Around the Year with Emmet Fox: A Book of Daily Readings

by Emmet Fox

The real remedy for every one of your difficulties is, as we are told on every page of the Bible, to find and know the Indwelling Presence. Acquaint now thyself with him, and be at peace: thereby good shall come unto thee (Job 22:21).

The first step that the earnest student must take to locate the Inner Light within himself is to settle on a definite method of working, selecting whichever one seems to suit him best, and then giving it a fair trial.

Get a definite method of working, practice it conscientiously every day; and stick to one method long enough to give it a fair chance. You would not expect to play the violin after two or three attempts, or to drive a car without a little preliminary practice.

Get to work on some concrete problem, choosing preferably whatever it is that you are most afraid of. Work at it steadily; and if no improvement at all shows itself within, say, a couple of weeks, then try your method on another problem.

The problem really is, not the getting rid of your difficulties, but finding your own best method for doing it.

There is only one way to make spiritual progress, and that is to practice the Presence of God.

Prayer is the one thing that can make a change in your life. If you will go direct to God in simple, affirmative prayer, you can heal your body, bring peace and harmony into your life, and make well-being a reality.

You should realize God as Truth when you want information on any subject, or if you suspect that you have to deal with deceit. If you believe that someone is trying to deceive you, claim that divine Truth dwells in the person concerned, and is expressed through him. If you realize this clearly enough he will then speak the truth. When you have to transact any important business such as signing a lease or a contract, spend a few minutes realizing divine Truth and if there is anything you should know it will come out.

Where there is fear there cannot be love. The best way to rid yourself of fear is to realize divine Love. If you love God more than you love your microbe, your sickness, your grievance, your lack, or your fear, you will be healed.

Divine Love never fails, but the important thing to realize is that divine Love must be in your own heart and cannot operate from outside, so to speak. When your prayers are not answered it must be because you have not fulfilled the conditions of the law, and, ninety-nine times in a hundred, it is because you are lacking in a sense of love for all.

Practice love every day and watch your thought, and watch your tongue, and watch your deed, that nothing contrary to love finds expression there.

You are Spirit. Spirit cannot die and was never born. Your true self was never born and will never die. You are eternal, divine, unchanging Spirit, in your true nature. The whole universe is a spiritual creation but we see it in a limited way. You have sometimes seen a window made of fluted glass, and you know that if you look at the street through this window everything will be distorted. Nevertheless, you know that the distortion arises from your seeing wrongly. Our false vision causes us to know ourselves only from a seeming birth to a seeming death; but this is illusion too. This distorted vision of Spirit is really what we know as “matter.” Eucken says, “Reality is an independent spiritual world, unconditioned by the apparent world of sense”—and this is substance.

The actual method of working is simplicity itself. All that you have to do is this: Stop thinking about the difficulty, whatever it is, and think about God instead. This is the complete rule, and if only you will do this, the trouble, whatever it is, will presently disappear. It may be big or little, it may concern health, finance, a lawsuit, a quarrel, an accident, or anything else conceivable; but whatever it is, just stop thinking about it, and think of God instead—that is all you have to do.

In order to “Golden Key” a troublesome person or a difficult situation, think, “Now I am going to ‘Golden Key’ John, or Mary, or that threatened danger”; then lift John or Mary or the danger into the presence of God and think only of God.

What you think upon grows. Whatever you allow to occupy your mind you magnify in your own life. Whether the subject of your thought be good or bad, the law works and the condition grows. Any subject that you keep out of your mind tends to diminish in your life, because what you do not use atrophies.

What you think upon grows. Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things

Stagnation is really death; but as long as you realize that the Source of your supply is the one unchangeable Spirit, all is well. The fading out of one channel will be but the signal for the opening of another.

In its inner and most important meaning, our daily bread signifies the realization of the Presence of God—an actual sense that God exists not merely in a nominal way, but as the great reality; we can rely upon Him to supply all that we need to have; teach us all that we need to know; and guide our steps so that we shall not make mistakes. This is Emanuel, or God with us.

