Discover the Power Within You: A Guide to the Unexplored Depths Within

by Eric Butterworth

We see then that the heart and core of Jesus’ teachings concerned not His divinity, but the Divinity of Man—the principle of divine sonship. He discovered this principle in general, and the divine potential in Himself in particular. He demonstrated the Christ-Spirit in action in His own life.

The word “Christ” is a problem in semantics. Because of a lifelong conditioning, most of us think of “Christ” and “Jesus” as synonymous. Lest it be thought that we are making a big issue out of a small matter, we must emphasize that this distinction is the hinge upon which the whole Gospel message turns. Unless we are secure on this important point, the whole structure of the Divinity of Man breaks down for us. Get this point clear in your mind! Drill yourself on it. You will become aware of the frequency with which the distinction is either clouded or completely confused. You will hear people referring to “When Christ was alive…. When Christ walked the earth, etc.” Christ is not a person, but a principle. Christ is a level of the particularization of God into man, the focal point through which all the attributes of God are projected into livingness. When Paul says, “Christ in you, your hope of glory,” he isn’t referring to Jesus. Jesus discovered the Christ principle within Himself.

Christ in you is your hope of glory, for it is that of you that is of God and is God being projected into visibility as you. Christ in you is your own spiritual unity with the Infinite, the key to your health and success.

Christ in you is “the true light which lighteth every man, coming into the world” (John 1:9). In other words, this point of light in the heart of man which Paul called the Christ, was also in Lao-tze, in Confucius, in Zoroaster, in Buddha, in Plato, in Emerson, and (in a very real sense) in you and me.

Every man is a spiritual being. Every man is innately good. Every man is a potential Christ.

It is not that we want to depreciate Jesus. We couldn’t do that if we wanted to. We are not pulling Him down to our level, but showing that we can be lifted up to His level. Low and base as man’s actions may at times be, he is still a child of God. He still has the potential of the Christ within him. And this is the hope without which the whole Christian religion doesn’t make much sense.

It is not hard to find where Jesus stood on this issue. He said (though there are those who would like us to forget it) that every single one of us can do and be all that He revealed if we stand where He stood and see as He saw and lay hold of the Truth as He laid hold of it. Jesus did not ignore nor deny man’s weakness and his outright sinfulness. But neither did He insist that man was bound to weakness nor that He was an incurable sinner. He implied very strongly that sin is simply the frustration of the divine potential in man and that what we call evil is simply the concealment of the good.

Not one person in a million is living up to the best within him. The great wisdom of the ages still lies locked in the depths of man’s mental capacity, the great possibility of health and healing and eternal life still lies undiscovered in the depths of man’s inner life, and the great key to success and opulence still lies within man’s undiscovered potential.

You have seen the Christ, not by sight, but by insight.” Let us be careful at this point, lest we lose sight of the principle of the Divinity of Man. This has often been used to prove that Jesus was the Christ of God, that He was God coming down from “out there” to live as a man for a while. Look again at this incident and you will note that it is Peter and not Jesus who is being lauded. Jesus had proved His divine capacities many times over by seeing into the heart of people and drawing out their innate greatness. But now it is Peter who has a flash of spiritual perception and who sees beyond the person to the real, to the divine, in Jesus. Peter reveals his own divinity just by the fact that he sees Jesus’ divinity.

The very first time it was used was when Jesus said, “Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my church.” He was not naming the man but praising a quality displayed by the man. The quality was petros, which is a term similar to our word “faith”—it means rocklike steadfastness. Jesus is praising Simon (Peter) for being stable and perceptive. And He is saying that it is upon this kind of perception that the church must be built. We read into the word “church” all that it has come to mean through the centuries since that time. But at that time, there was no precedent. The word “church” meant “called-out ones.”

Paul must have caught this meaning, for he said, “Know ye not that ye are a temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?” (I Cor. 3:16). The “church” Jesus talks about building is the inner life of man. He is saying that to build this inner life we must develop the perception to see ourselves and others in the context of the Divinity of Man. Actually, it seems evident that Jesus is giving Simon (Peter) something to live up to. He was anything but rocklike in character. He was the most impetuous and unstable of all the disciples. Jesus probably had been troubled about him. But in this flash of insight, “Peter” had given evidence of his inner potential. Jesus was delighted, and He gave him a prayer treatment to build up his consciousness of faith and stability. Later events show that this high trust took some doing for Peter, but eventually he did demonstrate all that Jesus had claimed for him and more. When we see it in this light, it gives hope for you and me, doesn’t it?

