find herself reasoning mentally with them. Until she had left her home and resided in another for over two years, did the spiders return to it. The near presence of one is always felt with unerring precision.

She tried a different concentration on the kind of birds she loved. Going to her door, she would imitate their call and throw out crumbs, mentally inviting them to come and dine with her. Her yard is now always full of all kinds of birds. She has counted twelve different varieties in one day. They sit on the window ledge and peer in. They swing on the rose vines in front of her windows and look for her. A pigeon ran up to her one day and showed her its wounded wing, plainly begging by piteous cooing for help in its dire extremity.

She tried the same mental attitude on children. Before long dozens of them thronged around her wherever she went. Her appearance would be the signal for cheers and welcoming songs from all kinds of children. Other people obeyed her unconscious or consciously formed wishes rather than her words. Her attunement with Nature made her radiant, happy and greatly beloved. So great was her sympathetic attunement with people that she had only to think on any subject for a time, and it would become a subject of conversation among those around her. Their feelings and thoughts were hers, choosing the kind she liked, or mentally directed, but she did not try to control them. She had only to listen mentally to any person, and she knew his or her feelings on any subject, just as she had known the spider’s. As long as she kept her own channels sweet and clean, there was no impediment between her and the mind of any one.

In time through prayer, her hearing and seeing in this spiritual way became an inner knowing, rather than an audible voice or an actual seeing. The seeing and the hearing always remained at her command, but she reserved them mostly for unusual occasions. No secret can be hidden from a heart and mind attuned to God; but every one and everything has a right to privacy. Only God can always look into the heart and mind of all Nature and make a sane, continuous, practical use of the knowledge thus obtained.—D. V. S.
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