The "Who Am I" Question

  The “Who am I?” question is the most important question you can ask because the answer to that question describes the soil—your identity (the real YOU)—that must be prepared for any planting that will be done in your life. When it comes to the values you hold and the behaviors you practice, with patience and perseverance, you can always find the most answers within yourself or your immediate family. But the “Who am I?” question—the question related to the essence of your existence—has external answers. In other words, you cannot look within yourself to discover who you are. Your own internal explorations will yield only your values at best, but will not disclose the compass by which you travel in life. Your notion of your own identity is learned from others outside yourself.

   Many external voices are telling you who you are: your family, the schools you attended, your religious institutions, and advertising and commercial messages, to name just a few of the myriad voices that scream every day into your ears that you are what they say you are. So the real challenge is finding the external voice that tells you the whole truth, the objective, unembellished, certain, there’s nothing-in-it-for-the-truth-teller truth. To be the voice of truth, this voice must speak based on irrefutable laws of nature—laws that have the same weight as the laws of gravity, physics, and mathematics.

What the Alpha and Omega Should Mean to You

  I am the Alpha and Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.

Revelation 22:13

    What is the meaning of Alpha and Omega related to you? It means the entire series of causation from the first originating movement to the final completed result. Whether you consider it on the Universal scale of creating a universe or on your own individual scale of building a house: everything has its origin in an idea—a Thought—and it has its completion in the manifestation of that idea (Thought) in form. Many intermediate stages are necessary, but the Alpha and Omega of the series are the Thought and the Thing. This is evidence that, in essence, the Thing already existed in the Thought. Omega is already potential in Alpha.

   Related to your life, this means that if there is an Alpha, the Omega must already be in it. The end always has its locus in the beginning. So, in terms of you, it means that where you start today counts. Each new day is a fresh starting point—a new Alpha. The Omega that was in your Alpha of yesterday will not be present in today’s Alpha if you have changed your Alpha course since yesterday.

   The manifestations of this truth for you are enormous. If you have been on the wrong track for years, you can get on the right track today. More than that, you can avoid the Omega that was in your past Alpha of thinking and behavior. On the other hand, if you leave the right track and choose the wrong track today, the Omega of good that you had been building up over time will be replaced by the Omega of bad inherent in the Alpha you chose today.

   The Alpha and Omega in your life function according to how you work with the Law of Cause and Effect. It is as basic a Law as “What you plant, you will harvest,” and “As a man thinks, so is he.”

   You must lay hold of this general principle that the Thing already exists in the Thought. The meaning of a general principle is that it can be applied anywhere and everywhere. You are the most important person you must deal with now and in the future. So, you must begin to see the Alpha and Omega in terms of your own potential.

   In the apostle John’s vision in the book of Revelation, the one who spoke the words in the above Scripture is described as “like a son of man”—i.e., however transcendent the appearance in the vision, it is essentially human and suggests the presence of the Universal Principle at the individual human level. But the figure in the apocalyptic vision is not a human being as you would ordinarily know and recognize her or him. The figure is that of Omega as it exists enshrined in Alpha. It is the Ideal You, in your future evolved state as it exists in the Divine Mind which was manifested in objective form to John’s eyes. It was presented as the Alpha and Omega of that Ideal in all the majesty of the Divine glory.

   If you can grasp the truth that the Thing is already existent in the Thought, then you should find it a short leap of faith from there for you to see that this transcendent Ideal You already exists in the All-Originating Spirit of God’s Mind. If on the plane of the Absolute, there is no space-time continuum, but only an everlasting now, then it follows that your evolved and Glorified Self is a present fact in the Divine Mind.

   But if it is true that the Thing exists in the Thought, it must equally be true that the Thought finds form in the Thing. Since Things exist under conditions of time and space—while Thought does not—Things are necessarily subject to the Law of Growth. While the essence of the Thing in the Thought is perfect from the beginning, the expression of the Thought in the Thing is a matter of growth.    

The Law of Leadership

  And David shepherded them with integrity of heart; with skillful hands, he led them.

Psalm 78:72

The Law of Leadership (that leadership development is crucial to realizing your full potential) is another Universal Law of significance to you. 

Leadership has been defined by many in many different ways. One definition is that leadership is communicating to people a sense of their own inestimable worth and unlimited potential to such an extent that they come to see it in themselves. Another is that leadership is the function of one who guides, directs, or otherwise controls the activities of others.

