Q: When we recognize our errors and have learned not to condemn ourselves for them, why don’t they then automatically disappear? Is it because deep down somewhere we still want them; we still think they are going to do something for us? (10-1-22)1

A:  Probably that is one thing, but another thing is this: Coming into the intellectual perception of these errors doesn’t always destroy them. You will remember there are two parts to our prayers, two essentials. One is knowing the truth. The second is that inner stillness until the voice of God speaks, or the presence of God makes Itself known. And so it is that sometimes after we have recognized our own errors, recognized what it is that is troubling us, we still do not make the grade until that Spirit comes upon us.

However, as a result of this class, it should be much easier to drop the errors of our experience, because now we have what we didn’t have before this current year [1956]. We have the definite teaching that we are troubled only because we are accepting something as good or evil, and as long as you’re accepting it as evil—your errors, I’m speaking of—you’ll want to get rid of them. Once you begin to know that they contain no evil, they will disappear of themselves.

You see, therein is the difference in our metaphysical healing work and others. We never have a disease to get rid of. We never have a sin to get rid of. We never have anything to overcome. Our work is merely the recognition that there is no evil in that which is presenting itself to us as evil, any more than there is anything good in that which presents itself to us as good.

Ours is a rising above the pairs of opposites. Ours is not an attempting to exchange bad humanhood for good humanhood, or sick humanhood for well humanhood. Ours is a continuous seeing through the human appearance to the spiritual reality, and that is easily done, once you begin to perceive that your major principle is not accepting good or evil. If you accept your errors as an evil, they will cling to you. If you resist evil, it will cling to you. If you gradually come to take the attitude: “So what! It is not an evil. It has no evil. There is no evil. There is no power of good or evil. I have been fearing something, wanting to get rid of something, which in and of itself is not evil.” When you come to that state of consciousness you find how it disappears.


1This excerpt is from Recording 167B: 1956 Seattle Closed Class, “Breaking the Mesmerism.”  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 Office website or by calling 1-800-922-3195.