Part 4: Issues in Spiritual Healing:
Session 1, We Cannot Solve a Problem at the Level of the Problem

The Recording

Recording 489A, “We Cannot Solve a Problem on the Level of the Problem,” is from the 1962 London Closed Class. This recording is one of two sources for Chapter 4, “We  cannot Solve a Problem at the Level of the Problem,” in Seek Ye First. 

• To listen to recording 489A at any time, click/tap here. The recording will be available through the end of the Spiritual Healing Study Program.
• To purchase the recording or the transcript from The Infinite Way Office, click/tap here.
• For the telephone listening extension, call 1-641-715-3900 and enter 604837#.

Optional Study and Practice

To download or print these study suggestions, click/tap here.

Review of Previous Sessions

Part 1 of our study program provided an overview of spiritual healing, and Part 2 focused on the core principles of The Infinite Way and their role in spiritual healing. Part 3 of our study program concentrated on the practice of spiritual healing.

In Part 3, we addressed spiritual healing consciousness, explaining that healing comes only when an individual becomes God-conscious, a transparency through which the healing grace of God can be revealed. To review the major points in this session, click/tap here.

We focused on impersonalization and nothingization, noting that impersonalization is recognizing that every individual is God in expression, and therefore, there can be no evil or sin in the individual. Nothingization is the recognition that since God is the only power, there can be no other power, and since any appearance of error is not of God, it has no power, substance, or law to maintain it. It exists only as an illusion, a belief in a selfhood apart from God. To review the major points in this session, click/tap here.

We also considered the topic of treatment, which is an activity done in response to a request for help. Treatment is always given to oneself as the practitioner, never to a patient, and it always has two parts: the contemplation of truth and settling into silence and listening. To review the major points in this session, click/tap here.

Finally, in Part 3, we worked on the importance of rising above the pairs of opposites in spiritual healing practice. We learned that to succeed in spiritual healing, we must not focus on changing evil into good, but on beholding the spiritual reality. We take the middle path and say, “Neither evil nor good, but spiritual.” To review the major points in this session, click/tap here.

The Current Session

With this session, we begin Part 4 of our program, which addresses issues in spiritual healing. In this first lesson, we consider a statement given to Joel, which he tells us to memorize: “You cannot meet a problem on the level of the problem.” Failing to understand and follow this is one of the issues we may encounter in spiritual healing.

Key Points from the Recording

Once again, there are several options for reviewing the recording. Chapter 4, “We Cannot Solve a Problem at the Level of the Problem,” in Seek Ye First captures the essence of the recording. As we always recommend, you can create your own summary of the key points in the class. Or you can use our review below. If you choose to use this review, please note that it includes some interpretation of the lesson, and be sure to add other points that stood out for you in the recording.   

The meaning of immortality

• The spiritual life is a revelation of immortality. Immortality does not mean longevity. Longevity refers to a longer span of human physical life. Immortality is not just the continuity of life after death. It has to do with the complete circle of our life—our pre-existence before we came to this plane, as well as the life that goes on after this human span. This is the life of the spirit that has no beginning or ending, not the life of physical sense.
• If there is only one God, there is one life, and that one life has no beginning and no ending. If there is only one life, that one life must be yours, and it must be immortal and eternal.
• Within that circle, we experience birth and death, but within that same circle, we have continuous “birthings” and “dyings” until we break through the limitation of human sense and become aware of our own eternal life, which we have even when we are not aware of it.

You cannot meet a problem on the level of the problem.

• Joel was given the statement “You cannot meet a problem on the level of the problem,” and he tells us to memorize it. He clarifies that he means that you cannot meet a problem spiritually on the level of the problem.
• For example, if someone comes to you asking for help with a headache, do NOT think of the person or the headache. As long as you hold these in your mind, you hold them in manifestation. Instead, remember: “You cannot meet a problem at the level of the problem.”
• The “problem” is the person and the headache. So you drop both, turn within, and say, “Father, since I of my own self can do nothing, take over.” Then, adopt a listening attitude so that the solution to the problem can come, and it can come in many ways. But if you have not tried to solve the problem at the level of the problem, and you have risen in consciousness, you have already helped.
• You may hear a voice say, “This is my Son, in whom I am well pleased,” to remind you that this person is not a mortal, but the Son of God, and that you must not judge by appearances. Other times, you might feel an inner release, or something else will confirm that you have made contact.

My kingdom is not of this world.

• When someone comes for help, remember, “My kingdom, the Christ kingdom, is not of this world.”’ This reminds you to take no thought for persons or headaches. You take thought only for My kingdom, the Christ kingdom, the spiritual kingdom.
• In the spiritual kingdom, there are no mortals and no diseases. There is only life eternal, immortality, eternality, perfection. No one has ever fallen from grace. In the spiritual kingdom, “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” There is a divine harmony that God maintains and sustains. In the divine kingdom, nothing enters that defiles or makes a lie.
• After recognizing the nature of the Christ kingdom, pause, and rest in “Speak, Lord; thy servant heareth.” Even if you do not feel a release, your work is done. If the healing comes, it is because you have not allowed your thought to dwell on “this world.” You kept it on “My kingdom.”

