The basis for this chapter is Recording 59B, from the 1954 Chicago Practitioner Class, titled “Start Prayer and Treatment with God.” This recording was posted through October 3, 2020, and is no longer available on this website. If you subscribe to the Joel S. Goldsmith Streaming Service, you can listen to the recording there. The optional study material for this chapter will continue to be available here on the Goldsmith Global site. To purchase this recording or the transcript from The Infinite Way Office, click/tap here. (Remember that all Goldsmith classes are available for purchase on iTunes as well. If you use iTunes, this may be a more convenient ordering option for you.)
(To download or print these study suggestions, click/tap here.)
Studying “Treatment”
At the beginning of the class that is the basis for Chapter 2, Joel says:
“On the subject of treatment, first of all, everyone who is in or ever becomes part of this morning work, or what we call practitioner work in The Infinite Way, should be acquainted with all of the chapters headed “Treatment” in all of the writings. … Every single book in The Infinite Way message [except The Infinite Way] was something that took place in a classroom, and therefore, every chapter on treatment is treatment as it was worked out in actual class, and so it should be studied.”
In 1954, when that class was given, students had to peruse the books that they had to find the chapter titles or subtitles that used the word “treatment.” Today, if you want to follow Joel’s suggestion, there are additional methods for finding these chapter titles or subtitles.
Practicing the Lesson
There are many lessons to take from Chapter 2 and from the source recording for that chapter, but one lesson was important enough to be in the title of both the chapter and the recording: Start prayer and treatment with the word God. Joel said,
“There is one principle of Infinite Way treatment which no student should ever forget: Never under any circumstances give a treatment to a person, a condition, or a disease. Never take a disease into a treatment; never take a condition into a treatment; never take a person into a treatment.
“How is this possible? How can you avoid taking persons and diseases and sins into your treatment since every call for help that comes to you is from a person about a disease, a sin, or some kind of a condition? If you understand that a treatment is a statement of spiritual truth and that there is no truth about a person, a disease, or a sin, you will not find it too difficult to practice this principle because inasmuch as there is no truth about any of these, there would be no possible way to give a treatment to a person, a condition, or a sin. The only truth there is, is about God, so the only thing you can ever treat is God.
“Let me illustrate how this is done: Suppose that I receive a call from Mr. Jones who explains that he has bad digestion. Immediately, there is just one word that pops right into my thought—just one word. It would make no difference if the call were not from Mr. Jones, but instead was from Brown, Smith, Blue, or Purple. Moreover, it would make no difference whether it were indigestion or polio, cancer, unemployment, or a contemplated divorce. There still is only one word that comes into my consciousness, and that word is God, G-o-d. No matter who the person is who calls and no matter what the nature of his claim may be—the house is burning down, the children have fallen into the lake—the answer is the same: one word—God.”
Joel teaches that our goal is to get to the place where, in any treatment, we can turn our thought to God and find that God immediately takes over and completes the treatment. But he points out that nobody ever gets to that point without practice, and he encourages us to do the practice, even if it means giving many, many treatments until we reach the goal.
“At first, there must be full and complete treatments, working with the idea of God from every angle, impersonalizing the error and nothingizing it, but then gradually as your consciousness is permeated with the Presence, your treatments take less and less time, until there are times when they do not take any time at all because the answer pops in as fast as the claims do. You will find that most of the cases that come to you are easily and quickly met.”
But how do we practice this lesson if we do not yet have individuals asking us for spiritual healing?
We can practice whenever ANY discord comes to our attention by responding immediately as if we were doing spiritual healing work. The current times are giving us many, many opportunities to practice every day. For example,
Joel points out that keeping the mind stayed on God is the only way to find peace. No one finds peace while thinking of the people of the world, or thinking of sin, disease, death, poverty, and the other discords of humanhood. So we keep our consciousness in God and never come down to the level of man or material sense.
What if I don’t like the word “God?” As Joel said, he himself went through a period in which he preferred to use other terms for God. So he would probably respond by saying something like, “Use any word you like, as long as you are not trying to define God, and as long as you are open and receptive to having that which we call “God” reveal Itself to you.”
When we practice constantly and arrive at the point where we are always ready to respond to any appearance or claim with the word “God,” we have developed the habit of starting treatment with God. Then, when someone does come to us seeking spiritual healing help, we will automatically begin treatment with the word “God,” and as Joel said, “In The Infinite Way, that is the only treatment we know.”
“Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee.” (Isaiah 26:3)
“Lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths.” (Proverbs 3:5-6)