This recording is the basis for Chapter 2, “Building a Consciousness of Grace” in Beyond Words and Thoughts. While this recording is no longer available for listening on this website, if you subscribe to the Joel S. Goldsmith Streaming Service, you will be able to listen to it there. The additional study material for this recording will continue to be available here on the Goldsmith Global site. To purchase the recording or the transcript, click/tap here.
This summary is provided simply to remind you of the content of the class. To download or print this summary, click/tap here.
In this class, Joel focuses on how we build a consciousness of Grace so that we can live by Grace, and not by law. First, he points out that nothing we can know with the mind is absolute truth. However, he emphasizes that the knowledge of truth serves an important purpose: It removes our spiritual ignorance. Every principle of truth that we learn, study, and practice serves to develop consciousness and bring us to the point where we can relax the mental activity involved in searching for truth or trying to get God to do something. By relaxing mental activity, we are enabled to retire within and rest in a state of receptivity to await impartations from the Source. Eventually, we arrive at the place where we can let Truth function our lives: “I live, yet not I, Christ liveth my life.” But if Christ is living my life, “I” am not thinking or doing. I am letting my mind be still. I am just beholding. When I become the beholder, I am living by Grace, which is a state of non-power.
Joel teaches that laws can operate only in the minds of those who accept them, and as you begin to live by Grace, physical and mental laws have less and less power over you. This is not because your developed consciousness of truth is a power over the law, but because the law is not a power in the presence of your consciousness of Grace. So how can we develop this consciousness of Grace? Joel says that at first, we build an intellectual awareness of two principles: the principle of one power and the principle that God constitutes individual consciousness. We build this awareness by working consciously and conscientiously with these principles, reading about them in the Infinite Way books, and listening to him talk about them on the recordings.
As the mind is filled with these principles of truth, Joel says, consciousness gradually accepts them. The old state of consciousness is educated out of itself and disappears, and the new consciousness wakes up. Then, when material or mental laws hit up against this new consciousness, they dissolve, just as darkness dissolves in the presence of light. But at this point, you are not using truth. Neither are you using words or thoughts, which is an activity of mind. You have become the power of Truth, and you are letting the divine Consciousness flow through you and live your life. In this new consciousness, you no longer try to do or be something of yourself. In quietness and stillness, you live by Grace, and It functions through you as benevolence, kindness, purity, and integrity. Your personal sense of life now simply beholds what the Father is doing through and as you.
Joel also speaks about peace, supply, and forgiveness. Further, he emphasizes that when we are living by Grace without words or thoughts, abiding in stillness in the realization that “I and my Father are one,” we are not under any human law—physical or mental. We will be able to see how the mind of mankind is in slavery to its own beliefs. But beliefs are not power, and Grace reveals the non-power. Now is the time, says Joel, to rise out of the state of mind that is “overcoming” into the realization of Grace that is the light that reveals no darkness.
Joel reassures us that this way of life does not destroy the mind. You have simply stopped trying to use the mind as a power and restored it to its true function as an avenue of awareness: “Take no thought.” “The Son of man comes in an hour when you think not.” As you rest your mind from seeking truth, Truth reveals Itself to you from the Source within. It is this Truth, received from within, that builds your consciousness of Grace and draws you from metaphysics into mysticism.
In this class and in the associated Chapter 2, “Above the Law to Grace” in Beyond Words and Thoughts, Joel encourages us to work consciously and conscientiously with the principles. He says that as we imbue the mind with truth, we come to understand that Truth is actually within us and that instead of using the mind to pursue Truth, we can relax mental effort, be quiet and peaceful, and receive Truth from the Source. However, Joel cautions students about being overzealous in working with the principles. In this excerpt from Living by Grace, he suggests a balanced approach.
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