This is Lesson D, the fourth lesson in the Thought Bricks Intro Course.
In this lesson Bernard emphasises that we are offspring of the Divine and that is why our thoughts have such powerful affects in our life. We are constantly creating whether we realise it or not. We therefore have responsibility, as well as the opportunity, to steer our thoughts in the directions which serves us.
The next lesson, will be the Lesson D: Follow up and the final lesson of this Intro Course. A link will be provided in that lesson for the Thought Bricks Foundation Course.
Blessings,
William M.
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Lesson D: Weight of Glory, Way to Achievement.
This lesson is written for you. Yes, you who are reading these words. I care for you so much. I don’t know you personally, but that doesn’t matter. You are an offspring of God. He is our heavenly Father. Therefore you are my kin.
{Although Bernard has passed into the world of spirit, his words to you are as true as ever. He is now even more able than before to watch over and care for his students and he even declared that he would continue to do so after passing over. – William M.}
Will you relax as you read these words, knowing that they are written by a friend? Never mind what you have experienced in the world around you. If people seem indifferent to you or ungrateful. If you have been lonely or if others have “let you down”. Forget all that for the moment and relax in the knowledge that I, who write these words, am your friend. Let my peace steal into your heart.
The words of scripture that I am going to quote for you may seem at first rather a drab and mournful picture. But believe me, this isn’t so. You and I have nothing whatever to do with that which is drab and mournful. We are going to talk about happiness and the way to it. These are the words:-
“Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.”
Many people, when they read these words, think of a stern God appointing times of trouble to His children. Then if they are duly resigned, rewarding them with the glory of a golden harp in heaven, or a crown. But it doesn’t mean that at all. Its real meaning is so important, so wonderful that it is able to solve all your problems.
First of all I want you to understand one basic truth. To carry it with you in your heart wherever you go. Here it is:-
This earth-life, with all it varying circumstances, is the outer picture of our inner thinking.
Suppose you have a camera and you decide to take a picture. You are not sure what you wish to take and. so you carry the camera around with you all day. First you decide on one picture, then another. Until at last you choose to take a picture of a tree. You face the tree, holding the camera in your hands and you see the tree pictured in the view-finder. Then you press the button to operate the shutter, hear the click and know that your picture is taken. After a some days you look again at the picture you took. Sure enough, there is your picture of the tree. Are you surprised? Of course not. You didn’t expect to see a picture of a daisy or a house or an elephant, did you? Why should you? You saw the tree in the view-finder and so you knew quite well that a tree was in the picture.
That is a picture of life. When we think, we are sighting future pictures in the “view-finder” of our minds. Our inner layers of mind will store the pictures we have made and presently the finished picture will come into visibility.
You were not surprised when your snapshot turned out to be one picturing a tree because you had sighted that tree in the view-finder. But when you sight a life-picture in the view-finder of your mind, how often you have been surprised when it has come into visibility in your world!
Sometimes – do you remember? – you have been quite cross about it and have wondered why God should treat you so badly as to send you such a horrid happening. At other times you have tried to feel resigned, saying to yourself that “God knows best” and feeling rather a martyr about it. I have even known of people who have decided that they were specially chosen by heaven for some great work and were being tested and prepared by having a lot of trials heaped upon them. (As though God didn’t know already what we are like and what we can achieve. He doesn’t need to test us.)
What has really happened, is that you have been inwardly thinking on the lines of poverty, illness, weakness, doubt. You may even have been brooding over the wrong someone has done you. Or you may have taken a dislike to somebody and thought of all the things he or she deserves to have in life as a punishment! But whatever the reason, you have been quite unconsciously sighting these things in the “view-finder” of your mind. Sooner or later they were bound to happen to you in real life.
Do you see now how many of the inexplicable happenings in your life, have come about? Whatever we think, comes visibly into our world. People may even think against others in revenge, but sooner or later the reality will come – not to others, but themselves. By our thoughts we “sow seeds”. And there comes always the “reaping” because we are offspring of the Creator and His creative power infuses all our thoughts. (That is His gift to us – it is what we inherit from Him as His heirs.)
“Be not deceived. God is not mocked. Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”
A little earlier I said to you that you and I were to have nothing to do with things mournful and drab. You may be thinking at this point, “But this is mournful and drab” Consider though, how this great truth acts both ways. For if we reap the sad and sorry seeds that we have sown, we reap the glad and triumphant ones also. What an incentive!
How let’s have a rest and think over what I have said. We actually have God’s creative power within us. We are told that we are “temples” and that His Spirit lives in us. How then, could we have the Spirit of the Creator within us, without having also his creative power? His creative power is in our thought. The whole world, was created by thought. Every single thing that has ever been invented on earth first began as a thought. Since we are offspring of God and His Spirit lives in us, this is what we have inherited from our eternal Father. He is the Creator of all things. His Spirit is in all things.
