Part One: The Vision I was crowned by my God, my crown is living

Chapter 8

It will be most difficult to make love, praise, or gratitude a permanent quality if you fail to break the habit of judging by appearances. The problems and sorrows on the human level cannot be ignored as though they were non-existent. It is only by keeping your eye single to the glory of my presence, the glory lying underneath appearances, that you are able to become familiar with the "everlasting arms" of Holy Spirit.

All the while, the web of appearances may be there to contend with. But let your troubled heart be still in the midst of this great storm while the three Ascension Attitudes wake up your Father consciousness. The Father has dominion over any storm that rages.

If you keep looking at appearances and judging difficulties to be my will, it is the same as closing off the avenue through which I help you.

All appearances are abolished through increased understanding. When you accept the race belief regarding any situation, failing to hunger for that increased understanding, you have erected a dam across the flow of truth.

Great men of Biblical days were not the men who took things for what they appeared to be, they were the men who challenged appearances, the men who refused to accept a God that was anything less than perfect.

Job was not satisfied with the popular concepts of his day which taught that his troubles had come upon him because of sins. He was living under the earthly law, of course, and he had reaped what he had sown. Still, he had the courage to deny that I would make him suffer for a weakness I had given him, especially since he had done his best and was aware of no big sins. He hungered for a more reasonable explanation. Because of his hunger, a higher level of understanding was reached and his losses were regained.

Elijah found it hard to believe that his God could be a murderer. My sons and daughters by the millions have judged appearances and accepted death as being my will. Elijah rebelled most intensely, crying out in protest that I should even murder little children! The child that had died before him arose and lived again.

Even the disciples of Jesus were easily deceived by appearances. Before the crucifixion, he told them plainly that he was dying only to rise again. Yet when they witnessed his shameful death, they judged solely by what they saw and lost faith completely in his beautiful message of eternal life.

The hungry mind refuses to accept appearances; the obvious does not satisfy. A thousand religious authorities could preach their doctrines of good and evil and the truly hungry mind would listen and be hungrier than before.

The way my children finally come to experience truth is by standing up and challenging appearances, by throwing away the handed-down opinions and making room for an independent glimpse of my heavenly presence.

Seek and you will find has been the promise, but if you are not hungry, if you think you have already found, you will never reach your hand toward mine.

New wine cannot be poured into old bottles when the old bottles are already full. New truth cannot be poured into my children if they have been satisfied with an obvious God. If you accept the centuries-old idea that I made you with the capacity to sin, then leave you suffering because you have sinned, you are likely to go through life subservient to this hopeless situation, trying hard to be perfect but knowing all the time perfection is out of reach.

Perfection and truth are both acquired by filling your surface mind with emptiness, then hungering, asking, and continuously seeking signs of my all-healing presence. At first it may seem that you are getting nowhere, that all your yearning is being ignored, but this is just because it has been a long time since you tried to wake the Father consciousness, which, from the human point of view, is very deep in sleep.

Heaven is within you, of course, where it has always been, and when you reject appearances and begin to reach after its perfection, only then is it stirred up.

If Jesus had settled for appearances after Lazarus died, there would have been no momentous event such as a dead man's rising. After all, it had been four days, and Mary and Martha were quite certain, with decay of the flesh in process, that it was far too late.

Jesus always said, "Judge not."

Underneath appearances are the everlasting arms of the perfect world I created; judge only righteous judgment in accordance with this knowledge. Underneath the errant surface mind are the everlasting arms of your center of omniscience and perfection.

Signs of my inner heavenly kingdom do not precede your comprehension of this truth, they follow it. Signs do not precede your faith, they also follow that.

Exercise the best judgment that you can in contending with appearances, but let your thoughts and feelings continue to be focussed on the everlasting perfection which lies beneath the web of human sub-creation.

As you form these renewed mental habits, replacing worry and frustration with the glad song of the heart, you will at last be building on the mighty rock of faith.