Fruits of the Spirit

The entire experience of man’s communion with the Spirit (the Thought Adjuster residing in his mind) involves the individual’s moral standing, mental motivation, and resultant spiritual experience. The realization and proof of spiritual communion manifests in what Christ termed, “the fruits of the spirit.”

The fruits of the spirit (qualities) are literally the spiritual substance of the Supreme as He is realizable in human experience.  The Supreme Being is the God of experience in time and space (evolutionary creation).

Man is a cell in the total sphere of the Supreme.  The consciousness of the Supreme is to man what man’s consciousness is to a cell in the body of a man.  The achievement of the total consciousness of the Supreme exists in the same sense, as the atoms of substance in man’s body will some day achieve the consciousness of a human being.

The fruits of the divine spirit achievable in the lives of God-knowing mortals are: loving service, unselfish devotion, courageous loyalty, sincere fairness, enlightened honesty, undying hope, confiding trust, merciful ministry, unfailing goodness, forgiving tolerance, and enduring peace.  These fruits of the spirit are discussed in more detail in the following paragraphs.

Loving Service

Humans must get beyond the childhood stage of selfishness and then transmute selfishness into loving service.  Loving service is service to humanity rendered selflessly with no personal expectations.

As adherents to the religions of man, men may serve their fellows from a sense of duty.  A son of God learns to serve with a loving spontaneity that carries all before it in the way that the human circulatory system carries nutrients from the heart to all parts of the body.

A son of God cooperates in all to which he can contribute (gained in meditation).  Proof that the service is the will of the Father will lie in the powerful assistance received.  Anything not expressing the will of the Father is avoided.  Meditation and service provide adequate expression for all the powers of the personality and soul.

Spiritual ambition or a fondness for power hinders true service.  Any emphasis upon the personality will distort the pure light of the soul as it seeks to pour through the lower self.

A true son walks the earth giving no thought to the size of his accomplishments.  He has no pre-conceived ideas as to his own value or usefulness. 

Acquisitiveness in the average man is the need to acquire that which the man wants for himself.  A spiritual man holds nothing for himself.  He utilizes all that is laid up in the divine storehouse for those he seeks to help.

The Christ does not look at a worker's worldly status or at the numbers of people who gather around him.  He examines the motives that prompt the worker’s activity and at the effect of his influence upon his fellowmen. 

Unselfish Devotion

An aspiring son of God will not make the contact desired in his meditation until he has transmuted emotional devotion into unselfish service to humanity, not just to the Christ.

A gentle nature and a loving attitude can produce a slowly developing spirit of dissatisfaction. Even though his fellows may love an aspiring son, he may find greater service in freeing himself from social ties and functioning in all his relationships as more ascetic.

The path of sonship may appear difficult to walk because the concept appears as a level of unachievable detachment. Such doubters are under estimating themselves. Undaunted persistence will lead to unselfish devotion.  Persistence is the characteristic of a son pledged to God. Men who do not waver in their search for light and for a field in which to serve their soul prove their devotion to their brothers, serve humanity, and the greater Sons Who guide the destiny of men.

In service to the brotherhood, there is little individual life. Increasingly the bonds of unselfish devotion should control the life of the individual.

Courageous Loyalty

A courageously loyal son of God is one who accepts the fact of sonship in the Kingdom of God with all of the demands of loyalty that acceptance involves.  He acknowledges the fact that all souls are one in the Supreme and he seeks expression as a soul.

A loyal son’s service to humanity determines all his activities and subordinates his life to the needs of time, not to a distant goal.

Loyalty to God takes great courage.  It takes courage to make spiritual decisions and to abide by them.  It takes courage to adjust one’s life (in all relations) to the needs and service of mankind.  It takes courage to demonstrate to others that the present world catastrophe is more important than the petty affairs of one’s individual life.  It takes courage to disregard the frailties of the physical body and the weariness of age.

Only honest and brave individuals are able to follow the leading of the inner spirit through the confusing maze of living.

 An aspiring son of God must beware of any sense of futility.  The sons of materialism use this weapon to stun their spiritual opponents into helplessness.

Christ’s death was the final act of that Son’s life of service. Inevitably, those who reveal truth to men are renounced.  They often pay with their lives for their teaching. Christ was no exception. The Crucifixion was the crowning act of his courageously loyal life.

Sincere Fairness

Sincere fairness is the condition of being totally just and unbiased.  Such a quality of fairness demands the ability to make judgments free from any discrimination or dishonesty.

A son of God best demonstrates sincere fairness by respecting the personalities of others. No matter how righteous his cause, a messenger of God must never promote any mission by psychic or physical force such as overwhelming arguments, superior mental advantage, cunning eloquence, fear, pity, or sentiment. Only spiritual power wins spiritual victories.