When we think, we draw forth some of this divine Spirit and mold it into visible form in our world. When we pray, we form a picture of what we want. If we believe that we are going to have what we are praying for, we naturally hold on to the mental picture of it (sighting it in the view-finder of the mind). Nothing shakes the picture nor destroys it for we expect it to appear.
All this time of our expectation, wonderful things are happening. Our creative thought-force is working over our inner picture, then sweeping out to everyone connected with it, for Creative Spirit lives within them too. So they are inspired to act on our behalf, to help to bring our inner picture to life. It’s like a magnet, our first faith-held thought, drawing to itself all that it needs to come into actual, visible reality.
I have known of thousands of faith-held thought-pictures coming true in people’s lives. (Of course I have experienced hundreds of them in my own.) I will just give you a brief glimpse of a very few which have actually happened to my students.
1.) “I have been thought building for a better relationship with my twelve year old daughter whom I adore, but with whom I have not been as patient and understanding as I should be. We are on far more harmonious and loving terms. Am controlled, and doing a much better job with her. I see a big change in myself, and consequently in my world.”
2.) Must tell you of the wonderful answer to my thought bricks. I had arranged to move on a Tuesday, and my daughter and her husband couldn’t give me any help until the following weekend. Didn’t know how I could manage during those first few days all alone, so I thought built for help. A few days before I left, I received, a letter from a friend telling me that her husband was taking a few days’ holiday so they had decided they would take me to my new home in their car. Well, the furniture arrived a few hours after we got here, and we were able to get the beds up and my friends stayed with me.”
3.) “Results are beginning to come from practical application of your teaching. The problem of loneliness is being overcome and I have noticed that with my own changed attitude to others, I get along very much better with them.”
4.) “Each day brings happy incidents as the result of my thought bricks. One day when peace and quiet was essential, the whole neighbourhood seemed to go mad. The man next door was banging away right under my window. The children at the other side were screaming their heads off. There was an electric drill at work close by. Going into another room I ‘asked’ for peace and quiet. The man next door decided to take his handiwork to work with him and finish it there. The other neighbour took her children out in the park and the drill packed up.”
5.) “Now for my piece of news! You will remember our little holiday postponed four times? How you taught me not to seek to influence my friend, but to do a chart? Well, within a week this friend herself suggested my husband and I needed a rest and holiday. She told us that in spite of her job in the nursery school she could come to take care of the five children at home. Even the job at the nursery school (which I felt rather cross about, you remember) has turned to us for good. For three mornings a week my three year old boy goes with her and loves it, and I have more time.”
6.) “Pleased to tell you that I have passed the exam. Remember I told. you about the friendly attitude I had with the examiner when I took the hospital examination? In the oral exam I was very happy with the examiners and positive about my success.”
Now as you read this and all the other teachings so far, do you see clearly that when you think, something happens? The thought must stand. alone and not be mixed up with other, conflicting thoughts. For instance, when you took that snapshot of the tree, if you had taken snapshots of a daisy, a house and an elephant on top, think of the confusion. So when you want something in life, think of it whenever you have the opportunity. Or write it down and read it often. But don’t brood over what you do not want.
Now we must go a step further in our talk. I have shown you what to do in the future. But what can we do about the wrong thought pictures and ideas of the past’? if you have “sown seeds” of wrong thinking, what of the “reaping’? You can’t just turn aside from it all and forget it. You have sighted these things in the view-finder of your mind. Unless you do something now, they will come into visibility in your life.
The first thing is to accept the fact of the things you don’t like in your life. Don’t feel God has forsaken you. Don’t blame Him. Don’t think He is testing you. Don’t think heaven has chosen you for a great work and is preparing you with suffering! (This sometimes is attracted by those who know the truth and who are willing to be trained as teachers.) Be realistic and admit to yourself that these unpleasant things of the present are the result of your own thought seeds of the past. Then resolve to do the best you can with them. To be cheerful – not to grumble. To be brave and wise. To learn by them so that you will be much stronger than before and will never make the same mistakes again. Learn from them too, so you can help others not to make the same mistakes as you did. Accept the fact that life is friendly to you and be a co-operative pupil, getting the very last ounce of learning out of the experiences now.
In fact, remember that:-
“Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.”
How much more clearly you understand these words, than when I wrote them only a short time ago. You see, you are making progress already along the way of understanding. That’s encouraging, isn’t it? You can already see that if we accept our adverse happenings, knowing we ourselves have thought them into being, we shall find they “work for us a weight of glory”. That “glory” will be power. Power to be happy, to overcome adverse circumstances in the future. Power to make our dreams come true, to help others and to be a source of inspiration to those around us. Power to be a conscious child of God. So live happily, knowing that you are storing up treasure, a weight of glory.