My peace I give to you.

• Another reminder is “My peace give I unto you, not as the world giveth.” My peace, the Christ peace, flows through you. You take no thought for human beings or headaches or any other ills, because the peace that the Christ gives is different. It has nothing to do with this world. Remind yourself, “I live and have my being in God-consciousness, and God knows nothing of human beings or their woes. These travails arise from a sense of separation from God.”

“Thou art the Christ.”

• As you disconnect from the person and the problem and rise into oneness with God, you have lifted the human being to his true identity. With your eyes and ears, you recognize that an appearance of mortality is being presented to you. But if you have spiritual enlightenment, you can look through that appearance and say, “No. I have nothing to do with the appearance. I know thee who thou art, the Holy One of Israel, the spiritual offspring of God.”

“Take no thought for your life; seek ye first the kingdom of God.”

• This Bible verse can also help us refrain from trying to solve a problem at the level of the problem. When someone asks you for help, immediately remember that you are to take NO thought for the person’s life or health. No matter how severe the appearance, you drop the person and the claim as quickly as possible, and you “take thought” only for the kingdom of God. Then you find that the true harmony of the person’s being will be “added unto them,” or revealed, because you have ignored their human life.
• You go back to the kingdom of God and remember: “You lived before Abraham was and will live unto the end of the world. There is something that is providing for the Son of God.” Then do not battle with sin, disease, lack, or limitation. Rest in the word and seek only the kingdom of God, which is within your own consciousness. Harmony is the only reality in the kingdom of God, and I am maintained and sustained in divine harmony and peace.
• “Seek ye the kingdom of God” means to stay with the spiritual truth about God and man, the spiritual offspring of God. Never permit your thought to come down to the level of the patient or the claim. If you are lifted up into the kingdom of God, you will draw the patient up, too.
• This approach can be especially difficult for parents and grandparents when dealing with children. Even so, you must not let your thoughts rest on the children. If you take them or their problems into your consciousness, you will not be able to do effective spiritual healing. Leave out the human identity of a child while you tabernacle with God and the child of God, the spiritual offspring. Then, you will have lifted the child up into the kingdom of God.

Spiritual government on Earth

• If you want to work for world peace, again, remember that you cannot meet a problem on the level of the problem. Do not think of the absence of war or overcoming an enemy. Think in terms of God’s government on earth—not good human Do not ask for human peace on earth, but for God’s government on earth, spiritual government.
• We do not attain that spiritual government by treating bad people to make them good, or thinking of victory, but by thinking only of the kingdom of God, where there is only spiritual government, omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient, a government of wisdom, intelligence, and love. And that kingdom is here, where we are now, filling all time and all space. “The place whereon thou standest is holy ground.”
• Again, keep your treatment in the realm of God, and do not permit yourself to think of countries or administrations. Stay in the spiritual realm, just as you do when caring for your patients, always remembering you cannot meet a problem on the level of the problem.
• If you remember that statement when you do world work, your entire meditation would be in the kingdom of God, above nationalities and geography, and you would be contributing to world peace.

The spiritual life is about giving, not getting.

• In the spiritual life, there is no such thing as “getting.” There is nothing to be gotten. You come to the spiritual life to give. Eventually, you see that giving is the only function in the spiritual life—being an instrument through which God gives, God expresses, and God lives. When you think in terms of getting, you are in humanhood, not in the kingdom of God. You are in “this world,” trying to improve it. Improving humanhood has no function in the spiritual life.
• If you are not providing yourself with opportunities for giving and sharing, you are not receiving the benefits of the spiritual life. Giving and sharing have many different meanings, and the least of these is money. Sometimes you may be called upon to help those who have less than you or who are temporarily lacking. But that is not spiritual giving.
• Spiritual giving is praying for your enemies and the world’s enemies, praying for spiritual government on earth, realizing spiritual freedom wherever a claim of bondage appears in any form. The spiritual life is entirely one of prayer, meditation, and treatment, in which you meet every appearance of discord with spiritual truth; in which you seek the kingdom of God and seek to live there, to live and move and have your being there, not just to return there for a few moments each day. The ultimate of the spiritual life is living completely in spiritual consciousness.

There is a divine Presence within my consciousness.

• The first step in the spiritual life is realizing that while there appears to be a human identity, entertaining a sense of separation from God, walking through life with sin, disease, lack, limitation, and death, there is also a Presence within the consciousness of every individual that is invisible to human sight, visible only with the soul faculties. As your spiritual consciousness develops, you will be able to look at an individual and behold this spiritual entity, this spiritual light.
• You become aware that you yourself have this Presence when things come about in your life for which you personally are not responsible. They come by grace. When the Spirit of God dwells in you, it is the Presence within you that goes before you to make the crooked places straight, walks beside you, gives you greater wisdom, and gives you direction.
• This presence is the Christ, the same spirit that animated Jesus, that existed before Abraham was, and that exists here and now within you. Its function today is the same as it was when it functioned in Jesus—to heal the sick, forgive sinners, feed the hungry, and preach the gospel. But the Christ isn’t available until you become aware of It, until you have the experience of the Presence within you. Eventually, this Presence takes over your life, and you can say with Paul, “I live, yet not I. Christ lives my life.”