Sincerely fair sons must live as if physical bodies (their own and others) do not exist. Cancel the limitations the physical body imposes on the spiritual consciousness by an inner mental attitude. A son of God may function as a teacher by appealing directly to the divine spirit that dwells within the minds of men.

Even though a son of God ignores physical bodies and despite the handicaps and the demands of the physical vehicle, the body must be uncontaminated to properly conduct the spiritual force that flows through it.

Enlightened Honesty

There is no doubting the desire, the determination, and the dedication of a son of God to serve humanity.  Enlightened honesty, however, may be the missing quality in his service.

Lacking enlightened honesty, an aspiring son of God may be spiritually repulsing contact from his inner side. This is not a reluctance to cooperate.  Rather, it is that he, as a personality, is placing himself in the center of his service to humanity.  His suggestion of self militates against identifying himself with the world of relativity.

The realization of this is not evident in his mind because he sees himself as the most real factor in any situation.  This personality attitude is deception and illusion. Emphasis upon personality conveys a sense of insincerity. There is no soul strength in his expression of life, but only the determination of the personality.

Enlightened honesty compels a son of God to concern himself only with what his brother is feeling and thinking.  He does this because he is more interested in the happiness of his brother than in his own feelings or thought.

Enlightened honesty is self-forgetfulness.  A son of God becomes strong by rendering his personality weak.

Undying Hope

Sons of God should never think they are what they want to be. This is impossible.

The life of a son of God does not stand still but inevitably (if he is sincere and earnest) proceeds from revelation to revelation.

In dealing with Deity, man can only know God through His nature, which is Spirit (Life) and Soul (love).  Man does not yet know the Universal Father. The Father remains inscrutable, unseen and unknown, except as He is revealed through the life of His sons, and by the revelation given by Jesus Christ.

The undying hope of a son of God is to know the Father when he enters His Presence in Paradise.

With undying hope, the sons of God stand for the spiritual values and love all men. This does not mean refraining from rebelling against the evil in life. Sons must love the offender and yet rid the world of the offense.

Confiding Trust

It is because man can harmonize with the spiritual leadings of the Thought Adjuster (the fragment of the Father that lives within man), that man experiences the presence and transforming power of other spiritual influences that surround him. The fact that man is not intellectually conscious of the intimate contact with the indwelling Adjuster does not invalidate this confraternity.

Communion with the Adjuster requires a confiding trust in His presence and directives.

The proof of companionship with the divine Adjuster consists entirely in the nature and extent of the fruits of the spirit yielded in the life experience of the individual believer. “Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.”  (Matthew 7: 20.)

While the will of God does not constantly prevail in the heart of a God-seeking mortal, if the period encompasses a lifetime, God's will is discernible in the spirit fruits that are borne in the life of each spirit-led son of God.

Such illuminated mortals already discern the lights of eternal life while performing the duties of their earthly assignments.

Merciful Ministry

Jesus preached a merciful ministry.  He admonished his apostles to do nothing to destroy the self-respect of individuals. The gospel should restore self-respect to those who have lost it.

The apostles were not to condemn wrongs, but rather to recognize the laudable things in the lives of their followers. Christ said he would stop at nothing to restore self-respect to those who have lost it and really desire to regain it.

Jesus taught the apostles to be especially careful not to wound the self-respect of timid and fearful souls or indulge in sarcasm at the expense of their simple-minded brethren. Jesus noted that idleness is destructive of self-respect.  He directed his teachers to put forth every effort to secure work for those who were without employment.

Unfailing Goodness

God manifests himself to every one of his creatures to their capacity to grasp the quality of goodness.

Unfailing goodness (whether personal morality, social equity, or divine ministry) is true and beautiful. When truth, beauty, and goodness are coordinated in personality experience, the result is a high order of love conditioned by wisdom and qualified by loyalty. Health, sanity, and happiness are harmonious integrations of truth, beauty, and goodness. Such efficient living comes about through the unification of energy, idea, and spirit systems.

To be great is to be Godlike. The quality of greatness is determined by the content of goodness.  If mortals can become good, they are becoming great. The more steadfastly humans pursue the concepts of divine goodness; the more they grow in greatness and in magnitude of survival character.

Goodness is realized in social service, altruism, and religion.

Forgiving Tolerance

Forgiving tolerance is the realization that all mortals are the children of the One Father.  However, sons of God must sever any relationship with people who seek to attack and destroy, regardless of their motives.  Sons of God must put themselves on the side of those who work for constructive ends.  They should work silently for order founded on love and brotherhood. 