The common mistake, of course, is to suppose that a formal recognition of God is sufficient, or that talking about divine things is the same as possessing them; but this is exactly on a par with supposing that looking at a tray of food, or discussing the chemical composition of sundry foodstuffs, is the same thing as actually eating a meal. It is this mistake that is responsible for the fact that people sometimes pray for a thing for years without any tangible result. If prayer is a force at all, it cannot be possible to pray without something happening. Pray regularly and quietly—remember that in all mental work, effort or strain defeats itself—then presently, the realization will come.

The most futile thing in the world is to seek to live upon a past realization. The thing that means spiritual life to you is your realization of God here and now.

The art of life is to live in the present moment, and to make that moment as perfect as we can by the realization that we are the instruments and expression of God Himself.

The forgiveness of sins is the central problem of life. Sin is a sense of separation from God, and is the major tragedy of human experience. It is, of course, rooted in selfishness. It is essentially an attempt to gain some supposed good to which we are not entitled in justice. It is a sense of isolated, self-regarding, personal existence, whereas the Truth of Being is that all is One. Our true selves are at one with God, undivided from Him, expressing His ideas, witnessing to His nature. Because we are all one with the great Whole of which we are spiritually a part, it follows that we are one with all men. Evil, sin, the fall of man, in fact, is essentially the attempt to negate this Truth. We try to live apart from God. We act as though we could have plans and purposes and interests separate from Him. All this, if it were true, would mean that existence is not one and harmonious, but a chaos of competition and strife. But, of course, it is not true, and therein lies the joy of life.

The forgiveness of others is the vestibule of Heaven. You have to get rid of all resentment and condemnation of others, and, not least, of self-condemnation and remorse. You have to forgive yourself, but you cannot forgive yourself sincerely until you have forgiven others first.

If your prayers are not being answered, search your consciousness and see if there is not some old circumstance about which you are still resentful. Search and see if you are not really holding a grudge against some individual, or some group. If so, then you have an act of forgiveness to perform, and when this is done, you will probably make your demonstration. If you cannot forgive at present, you will have to wait for your demonstration until you can, and you will have to postpone finishing your recital of the Lord’s Prayer too.

By forgiveness you set yourself free; you save your soul.

Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and he shall sustain thee … (Psalm 55:22). The technique of forgiveness is not very difficult when you understand how. The only thing that is essential is willingness to forgive. Provided you desire to forgive the offender, the greatest part of the work is already done. The method of forgiving is this: Get by yourself and become quiet. Repeat any prayer that appeals to you, or read a chapter of the Bible. Then quietly say, “I fully and freely forgive X (mentioning the name of the offender); I loose him and let him go. I cast the burden aside. He is free now, and I am free too. The Truth of Christ has set us both free. I thank God.” On no account repeat this act of forgiveness, because to do it a second time would be tacitly to repudiate your own work. Afterward, whenever the memory of the offender or the offense happens to come into your mind, bless the delinquent briefly and dismiss the thought. Do this, however many times the thought may come back. You will find that all bitterness and resentment have disappeared, and you are both free with the perfect freedom of the children of God. Your forgiveness is complete.

You think, and your thoughts materialize as experience, and thus it is, all unknown to yourself as a rule, that you are actually weaving the pattern of your own destiny, here and now, by the way in which you allow yourself to think, day by day and all day long. Your fate is largely in your own hands. Nobody but yourself can keep you down. Neither parents, nor wives, nor husbands, nor employers, nor neighbors; nor poverty, nor ignorance, nor any power whatever can keep you out of your own when once you have learned how to think.

If you really believe in the existence of God you should be happy and cheerful. God has all power, and God is good; so life must be good too.