However, at the most basic level, leadership simply means having influence that affects the behavior and/or worldview of others within a particular sphere, whether that influence is negative or positive.

Negative leadership is coercive--i.e., it requires raw power (external force) to maintain itself. Examples of negative leadership include threats from the gun, the law, economic reprisal, and negative propaganda that exploits people's fears. People tend to follow negative leadership because they either resonate with it, feel psychologically threatened, socially compelled, or physically forced to do so.

Positive leadership is inspirational--i.e., it requires Soul Power (internal values) to perpetuate itself. Examples of Soul Power include the power of being, the power of behaving, the power of belonging, and the power of believing. 

The power of being is the manifestation of God's DNA within you--your power of imagination and creativity. The power of behaving is your ability to choose how you will act on your own (your power of choice).

The power of belonging is the strength you feel when you work with others to accomplish goals you can never reach alone. The power of believing is your personal miracle-working power that works within you to create your future.

These powers are activated by your faith in yourself and the Divine connection that you have with the All-Originating Spirit of God.

The First Cause: Part 2

  In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.  Genesis 1:1 

   Your creative process will begin with your thoughts, but the raw materials you will need will develop on their own without help from you. When you engage in creative thought, what you have imagined begins to form itself. The invisible forms you create will be nurtured by another.

   How is it that the raw materials that your thought has produced will develop on their own? Who or what will nurture these invisible forms that your thought has produced? These questions follow naturally from yesterday’s discussion of the first cause.

   You can begin to answer these questions by understanding and applying a few basic principles. First, every thought that has ever been thought from the beginning of time is still here. This means that all completed and unfinished thought forms are available to you. King Solomon was not wrong when he stated that there was nothing new under the sun.

   Second, you are in Oneness with the All-Originating Spirit of God. This means that your thoughts are empowered because your thinking is not done in isolation—you have Divine help. Third, the Divine help you receive is not predicated upon whether your thought is good and productive or bad and destructive. Remember that you are not functioning in the realm of religion but in the reality of Universal Law and its dictates.

   If your thoughts are in opposition to the Law of your own Being—i.e., if they are an inversion of what is good, true, and beautiful—then you will reap in manifestation what you have sown in contemplation.

   You have the power to do good or evil. You will manifest what you choose: whether the narrow path that leads to life or the broad road that leads to death. Consequently, your own thought determines your destiny.

   This is the key principle that determines your life journey: you have the power to create your own destiny through what you think. This power, that flows from the image and likeness of the Spirit of God within you, is the manifestation of you as the first cause at your microcosmic individual level.

The First Cause: Part 1

 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.  Genesis 1:1

  I now come to a discussion of first causes, because creation—as opposed to construction—begins there.

   When you first tried to think about the difference between Spirit and Matter, you probably came to the point of view that Spirit is alive while Matter is dead, because dead means the inability to move. But now that you know from science that everything—from the rocks to your very own heart—is constantly moving and vibrating at different, unique frequencies. So, movement is not the differentiator between Spirit and Matter. Rather, Intelligence is.

   Although a rock may be moving internally, it is not intelligent in the sense that it has the ability—volition—to move itself without being moved by an external force. Intelligent beings, whether plants, animals, or people, have volition and can decide—even if that decision comes from instinct rather than thought—to move themselves.

   The higher the level of Intelligence, the greater the capacity to think. So, you can assume rightly that human beings can act both by instinct and decision stemming from thought. When you come to the question, "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" your understanding of the first cause teaches you that the chicken had to come first. The egg is the reproduction of the chicken—a secondary cause—while the creation of the first chicken is a first cause.

   Thus, the origin of anything is connected to the first cause, while the reproduction of that same thing is a secondary cause.

   Put another way, the first causes are creative while secondary causes are constructive.

   As you travel back in your mind to millions, billions, or farther back trillions or quadrillions of eons ago, you will bump into the beginning: that place antecedent to space and time. There was only Self-Existent Spirit there and nothing else.

   My discussion of the first cause must bring you to the question: What was around before the heavens and earth were created? The obvious answer is Spirit because you can't conceive of nothing existing. (Even empty space is something!) But your next question must be: What materials did Spirit use to make the heavens and the earth if there was nothing else but Spirit at the beginning? This then is where your deeper inner journey begins.

