A: Now, you can always discover what is right and wrong in the human scene by the measure of “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” Now of course, you know that such things as insurance do not have to do with your spiritual life. They have to do with your human life, and they do not involve you so much as they involve members of your family.
For instance, if you were all alone in this world, had no relatives, parents, children, no one dependent upon you, and you had arrived at a place where you realized God as your being, of course there would be no need for insurance. It wouldn’t be a matter of a contradiction; it would be a matter of having entered a state of consciousness in which the subject would never even arise.
But assuming now that you do have family, dependents, or someone looking to you for support, and you do not wish to be a burden upon them in case of illness or accident, certainly you will provide insurance for their sakes. That’s a matter of loving thy neighbor as thyself. Or if you are in a position of having family and dependent children or children to be educated, unless they themselves have risen to the place where they are spiritually free, you have no right to try to make their spiritual demonstration for them, and you must meet them on the level of their existence.
Now actually, that applies to us in every walk of our human life. We must govern our conduct toward husband, wife, parent, child, employer, employee, neighbor even more lovingly than if we did not have truth, and right on their own level of demonstration.
Now, never let us, in our work at least, get to that place where we prove to be unloving to those in our circle, and we must measure that love not only by our sense of love, but by theirs, and there isn’t anything very loving to leave a widow or a dependent child or one not yet through school without means just because you believe that you have arrived at spiritual demonstration, and so I would say that our answer is: do unto your family as you would like them to do if the position were reversed.
This is the same advice that I give in the matter of religious conviction or medical. I would never interfere in the life of one of my relatives in either their religious convictions or their medical convictions. They may have whatever religious belief they like, because I demand the right to follow mine, and they may have whatever medical belief they want, because I demand the right to follow mine, and that which I want for myself, I certainly offer to them.
1This excerpt is from Recording 213B: 1958 Second Chicago Closed Class, “Questions and Answers on the Mystical Life and Healing, Part 2.” It is posted with kind permission from the Estate of Joel Goldsmith, which holds the copy protection on the recorded classes and the copyright on the transcripts. The full transcript of this recording is available from The Infinite Way website or by calling 1-800-922-3195.
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