A: God is not a person sitting around manipulating the world: God is our very own consciousness. God is forever imparting Its truth and Its guidance to us, but because we are not always listening, sometimes we are compelled to take a roundabout way to reach our goal. It is not God who is responsible for this; it is our own obtuseness. God is always right where we are, imparting His impulses until ultimately, we reach the goal.
It is not that there was a God who made his brothers sell Joseph into slavery, but undoubtedly there was such a state of consciousness in Joseph that ultimately, he was destined to be the king’s righthand man, and in some way, he had to be brought to the proper place in order to function in that capacity. Similarly, the circumstances which we define as our “Egypt” may later be responsible for our becoming a “prince.” In other words, had we not had some particularly trying experience, we would not have learned the necessary lesson, heard the Voice, and set our feet again upon the path.
You can take all you have read so far in this book [Conscious Union with God] and immediately begin to put it into practice and gradually, through that understanding, come into perfect harmony. Or, on the other hand, you can say, “Yes, I’ll practice as much of it as I can, but I must indulge in this bit of humanhood today, or I must indulge in that.” True, you arrive at your proper place ultimately, but often only through much suffering.
For example, you could at this moment stand on this truth: “All that the Father has is mine, and never again do I have to take thought for supply.” You could take that stand right now and demonstrate it, but most of you will not do this. Most of you will be a little bit worried about next month’s bills and continue to take thought for this, that, or the other thing. And to the degree that you take thought, you are violating your understanding. To that degree, then, there will be a period of suffering, though ultimately you will arrive at your goal.
That is what happened to Joseph. Had he been sufficiently attuned, he might have said: “I think I’ll move to Egypt.” But he didn’t. Instead, he perhaps thought that he was always going to remain with his father and his brethren, so he had to be picked up and forced into his rightful place—Egypt.
Then when he was in the household of the Pharaoh, he could just as well have said to himself, “I am going to live as pure spiritual being and never let mortality enter my thought.” But he didn’t. He had to go down into prison and there learn that the indulgence of any form of mortality has no place in the experience of a spiritual being. When he was in prison, he had time to think, and that is when he finally came to the realization, “Well, if I’m spiritual, I guess I’d better act like it.” Sometimes it takes the very depths of human experience to bring us to an awareness where we are willing to let the spiritual light gleam.
1This excerpt is from Chapter 8, “Questions and Answers,” in the book Conscious Union with God. It is posted with kind permission from Acropolis Books, the authorized publisher of Goldsmith books.
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