The moment you catch yourself thinking a negative thought, you should reject it instantly. Do not stop to say “good-by” to the error but immediately switch your attention to the Presence of God. Indeed, we may say that when error presents itself to consciousness, the first five seconds are golden.

Supply the necessary mental condition, and the demand, the opportunity, or the occasion, will present itself automatically.

To recognize failure intelligently is the first step toward building success.

And the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God, and into the patient waiting for Christ (2 Thessalonians 3:5).

Begin every treatment (no matter how many you may give) by saying: I can overcome this difficulty.

To cast the burden means really to insist upon harmony and peace of mind, and to cease from worry and anxiety there and then.

Externally, the Bible is a collection of inspired documents written by men of all kinds, in all sorts of circumstances, and over hundreds of years of time. The documents are seldom originals, but redactions and compilations of older fragments; and the names of the actual writers are seldom known for certain. This, however, does not affect the spiritual purpose of the Bible. The book, as we have it, is an inexhaustible reservoir of spiritual Truth, compiled under divine inspiration, and the actual route by which it reached its present form does not matter.

The spiritual key to the Bible rescues us from these difficulties, dilemmas, and seeming inconsistencies. And the Truth turns out to be nothing less than the amazing but undeniable fact that the whole outer world—whether it be the physical body, the common things of life, the winds and the rain, the clouds, the earth itself—is amenable to man’s thought, and that he has dominion over it when he knows it.

To accept the Truth is the great first step, but not until we have proved it in doing is it ours. Jesus proved everything that he taught, even to the overcoming of death in what we call the resurrection. By surmounting every sort of limitation to which mankind is subject, he performed a work of unique and incalculable value to the race, and is therefore justly entitled the Savior of the world.

If you really do wish to become a different person altogether in the sight of God and man, then Jesus, in his Sermon on the Mount, has clearly shown you how it is to be done.

To be poor in spirit does not in the least mean the thing we call “poor spirited.” To be poor in spirit means to have emptied yourself of all desire to exercise personal self-will, and, what is just as important, to have renounced all preconceived opinions in the wholehearted search for God. It means to be willing to set aside your present habits of thought, your present views and prejudices, your present way of life if necessary; to jettison, in fact, anything and everything that can stand in the way of your finding God.

This is really the story of mankind in general. We reject the salvation that Jesus offers us—our chance of finding God—because we “have great possessions”; not so much that we are very rich in terms of money, for indeed most people are not, but because we have great possessions in the way of preconceived ideas—confidence in our own judgment, and in the ideas with which we happen to be familiar. We have pride, born of academic distinction; sentimental or material attachment to institutions and organizations; habits of life that we have no desire to renounce; concern for human respect; or perhaps fear of public ridicule. And these possessions keep us chained to the rock of suffering that is our exile from God.

The poor in spirit suffer from none of these embarrassments, either because they never had them, or because they have risen above them on the tide of spiritual understanding.

There is really no need for man to have trouble, because if he will only seek God first, the trouble need never come. He always has the choice of learning by spiritual unfoldment or of learning by painful experience. Family troubles, quarrels and estrangements, sin and remorse, need never come at all if we seek first the Kingdom of God and Right Understanding; but if we will not do so, then come they must, and for us this mourning will be a blessing in disguise, for through it we shall be “comforted.” And by comfort the Bible means the experience of the Presence of God, which is the end of all mourning.

The word meek in the Bible connotes a mental attitude for which there is no other single word available. It is a combination of open-mindedness, faith in God, and the realization that the will of God for us is always something joyous and interesting and vital. This state of mind also includes a perfect willingness to allow this will of God to come about in whatever way divine Wisdom considers to be best, rather than in some particular way that we have chosen for ourselves.

This mental attitude of teachableness, willingness to be led, is the key to dominion, or success in demonstration. There is no word for it in common speech, because the thing does not exist except for those who are up on the spiritual basis of the teaching of Jesus Christ. If we desire to inherit the earth we must absolutely acquire this “meekness.” The Lord reigneth; let the earth rejoice … (Psalm 97:1).