Forgiving tolerance requires a son of God to face humanity’s problems, to think clearly, about what is occurring, and take corrective action. Humanity must shift its consciousness away from its aggressive acquisitive material desires into soul consciousness on a world scale. This is true of individuals, of nations and of races.  As each individual works out his own problems in daily life, he is helping to solve the world problem.

Sons of God must cooperate with the government or state to which they owe allegiance.  (This does not mean endorsing all policies and lines of activity undertaken by such governments.  It simply means refraining from all actions that could cause problems.)  There are always possibilities for constructive activity within any governmental policy or regime.  It is to these constructive and peaceful enterprises that the sons of God must direct their attention.

Further, sons of God should refrain from all interference in the affairs of any political party or religious group.

God’s mortal sons should strive after harmlessness in speech and in life in relation to family, community, nation or group of nations.  They do not attack or defame any leader, nation, or race.

The spiritual forces cannot work through critical people, whose ideas and attitudes cause separation, and who are fanatical in their beliefs and comments. 

Enduring Peace

The enduring peace of a son of God is indifference to the cares of the world.  To a son of God, it does not matter if nations topple or all things visible crash.

Unlike the material gifts the world gives, the peace Jesus gives is not quantified.  Only the capacity to receive limits His gift to individuals.  Capacity to receive increases as the individual attempts to give away his spiritual gifts.

The personal peace of Jesus makes the parts of the individual personality whole. His social peace thwarts fear, greed, and anger. His political peace thwarts racial antagonisms, national fears, and war.

The gift of enduring peace fills the recipient with an inner contentment and serenity, a sense of underlying oneness.

The touch of the spiritual energies such as love and enduring peace are delicate. Only one who knows their true value may use them. Sons of God must discern the spirit that is flaming within them with gifts of spiritual energy. Those who do not accept the gift of spirit wither. Through ignorance, the dark ones destroy themselves.

Paths of Sonship

Absolute Sonship (the path being traveled by the Master Son, Michael, the creator of this universe) corresponds to the path of sonship that humans travel on a much lower plane.  The Master Sons on the path of Absolute Sonship know the wishes and the will of the Absolute Father.  He entrusts the execution of His plan to the Master Sons just as Michael entrusts the execution of his will to those in his hierarchy down through the human disciples.  Eventually, human disciples will assist the Master Sons seeking Absolute Sonship.

In our dual universe, human disciples confront opposites.  They choose a path of activity or an attitude of mind that produces pleasure or pain.  This is because men fail to distinguish between the personal self (functioning as a physical, emotional, and a mental unit) and the divine spirit Who indwells each person.  Humans identify themselves with the mortal form rather than the spirit.  Men regard themselves as the faux non-self, forgetting their sonship unity with Christ and the Universal Father.  Men do not realize they are in reality the indwelling spirit self, who labors as their Thought Adjuster.

The purpose of the temporary mortal form is to enable the true Self to contact worlds otherwise closed to it and to develop full awareness of all parts of the Father's kingdom.  Through the human form, experience is gained, consciousness is awakened, faculty is developed, and powers are unfolded.

As sonship is meditated upon and understood, each person realizes he is not the form but the indweller, not the material self but the spiritual, not differentiated but One. One becomes what one is through meditation on the soul, the middle aspect, the Christ principle that links the Father (spirit) and the Mother (matter or the Unqualified Absolute).

Some day, all religions will be viewed as emanating from one great spiritual source.  There will no longer be Christians nor heathens, Jews nor Gentiles, but simply one body of believers. All will accept the same truths, not as theological concepts but as the essence of spiritual living.  All will recognize the brotherhood of divine sonship.  All will seek to cooperate with the continuously revealed divine plan. This religion is forming today.

Meditation

For their well-earned rest and relaxation, Jesus sometimes took his apostles away by themselves for short periods to engage in meditation and prayer.  For the most part, however, he kept them serving the multitudes. The soul of man requires both spiritual exercise and spiritual nourishment.

One of the great troubles with modern life is that man feels he is too busy to find time to retreat for spiritual meditation and religious devotion.  However, it is not necessary to go apart to a lonely or holy place for solitary meditation to receive the spirit.

Jesus taught that God lives in man. He listens and waits to help.

Emotional excitement is not a proper spiritual stimulus. Excitement exhausts the powers of both mind and body. The secret of spiritual communion is combining meditation and relaxation. The most healthful spiritual meditation is silent thoughtful worship and a prayer of thanksgiving.  Meditation makes the contact of mind with spirit.  Relaxation establishes the capacity for spiritual receptivity. Weakness becomes strength.  Fear becomes courage, and the mind of the ego becomes the will of God.

Through communion with God comes deliverance from the world’s illusions of evil and material restraints. When man knows God, he frees the soul to prepare for the spirit struggle of immortality. As the mortal life is ending, man must not hesitate to forsake the body.  He will awaken in a more fitting and beautiful form in the realms of the Supreme where there is no fear, sorrow, hunger, thirst, or death. Evil is left behind in this world.  Only virtue follows the soul to heaven.