This Presence is within every individual.

• Everyone on the face of the globe has this indwelling Christ, but few have become aware of it. You bestow this benediction upon everyone who touches your life when you keep living in the kingdom of God, not allowing your thought to come down to human beings and their problems, but staying up in the realities of God’s kingdom, and when you live consciously in the realization, “Christ indwells me, and It is a healing influence and a forgiving influence to everyone who touches my life.”
• To enable the Christ within to be a forgiving influence, you must divest the human desire to see the sinner punished rather than forgiven. When you get to that point, the Christ is truly alive in you as a forgiving agency.
• Again, you do not meet a problem on the level of the problem. You meet it by dwelling in the Christ and letting the Christ dwell in you. Live up in the kingdom of God, not in the human world.

The Christ within IS my true identity.

• Some students think that if we say there is a Christ indwelling us, it means that we ourselves are not the Christ; that there is an actual twoness there. That is not what it means. It means that the Christ is now, always has been, and always will be our true identity, the “one” that we actually are, but that we also have a false dual sense of ourselves—God AND me.
• To realize your true identity, you must die daily to that false sense of a human self; you must surrender that sense of self, that one who wants to be healed or supplied. You must dwell in the Christ, which is forever living in and as you, which is immortal and eternal. The longer we think only of improved humanhood, the longer we delay our spiritual progress because we are holding on to that false sense of self.
• In proportion as you are not concerned with a victory over disease, or over enemies, or over anything else, and you are so lifted up that your whole awareness is that Christ may fulfill Itself and be the means of healing and forgiving and feeding in the human experience, you forget that personal sense of self that wants to be fed, or healed, or forgiven. You have forgotten yourself, and when you have forgotten yourself sufficiently, you have “died” in the right sense of dying.
• The more we dwell in the kingdom of God, the more we find that we are not living with human beings, but with brothers and sisters of one spiritual household in the kingdom of God. Everyone who touches our lives, who is the least bit receptive, begins to respond to that spiritual impulse.

Reprise: You cannot meet a problem on the level of the problem.

• Put this into practice: You cannot meet a problem on the level of the problem. Dismiss the person and the problem, jump right up into the kingdom of God, and stay there at least five or ten minutes. Then come back, forget the problem, and watch it dissolve.

Suggested Practice

• Take some time to review what you have learned thus far in the spiritual healing study program. Could you answer these questions from a new student?
  • “I hear Joel speak about the ‘healing consciousness,’ but I’m not quite sure what he means. What is the healing consciousness? Is it something you are born with, or can I develop it?  If so, how do I develop it?”
  • “I know the four major principles — the nature of God, the nature of individual being, the nature of error, and the nature of prayer—but I’m not completely clear about how each one relates to the healing work. Would you please explain?”
  • “What is the difference between impersonalization and nothingization in healing work?”
  • “I always thought that a treatment was something given by the practitioner to the person seeking help, but I just heard Joel say this is not true. Would you please clarify what he means by treatment?”
  • “I just don’t understand how it is possible to ‘rise above the pairs of opposites’ when the opposites are so real every day. I do see disease and health, life and death, good and evil, and I see them operate every day. Are you able to see through them, and if so, what do you recommend I do to develop that capacity?”
  • “Joel says, “Neither good nor evil, but spiritual.” I’m trying to understand this, but I don’t get what he means by ‘spiritual.’ How can something like a disease be spiritual? Can you help me with that?”
  • I have seen the medical profession heal many people of diseases, so how can Joel say that you cannot solve a problem on the level of the problem? It seems that medical healing is solving a problem on the level of the problem.”
• Have you learned anything in this study program that you either did not know before or had only a fuzzy understanding of? If so, what did you learn, or what was clarified? Were you holding any misconceptions about spiritual healing that were corrected as you studied? If so, what did you believe before, and how was it corrected?
• Joel concludes this class by saying that we must put this lesson into PRACTICE. One way to do this is to reflect quietly on our lives.
  • Are there problems or issues in my life that I am trying to solve? (And/or, have others come to me for help with their problems or issues?)
  • Take one such problem or issue and ask, “How am I addressing this problem? Am I trying to solve it on the level of the problem?” (Really ponder the question. Feel free to be completely honest because this is only an inquiry within yourself to help raise your awareness of how you are addressing problems and the opportunities to make a change, if needed.)
  • If I am trying to solve the problem on the level of the problem, how can I shift gears and follow the direction that Joel gives in this class?