Recording 246B, “Bringing Grace into Active Expression,” is from the 1959 Maui Advanced Work. It is the basis for Chapter 6, “Bringing Grace into Active Expression,” in Man Was Not Born to Cry.
To download or print these study suggestions, click/tap here.
As you review the previous chapters, ask yourself how each chapter reflects the book’s theme: Man was not born to cry.
Chapter 1: “The Spiritual New Year”
Joel teaches that good wishes or resolutions do not produce a truly spiritual New Year. It comes with a new state of consciousness because our consciousness shapes our experience. We must stop identifying with erroneous beliefs about ourselves and live from the realization of our spiritual identity and the truth of one power, rather than from fear, conditioning, or mass belief. If we do not consciously recognize the truth, we are subject to the world hypnotism, the belief in good and evil. Still, one spiritually awakened consciousness can ultimately bless the world.
Chapter 2: “The One Great Demonstration”
Joel emphasizes the importance of meditation and inner silence in developing spiritual awareness. He addresses a core Infinite Way principle: God constitutes individual being. When we realize this truth, we no longer try to demonstrate things or conditions. We demonstrate the conscious awareness of the presence of God, and then God appears as the fulfillment of the need. The solution to every problem lies in realizing the presence of God within and letting that Presence go before us. There is not God and you; God lives as you—God constitutes your being. When we stand consciously in this truth and allow God to use us, we become beholders, watching God at work.
Chapter 3: “The Truth That Makes Free”
Joel affirms that the realization—not just an intellectual understanding—that God is All is sufficient for our every need. He teaches that when you know the impersonal, universal nature of evil, you see that nothing in you is responsible for your ills. Why? Because God constitutes your identity. Therefore, you cannot have any evil qualities. Any error that finds expression in you has nothing to do with you; all evil stems from a universal, impersonal source and originates in the erroneous belief in two powers. To be free of that belief, you must know that since God did not make the belief in good and evil, it is not God-ordained or God-sustained and has no law of God to perpetuate it. Joel also explains that we can prevent ills from entering our experience by doing “protective work,” which is not trying to protect ourselves from anyone or anything, but refusing to accept erroneous universal beliefs.
Chapter 4: “Christ Raised from the Tomb”
In Chapter 4, Joel teaches that the Messiah, or Christ, is not an external power that changes human conditions, but the divine Presence within every individual consciousness. Therefore, the spiritual path turns us away from the worship of personality and toward discovering the indwelling Presence revealed by the great mystics. This discovery requires a rebirth: the “natural man,” or human sense of selfhood, must die so that the Son of God may be raised up in us. In other words, our human selfhood is the tomb in which the Christ lies hidden. The ultimate function of the Christ is to lift us above dependence on human good into the realization of a spiritual kingdom “not of this world.” Instead of trying to use God to improve our human lives, we allow God to live ITS life AS our individual being.
Chapter 5: “Withinness”
In this chapter, Joel reiterates the Master’s teaching that the kingdom of God is within you, and he teaches that realizing this truth brings freedom from fear, sin, disease, lack, and limitation. Since God is within us and is omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient, there is no power outside of us that can harm us. And since God is not responsible for our troubles, and no outside power can harm us, the difficulties of human experience arise not from external forces, but from ignorance of our true spiritual nature and the belief in powers other than God. We can dispel that ignorance by knowing the truth about our identity and our God-given dominion. We can remind ourselves daily that all good is already within us, waiting to be expressed. And we can continually acknowledge God’s presence, not only in ourselves, but in everyone we meet.
Chapter 6: “Bringing Grace into Active Expression”
In this chapter, Joel teaches that as humans, we do not experience the grace of God and its benefits because we are not “abiding in the Word and letting the word abide in us;” we are not “dwelling in the secret place of the Most High.” We may believe in God, but belief is not enough; we must experience God—make contact and bring God into expression in life. This requires spiritual realization, or illumination, an experience in consciousness we attain in proportion to our degree of devotion, not only to study, but to putting into practice what we study.