Jesus told Peter, "Serve your fellow men even as I have served you.  Forgive your fellow mortals even as I have forgiven you. Let experience teach you the value of meditation and the power of intelligent reflection."

Those who know that God is enthroned in the human heart are destined to become like him, immortal.

Meditation Advice

Through meditation, service, and a close relationship with the immanent Spirit, one achieves unlimited powers, works miracles, and acquires the highest spiritual knowledge.

There are, of course, many levels of meditation.  One becomes better with practice.  Preliminary stages are concentration upon and application to any particular line of thought.  This differs for different types of people. A striving for righteousness (i.e. goodness, morality, virtuousness and ethicality, is a vital ingredient for spiritual meditation.

Concentration upon solving any problem is a lesson in learning to meditate.  A person who is reading with the full force and power of his brain to understand what lies behind the written word (symbol and metaphor) is learning to meditate. The religious person centers his attention upon the life within his form, upon God, upon Christ, or upon that which embodies his ideal. 

Avoid meditation techniques that combine breathing exercises with meditation, specify physical postures, and teach students to center their attention upon physical organs or centers.  These processes are concerned with the form not with the spirit, which is life itself.

True meditation opens unimaginable ranges of experiences. The walls of man’s personal life no longer confine him.  He no longer occupies himself with selfish interests. His life will begin to merge with the greater whole.  He will seek to understand that greater Identity of which he is a part.

Through brooding concentration, constant recollection, and by strenuous application to the particular line of thought that interests them, great thinkers (such as Edison) have tapped the inner reservoirs of inspiration and of power.  They bring down thought forms from the higher levels of the mental plane that benefit all mankind. 

When man works more on meditation, begins cultivating the interest of all rather than self, developed strong uncontaminated physical bodies, and emotional bodies not influenced by desire, when he uses his mental body a tool not its slave, then he shall know the true meaning and the benefits of meditation.

The Objective of Meditation

The purpose of meditation is to align the soul, the mind, and the brain.

When a man functions as soul, the soul is the intermediary between the plane of divine ideas and the mental plane.  Participation in the divine creative process is the objective of all true meditation.

Participation in the creative process requires the thinker to discard all conceited and selfish thoughts.  The soul receives and registers idea shadows intuitively.  Through determined contemplation, the thinker receives the image of a subjective skeleton and identifies the form that it should take.

This process compares to human conception.  Within the embryo (the result of the male-female relationship) lies all the inherent capacity for growth and development of a finished form. Similarly, in meditation, the Spirit aspect has fecundated the matter aspect, represented by the mind.  Within the idea that inspired by the Spirit and materially conceived, lie hid the potencies of finished thought forms. In the early stages, there is only the conceived idea, but it is potent enough to draw to itself the essentials for growth and form.  It may prove mediocre and feeble or a creation of real beauty and value.

The factors that govern the emergence of an idea out of the cosmic mind into the world of tangible forms are energies emanating from the plane of the Seven Adjutant Mind Spirits. They calculate the effects of the forces with which new ideas move forward, and the manipulation of energies.  They allow a cushion for the strains and stresses upon life forms, and they deal with the cyclic impulses to which the evolutionary process must respond.

The human kingdom is the medium of expression for the cosmic mind.  As the perfection of sons of God in human form increases, the problems of the natural world will be more easily solved. 

The Power of Sons

The Universal Father rules through his Sons.  Throughout the organization of the universe, there is an unbroken hierarchy of spiritual rulers ending with the Planetary Princes on the evolutionary worlds.  The Most Highs direct the Planetary Princes. "The Most Highs rule in the kingdoms of men" (Daniel 4:17).

The Most Highs rule in the kingdoms of men chiefly through the ministry of angels.

The midway creatures (created at a level slightly above men) act as liaison between the angels and favorably constituted mortals. The midwayers collaborate with the Thought Adjusters in the minds of the receptive humans. Through the forward-looking human personalities, the spiritual agenda is advanced.

This activity impels religions, governments and civilizations forward. Secular history reveals that major developments in civilization result from the activity of deity and men.

A spiritual movement normally precedes the beginning of a great social movement.  The world’s religions produce an environment that makes the work of lay leaders possible. Such religious and political threads can be traced back through history in great pronouncements such as America’s Declaration of Independence. 

In the battle of America for freedom from England, the religions of the colonies laid the groundwork for securing religious and political freedom.  The religious strife between the Church of England and the American Dissenters furnished most of the combustible material for the Revolutionary War.  Disputes over taxes ignited the flames. 

The Most Highs had spoken.