   Since there was nothing but Spirit at the beginning, Spirit contemplated Its Self and through involution—engaging Its Self to become other than Its Self—became the raw materials It needed to create the heavens and the earth. This involution—this divine engagement in becoming what was not Spirit—is the first cause that made creation itself possible. It is also the pattern by which Spirit has always operated.

   First comes Spirit, then Spirit’s involution or engagement in entangling Its Self in that which It is not. Out of this involution comes the raw materials from which Spirit created the heavens and the earth.

   Once you grasp the significance of Spirit’s penchant for involution, you will begin to see how and why God would become the Man Jesus in the same way that God becomes you. But for now, it is only necessary that you become familiar with the term involution.

   So, you see that the first cause (the All-Originating Spirit of God) did actually create everything out of nothing external to Itself. Spirit created everything needed for creative activity out of Itself!

The Universal Law of Abundance

 The Universal Law of Abundance teaches us that we live in a world of abundance and not lack. All the water that has ever been on planet Earth is still here. Although it is constantly recycling itself and changing its form from liquid to solid to steam and gas, not one new drop of water is added to our water supply, nor is one old drop of water subtracted from our water supply. We are drinking the same water that our ancestors drank.

In the same way, all the gold that has ever been on this planet is still here. All the wealth that has ever been amassed on this planet is still here. So, in terms of resources, everything that has always been here is still here, either in original or transmuted form. Consequently, we lack nothing related to resources available to us.

Now, if you accept this universal foundational principle, then it will affect the way you think in two specific ways. First, you will tend to be upbeat, and grateful, and, more likely than not, you will feel optimistic with hopeful expectancy about your future. Second, you will have a positive attitude that whatever your goals in life, you will succeed in achieving them.

Your mindset—the way you think, what you think most about, and how you think—determines what you believe, regardless of the facts. Even if there is no lack, but you believe in your mind that there is lack, then—despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary—you will continue to see every glass of water as half-empty and on its way to being emptied forever. Accordingly, a mindset of lack produces the opposite of abundance for you, supports your excuses for not developing yourself to your greatest potential, and keeps you from leveraging the resources that you already have in hand. In addition, a mindset of lack promotes the false belief that you are powerless to create your own resources.

People who believe in lack begin most of their conversations with “If I only had this or that,” or “If those people over there would only stop doing this and start doing that, I could do thus and so.”

If you decide not to accept the Universal Law of Abundance, then it will affect your mindset in two specific ways. First, you will tend to be downcast, and ungrateful, and more likely than not, you will feel pessimistic with fearful dread about your future. Second, you will have a negative attitude that whatever your goals in life, you will not succeed in achieving them.

If you believe you can be, do, and have more in life, then you can be, do, and have more. If you believe that you can’t be, d,o, and have more in life, then you can’t be, do, or have more. The way you think—your mindset—determines your destiny.

The ancient aphorism is still true: “As a [woman] man thinks in [her] his heart, so is [she] he.”

The Law of Iron Will

  Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming.

Ephesians 4:14

The Law of Iron Will requires that once you make a decision, you must be unwavering in carrying it out, despite whatever obstacles or apparent impossibilities confront you. You can ill afford to second-guess yourself because other people and/or institutions disagree with your decision. The Law of Iron Will allows you to commit your decisions to God and resolutely carry them out, no matter what the odds of success may be according to the popular pundits of the day.

Expanded/evolved people have had to take a stand on a ground that was not confirmed as solid by their detractors. Every significant breakthrough in science, education, and industry has come as the result of single-minded, steadfast opposition to the conventional wisdom of naysayers who oppose change and cling to the presumed safety of the status quo.

The master key to the Law of Iron Will is the definiteness of purpose. Focus on the definite objective that your decision represents and concentrate on that objective while awake and asleep. You will develop toughness of mind, tenacity of spirit, and tautness of emotions. This will help you counter, withstand, and overcome all objections and negative assaults from those who don't have your drive and vision.

The Law of Iron Will can support and cradle you during difficult times to bring to fruition the new project, process, service, or strategic application that you have created through your imagination and the concomitant skills and abilities you have developed along your life path. The Law of Iron Will protects you by focusing your mind on the rightness of your firm resolution.