As humans, we depend on others. But when we become the “man who has his being in Christ,” we realize we are one with That which created us, and we are maintained and sustained by this infinite Presence and Power operating as our intelligence, love, life, health, guidance, and direction. We have an infinite sufficiency that flows from within as needed, always with twelve basketsful left to share. In this chapter, Joel teaches what we must do to attain and maintain this state of consciousness and use it to benefit the world.
Recording 246B, “Bringing Grace into Active Expression,” is from the 1959 Maui Advanced Work. It is the basis for Chapter 6, which is largely an edited transcript of the recording.
These suggested practices can help reinforce the lessons and principles highlighted in this chapter.
1. Use one of the study methods suggested for the previous chapters.
If you used either of the study methods we suggested for the three previous chapters and found them helpful, you can apply that study method to this chapter. While we have not provided the study pages as we did for the previous chapters, you can still apply the methods, which we review below.
Method 1: Study one chapter section each day
Instead of reading the entire chapter at once, read one section each day and focus only on that section. (To read the quote from Joel that supports and encourages this approach, click/tap here.)
Our study book comprises the 1962 Infinite Way Monthly Letters. Joel often said that a Monthly Letter was an “outline for study and practice,” and that students should learn to “pick out the pearls, apply them, use them, and live with them.” Studying the chapter section by section lets us follow Joel’s direction and move beyond merely reading the chapter to letting its message take root in our consciousness.
For each section:
Method 2: “Translate” the chapter into your own words.
With this study method, you “translate” the chapter into your own words. This does not mean that you should alter Joel’s principles or substitute your personal opinions for them. Simply ponder the meaning of the words and then, in your own words, write what you understand each paragraph or section to be saying. Make notes about questions that arise, or about anything that comes to you that deepens or enhances your understanding. (To read the quote from Joel that supports and encourages this approach, click/tap here.)
As you work with this method, take a moment before you begin to pray for light, discernment, and understanding, and when you finish, allow time to be still and listen, receptive to whatever may unfold from within.
2. Check Your Understanding
We offer the following questions to help you review and deepen your understanding of the key points presented in this chapter. Of course, as Joel says repeatedly, simply recalling or knowing these points intellectually is not the same as realizing them in consciousness. He emphasizes that intellectual understanding alone is not enough; the ultimate goal is to experience the truth and live by it. Nevertheless, clearly understanding what Joel is teaching in a lesson is an important part of our spiritual study, and considering questions like these can build that understanding and strengthen our practice.
3. Suggested Contemplations
You must do your meditating. You must find something, whether it’s the garden, or the ocean, or the mountains; you must find something to take into your meditation that you can ponder that will eventually bring you to the realization that the Invisible always underlies the visible, permeates the visible, and animates, creates, maintains, and sustains it.
What can you take into meditation and ponder that will best help you realize more fully that the Invisible always underlies the visible?
The Kingdom of God is within me. Right here where I am is holy ground. The Father and I are one. All that the Father, the Invisible Infinite, has is made manifest through my individual being. This inner meat, which I have and which the world knows nothing of, appears outwardly as food on my table. This spiritual water, which I have within, bubbles up into life eternal in outer expression. This power of divine grace, which is now mine by virtue of my oneness with God, becomes the resurrection, and even my body is raised up out of the tomb of disease, or the tomb of old age, or the tomb of infirmity, and is restored again to its normalcy, harmony.
As I consciously realize that I am fed from within, that all that the Father hath is flowing into me and through me; even the lost years of the locusts are restored; even the money that has been lost or dissipated begins to come back; even reputations that have been lost are remade.
All things become new out of this infinity because I have stopped looking to man for my good. I have stopped looking to favors or favoritism. I understand now that all that I shall ever need will be given to me from the infinite Source within my being, which continuously fills the ocean with all that it needs, and the air with its birds, and the heavens with all of the suns and moons and stars necessary to completeness and fulfillment of God’s plan.