In all experience, life asks the question of you, “Who do you think you are?” The challenge is to get still and quietly reflect upon the whole man that you are. Humanly you may be terribly sick, discouraged, insufficient. But this is only one glimpse of the eternal performance of the soul on its journey to mastery. Is the dandelion only the tiny shoot? Are you only the limited person you appear to be or think you are? No! You are what you can be. And what can you be? From the standpoint of your divinity, you can be a perfect, healthy, confident, radiant expression of the living God.

What is this man? He is a good man, ignorant of his innate goodness, expressing himself incompletely, frustrating his divine potential. Granted, he has acted the role of a vicious criminal. But what are we going to do with him? Lock him up? Chain him? Punish him? But does this really correct him? Does it change his view of himself?

If we really want to help people in their discordant “performance,” we will have to develop the insight that Jesus praised in Peter, so that we will look beyond the “flesh-and-blood” appearance and see the Christ, the son of the living God. We will have to develop the perception to sense the spiritual dimension of their lives, to see them as whole, to salute the divinity within them.

To be poor in spirit or pride means to empty yourself of the desire to exercise personal will in the quest for self-realization.

“Blessed are the poor in pride.” Blessed are they who can let go of the attempt to understand intellectually, who accept the deep things of spirit as a little child. Blessed are they who are teachable, open-minded, receptive to the Truth, willing to renounce preconceived opinions and prejudices and entertain a new concept of life.

Jesus is telling us that there are two ways by which we may come into a knowledge of the Truth and experience the releasement of our inner power: (1) We can be “poor in spirit,” and simply let go instantly with the receptivity of a little child, and let our Christ self express, or (2) we can resist the Truth of our divinity until our life is devastated by the fruits of wrong thinking, such as sickness and sorrow and failure. Then in these experiences we may find our self-will broken down and replaced by a new desire to reach for the absolute Truth of God. So, Jesus is saying, “The man who sorrows is fortunate, for in his sorrow, he may come to experience God’s presence in his life.” It is not true that God sends problems to man, nor that man cannot find the heaven of fulfillment without challenges. However, the human of us tends to settle into ruts and routines and to resist the growth demanded by the expanding potential of our own divinity.

I AM GRATEFUL FOR CHALLENGES THAT LEAD ME BEYOND MY EXTREMITY TO GOD’S OPPORTUNITY.

Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. Considered from the human standpoint this statement, or promise, is ridiculous. It is most certainly the aggressive and not the meek who inherit and possess the earth. In fact, the average individual has many discouraging moments when he broods on the great injustices of life, because “they” always seem to get the breaks.

Actually, Jesus is not talking about “meekness” as an approach to people. He is referring to an attitude toward God. Jesus was meek toward God. He knew that “I of myself can do nothing.” He recognized that He was just a simple carpenter’s son, who had found His spiritual unity with God, and in this discovery He had tapped the secrets of the Universe. But He knew that the miracle-working power that was now His came not to Him but through Him. As long as He was in tune, He could do all things.

Meekness is a sensitiveness or surrender of consciousness to the influence of something. When Jesus says “Blessed are the meek” He doesn’t mean a surrender to people, but to God.

The best conductor of electricity is the substance that is least resistant to the flow of the electric current. Likewise, the best conductor of divine power is the person who is nonresistant to the flow of divine power. This attitude comes from a conviction that God is always the answer to human needs, and a willingness to submit wholeheartedly to the flow of the Spirit in and through us.

The meek consciousness is not self-centered. It is God-centered. It is humble in the recognition of human limitations but confident in the conviction of divine resources. And it is not afraid of public opinion or of resistance—not even of failure. Because success to this person is not a matter of public-acceptance but of God-acceptance. However, true meekness is not a show of humility or arrogant self-abasement to attract attention.