Dear friend, you who are my kin, I am leading you to a life of conscious sonship with the Father. You are really and truly His offspring, His heir. In fact, you are co-heir with Christ. Think what this means. No longer must you think of Christ as outside of and far beyond you. Christ is a spiritual centre (or consciousness) within you. “I in Thee”, said the Master, “and thou in Me, that we all may be One.” Don’t feel that you are unworthy because of things that you regret in the past. Haven’t you heard the saying, “He shall save His people from their sins”? As you unite with this Christ Spirit (or consciousness) within you, you will indeed be saved from all your sins and mistakes. They will all be dissolved away in the pure flow of the divinity within you. You will enter into your inheritance as a conscious child of God, communing with your Holy Father even as the Master, Jesus the Christ, did while on earth.
“Father I thank Thee that Thou has heard Me”, He said on one occasion, “and I know that Thou hearest Me always”. So it shall be with you. All the adverse happenings will work themselves out and be dissolved away, to give place to a life of wisdom and fulfillment. You will be able to live and commune with the All-Life who is your Father, and from whom you sprang. You will be able to form mental pictures and ideas of the things you want to happen and gradually they will. You will be able to work wonders through your union with Him, as others have done before you.
“The works that I do”, said the Master, “Ye shall do also. And greater works than these shall ye do.”
Isn’t it worth it all, to endure the “light affliction” (though it may not seem light to you just now) so that you may have working in your life a weight of glory? For it will come to you – be sure of that. Turn to the creative power of God in you, which is ever-loving, ever-benevolent to you. Then as surely as the sun will rise again tomorrow, so shall the sun of your happiness arise.
Our talk is over. Read these words many times (include the “Questions and Answers’ too) and let me tell you again this wonderful truth. For every time you read these words, it will be as though I stand. beside you, encouraging you and saying,
“Fear not, little flock. It is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”
Question, and Answers About This Lesson
This lesson is a popular one and in past years a number of questions have come from new students.
1.) “I can’t as yet track down the errors of my past way of thinking. Will you assist me about this?”
2.) “The ‘camera’ simile is not clear to me. Will you explain further?”
3.) “I can understand that my incorrect thinking has affected my life, but what of the handicaps I was born with? I couldn’t have thought wrongly as an infant unborn, so how is this explained?”
It must be remembered that this lesson contains only a small “glimpse”. A much wider “view” will unfold as you continue to study and practise the teachings. You will then be able to answer your own questions from the standpoint of your greater wisdom.
Here are some questions though, that are so vital to your immediate practice that I am both quoting them and replying to them here.
(A.) “My son lost his job. Is it possible that my own depression attracted this into his life?”
My answer is:- No. People’s thoughts affect their own lives. They can only affect others if the other people are willing. That is, if they open their consciousness (such as in instances of requested prayer). Or if they are weak, negative thinkers. They can then be made more so by the depressed thoughts of others. No negative thinker however, can ever influence a positive thinker to his disadvantage. Negative is weak. Positive is strong.
(B) “I have arthritis but never consciously thought of this particular illness, How could I have drawn it to me?” And –
(C.) “At present I am living in a small flat in town. Have always wanted a house in the country. As I never held, the thought of a flat, how could I possibly have brought this circumstance?”
My answer to B. and C. is:- This lesson hasn’t been read slowly enough or often enough to get the full teaching. In its pages I have written, “What has really happened, is that you have been inwardly thinking on the lines of poverty, illness, weakness, doubt. You have been quite unconsciously sighting these things in the ‘viewfinder’ of your mind. Sooner or later they were bound to happen to you in real life.”
As you will see by this, brooding thoughts of illness, weakness, and so on, may result in the loss of good health though actual symptoms may not have been visualised. Also habitual thinking on the lines of fear, poverty &c. would attract what is not wanted. Whereas firmly-held thoughts of faith, optimism and expectation would bring what is wanted.
This unconscious thinking is a gradual process, but the whole thing can be speeded up by conscious thinking. By constructive thinking, wrong habits of thought of the past are cancelled out and a new habit of faith is formed. Go over this lesson with an open mind, then practise it. You will gradually draw to yourself your heart’s desire, and a life of harmony and fulfillment.
We have come a long way in these four lessons, since I began the first one by saying to you, “This seems a good time to talk to you about God”. I must confess that I smiled, when writing that! For many people have such extraordinary and such illogical ideas about God. They imagine a being far away and completely separate, not realising that God is the All-Life and that, as they are alive, they must have this life in them. Some image that God is loveless too. They don’t wonder where the kind and loving people they know, got it from! How could that which sprung off from the whole, be greater and, better than the whole?
Now that you have traveled with me through this preparatory section of the Course, you understand so much more, I know. You will have more confidence and optimism. You will value yourself more. And your thought building power, as an offspring of the Creator? That will increase steadily – and so will your achievements.
– Bernard
The last lesson will be the Lesson D: Follow up – Life as a Mirror. Then you can join the Thought Bricks Foundation course.