Moses—who overcame the old age belief to the extent of manifesting the physical body of a young man in the prime of life when, according to the calendar, he was one hundred and twenty years old, and then transcended matter altogether, or “dematerialized” without dying—was known preeminently for this quality; “as meek as Moses.” Apart from his own personal demonstration, Moses also did a marvelous work for his whole nation, getting it out of Egyptian bondage in the face of incredible difficulties. Moses had an open mind, ready to be taught new things and new ways of thinking and working. He was not, in the beginning at least, free from serious faults of character, but he gradually rose above these defects as the new truth worked in his soul. Moses thoroughly understood that to conform oneself rigorously to the will of God, far from involving the loss of any good, could only mean a better and more splendid life. He did not, therefore, think of his task as self-sacrifice, for he knew it to be the highest form of self-glorification—the glorification of God. … the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works…. I am in the Father, and the Father in me (John 14:10-11). There is a marvelous Oriental saying that “meekness compels God himself.”

Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled (Matthew 5:6). Righteousness is another of the key words of the Bible, one of those keys that the reader must have in his possession if he is to get at the true meaning of the book. Like earth and meek and comfort, it is used in a special and definite sense. Righteousness means not merely right conduct, but right thinking. In the Sermon on the Mount, every clause reiterates the truth that outer things are but consequences. As within, so without. When people awaken to a knowledge of these truths, they naturally begin to apply them in their own lives. Realizing at last the vital importance of “righteousness” they begin immediately to try to put their house in order. The principle involved is simple, but unfortunately the exemplifying of it is anything but easy. Now, why should this be so? The answer lies in the potency of habit; and habits of thinking are at once the most subtle and the most difficult to break. Perhaps failure to achieve righteousness is the failure of half-heartedness; you long but not too deeply. Your hunger and thirst do not rise from a sense of total need. Have a mental stocktaking or a review of your life. It could not happen that a wholehearted search for truth and righteousness, if persevered in, should not be crowned with success. God is not mocked, nor does He mock His children.

March 31 THE PURE IN HEART Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God (Matthew 5:8). This is one of those wonderful gnomic sayings in which the Bible is so rich. It is a summing up in a few words of a whole philosophy of religion. Let us begin by considering what the promise in this Beatitude is. It is nothing less than to see God. To “see” in the sense referred to here, signifies spiritual perception, and spiritual perception is just that capacity to apprehend the true nature of Being that we all so sadly lack. We live in God’s world, but we do not in the least know it as it is. Heaven lies all about us—but because we are lacking in spiritual perception, we are unable to recognize it, to experience it, and, therefore, so far as we are concerned, we may be said to be shut out of Heaven. We are very much in the position of a color-blind man in a beautiful flower garden. All around him are glorious colors; but he sees only blacks, whites, and grays. If we suppose him to be also devoid of the sense of smell, we shall see what a very small part of the glory of the garden exists for him. Yet it is all there, if he could but sense it. Out task is to surmount these limitations as rapidly as may be, until we reach the point where we can know things as they really are—experience Heaven as it really is. That is what is meant by “seeing God.” To see God is to apprehend Truth as it really is, and this is infinite freedom and perfect bliss.

The eye symbolizes spiritual perception. Whatever you give your attention to, is the thing that governs your life. Attention is the key. Your free will lies in the directing of your attention. Whatever you steadfastly direct your attention to, will come into your life and dominate it. If you do not direct your attention consistently to anything in particular—and many people do not—then nothing in particular will come into your life except uncertainty and suspense.

If the Glory of God comes first with you, and to express His Will becomes the rule of your life, then your eye is single and your whole body, or embodiment, will be full of light.

Man is essentially spiritual, the image and likeness of God, and therefore he is made for the spiritual basis, and he cannot really succeed on any other.