Realize that the great source of wisdom is intuition, the great source of vision is insight, the great source of power is innate spiritual power. Work diligently to get this consciousness of meekness which is the “taming” or harnessing of your inner potential—and you will become a master in your field. You will “inherit the earth.” Now, let us reduce this beatitude into a BE attitude. Let us affirm: I AM IN TUNE WITH GOD—THAT WHICH IS GOD-INSPIRED AND GOD-DIRECTED SHALL PREVAIL

Jesus deals with attitudes and not platitudes. It is right attitudes that make the successful man. It is right attitudes that make and sustain good health. It is right attitudes that enable a person to overcome alcohol or smoking or overeating. No matter what your need, you can be “transformed by the renewing of your mind.” A right attitude is the key to any desired good. “But,” Jesus is saying, “you must be hungry.” You may desire healing and you may be affirming life and wholeness for yourself. But you must “hunger and thirst” for health, want it to the exclusion of all else,

To “hunger and thirst for righteousness” is to want to be helped and healed to the extent of renewing the mind. If a person is in the gutter, the only way he can get out of the gutter is to look up and reach for something higher. He can be helped. He can rise out of the gutter of life, but first he must begin thinking “out-of-the-gutter” thoughts. This is true at every level of human experience. If a person is ill in mind or body, before he can get out of the experience of sickness, he must begin to think out of it. He must look up. He must entertain the possibility of something different in his life. He must desire it enough to reach for it—and reaching is actually accepting.

The fundamental idea of Jesus’ teaching is that man is essentially a divine creature. The potential for wholeness is forever with him and within him. Thus help and healing are not dependent upon some special act or will of God. They are a matter only of man’s faith and vision, his desire and acceptance, his “hunger and thirst after righteousness.” If men fulfill their part, the promise is “they shall be filled.”

Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. This attitude reveals the law of consciousness. If you want to be loved you must love; if you want friends you must be friendly; if you want just treatment, be just. Life is lived from within out. You may not always be able to change the world about you, but you can change your thoughts about the world; and when you do this, you change your world, which is a world of your thought.

This is a hard lesson for most of us, for we are not conditioned to believe that we can solve our problems with people and with the world by an inner adjustment. We are inclined to think “If my wife would just stop nagging… if my boss would just give me a break… if the weather were not as bad as it usually is… if this or that or the other would happen, then I would be happy.” Jesus is emphasizing that what comes to you is what your consciousness has drawn to you.

You can change the pattern of attraction and change your world. This is why Jesus later says, “Love your enemies and pray for those that despitefully use you”—not because they deserve it, but because you must take a step up in consciousness to evoke the higher working of the law.

You cannot see God with the human eyes in the sense of locating Him in a place, manifesting as a form. God is not to be seen with the physical eyes, for God is a whole of which man is a part. Every part is a manifestation of God, an expression of Infinite Mind, an animation of God-life, an activity of Divine Substance. So every part contains the essence, and thus the potential of the whole. If man is conscious of the whole within himself, then he is whole. It was in this consciousness that Jesus declared, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.” When man learns to see in God-consciousness, then he sees beyond appearances to the innate potential of all that appears. “Righteous judgment” is seeing from God-consciousness.

When you are pure in heart, when you are unalterably convinced that “There is only one presence and one power, God, the good, omnipotent,” then you see God everywhere, you see good everywhere. However, you are seeing things, not as they are, but as you are. This “seeing” is an insight which influences the outlook. The physical eyes are no longer organs of sense impression. They become channels for the expression of inner power. Seeing becomes an actual projection of God-power—a power of blessing. When you are “pure in heart,” when you are established in spiritual principle, you view all things from God-consciousness. Jesus saw God, or good, in all men. He refused to settle for the belief in the partial man of sin or weakness or affliction. From God-consciousness, He saw the whole man within the part, and this seeing was the key to His healing power.

The Church would do well to embark upon a “new evangelism” based upon the omnipresence of God, the good, and the practice of viewing life from the highest rather than the lowest point of view. People need to be trained to develop a spiritually oriented insight that will lead to the positive, creative, and loving outlook.

Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called sons of God. This is an important key to the potential God-power in man. Man is a spiritual being, a true child of God in spirit—but he only becomes this in fact and expression when he is attuned to the Infinite and expresses his God-potential of love and peace. This calls for much meditation and scientific prayer, the diligent conditioning of the mind to the accepting and releasement of the dynamic God-potential within.

I AM A CHILD OF GOD AND I ACT LIKE ONE. I AM A RADIATING CENTER OF PEACE AND LOVE.

And Jesus experienced the challenge of mental inertia in the account of His struggle with “Satan” in the wilderness. What is temptation but the inertial pull of limited states of consciousness resisting the upward reach of man’s higher aspirations? Jesus had caught the ideal of the Divinity of Man, and He had set His course in the direction of personal fulfillment. But Satan, the human consciousness of Jesus, was saying, “Don’t be foolish. You have fabulous powers by which you can control the world. You can be rich and powerful.” But the “external force” of Jesus’ unshakable faith and vision overcame the inertial pull of the human man. He said, “Get thee behind me Satan” (Matt. 4:10).

MY QUEST FOR TRUTH I PRESS ON PAST MY HUMANITY TO A DEEPENING AWARENESS AND AN INCREASING RELEASEMENT OF MY POTENTIAL DIVINITY.

God’s greatest gift to man is the power of thought, through which he can incorporate into his consciousness the mind of God.1 Charles Fillmore

Locked within the superconsciousness of man are the answers to all the problems and the secret of all the mysteries that mankind will ever face. Man is a thinking being. The very word “man” comes from an ancient Sanskrit word which literally means “to think.” Through thinking, man has the possibility of knowing God and expressing the wisdom of Divine Mind. Man is the greatest concentration of divine energies in the Universe. He is the greatest natural resource. And the world of possibilities within man is still the great frontier.

For every spiritual concept that excites you, get still and reflect quietly upon it until something happens in you. When you read something that seems strangely familiar, something that is inspiring and unforgettable, it is because the words have stirred up an awareness of a depth of spirituality within yourself. It is the releasement of this innate potential that is the object of all study. The words of the teacher, the book, or the course of study—even the words of the Bible—are not the object of your search, but the means to the end of a personal revelation of Truth.

Jesus is talking to you who are timid about speaking the word of Truth, and also you who talk too much about Truth. “Ye are the light of the world.” Isn’t that a wonderful thought? The light of the world is the very spirit of Truth. You are the very activity of God in expression, so there is no place where the light of God is any more present than where you are. And there is no one who is any more privileged to radiate that light than you. “Let your light shine.”

By whatever definition we hold, Jesus was a mystic of mystics. It has been said that a mystic is one who is no longer mystified—by religions, by theologies, by doctrines. The Temple rulers were mystified by Jesus’ mysticism, and they were mystified by their own creeds. Now these men were sincere people. The Temple was the repository of the accumulated facts about God, and the body of this kind of knowledge was tremendous. The rulers were the keepers of the keys, as it were, the defender of a faith that they did not understand. How then could they understand one who did?

This is what Jesus was saying over and over. Know the Truth about yourself, about the indwelling potential of your own divinity. Know the divine law and open your inner eye to see life from a higher dimension. “Ye shall know the Truth and the Truth shall make you free.”

Jesus was first of all a teacher, and it is the duty of any teacher to break commandments and teach others to do so. Jesus taught men how to break down the crystallized creeds of religion and know the Truth inherent within them. He showed men how to break the law of the Sabbath by fulfilling it. “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27). In this sense, it is the purpose of this book to break all the commandments, to clarify them, to simplify and make them usable and demonstrable.

Secondly, let us remember that “Heaven,” as Jesus uses the term, refers to a present potential rather than a future place. He said, “The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand” (Matt. 3:2). The Kingdom of Heaven is always within the creation as the oak tree is always in the acorn. The whole is always in the part. The divine

man that you can be is always the depth-potential within the struggling huma...

We might have a clearer insight into Jesus’ intention here if we think of “least in the Kingdom” as “at least in the Kingdom.” Heaven being the innate potential, the least in the potential would mean the starting point of its releasement. Jesus is simply saying that anyone who makes the break-through from dogma to consciousness, in himself or for others through his teach...

Jesus is saying that murder or stealing or even adultery are acts of thought. As far as the mental law is concerned, we break the law, or break ourselves upon it, every time we think in negative or destructive ways. Your thought is your life.

The judgment is in ourselves. Every act fulfills itself. Every day is a day of judgment. Man is not punished for his sins, but by them. And the punishment is the hell fire of inner conflict that leads to physical stress and pain and disease, and to the human problems of lack and failure. Jesus is simply pointing to the fact that we all do a lot of killing that does not come under the restraint of the commandment as it has been traditionally accepted. Every destructive thought is a killing thought, and “there is the devil to pay.” When we permit ourselves to go on emotional binges of anger, hatred, bitterness and fear, there is no dodging it—we must pay the “hidden luxury tax of negative thinking.” In other words you can’t have your pet peeves and have peace of mind too.

Yes, you have a “perfect right” to be angry at some injury that has taken place in your life, but you also have a right to the nervous disorder or stomach ulcers that inevitably follow. For we are always dealing with law. Your responsibility to yourself as well as to the divine law, is to keep yourself inwardly poised and to keep your thoughts positive and loving, in spite of injustice or disorder around you.