Don't Allow Others' Criticism to Change Your Life Path

 He shall say: "Hear, Israel: Today you are going into battle against your enemies. Do not be fainthearted or afraid; do not panic or be terrified by them.

Deuteronomy 20:3

I read a story once about an old man, a young boy, and an old donkey. The three were traveling on a long journey with the old man riding on the back of the donkey and the young boy walking beside the donkey. When they entered the first town, the townspeople were furious with the old man for making the boy walk while he rode on the donkey. They criticized the old man, accusing him of child abuse, and insisted that the young boy ride the donkey while the old man walked. 

Shaken and dismayed by the harsh criticism of the townspeople, the old man got off the donkey, placed the young boy on the donkey, and walked beside the donkey until they reached the next town.

When they reached the next town, the townspeople there were outraged that the young boy rode on the donkey's back while the old man was forced to walk. They accused the young boy of disrespecting his elders and of elder abuse. The young boy was deeply hurt to the point of tears and self-loathing because of the criticism of the townspeople.

After this, the old man and the young boy, in fear of the criticism they would receive in the next town, came up with the perfect plan to avoid criticism. They decided to continue their journey by strapping the donkey to a pole and carrying it as they walked to the next town.

Of course, you know the criticism that both the young boy and the old man will receive when they enter the next town on their journey.

The obvious moral of this story is that people will criticize you no matter what you choose to do. You must overcome your fear of criticism and have the courage to follow the Law of Your Own Being. This means you must trust yourself and your instincts to get you where you desire to go in your life. 

Every achiever, innovator, and change-maker in history has had to overcome criticism to make the world a better place. Stay faithful to the good you are creating for the world's benefit!

The Intelligence and Responsiveness of Universal Spirit

 Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight. Proverbs 3:5-6

   To deny that there is intelligent order throughout all Nature is to be utterly foolish. You know this because it has taken the most highly trained human minds to describe the steps taken by the Universal Intelligence (the All-Originating Spirit of God) which is always farther in advance of the brightest human minds. The more deeply you investigate the world all around you, the clearer it must become to you that all of science is the translation into words and symbols of an order that already exists. If all that you and all the other great minds among us can do is merely describe the existing order, then this alone is proof that there is a Higher Intelligence that has the power to orchestrate this great sequence of order and interrelation of all things.

   You must eventually face the reality that it is a Living Spirit in the heart of every atom that gives it outward form and definition. It is also a Living Spirit that becomes in the atom the intrinsic polarities that constitute the particular atom’s characteristic nature.

   What I am discussing here is neither random nor accidental. Every single attraction and repulsion is intentional, acting with force to collect the atoms into molecules, the molecules into tissues, the tissues into organs, and the organs into individuals. These facts are proved from physical science, and they provide a Great Law in Spiritual Science: in any collective body, the intelligence of the whole is superior to that of the sum of its parts.

   Since Spirit is at the root of all things, then thoughtful observation discloses that its operation is guided by a Superior Intelligence that adapts means to ends and flawlessly harmonizes the entire universe of manifested beings. But the All-Originating Spirit of God is not only Intelligent—It is also Responsive.

   You can rely on the fact that the Spirit is not only Intelligent but also Responsive based on the fact that the mere sum of the Intelligence of Spirit in lower degrees of manifestation—i.e., as shown in created life-forms below the All-Originating Spirit—does not equal the Intelligence of the whole. The degree of spiritual intelligence that a living organism has is determined by the wholeness of the organism through which it finds expression.

   The more highly organized being has a degree of Spirit which has greater thinking capacity than less organized degrees of Spirit. Consequently, the highly organized being is capable of exercising control over all lower forms or less fully integrated degrees of Spirit. This leads to the conclusion that the inside “Holy of Holies” of this Intelligent Spirit is both Intelligent and Responsive.

   Intelligent Spirit is the Power that knows Itself and knows that Spirit is all there is. Accordingly, Its lower powers recognize Its higher powers, and by the Law of Attraction, they must respond to the higher degrees of themselves. This general principle then makes clear that the All-Originating Spirit of God, under whatever external manifestation It may appear, is necessarily both Intelligent and Responsive.

   This leads to the obvious conclusion that all degrees of Spirit contain elements of personality, even if it is not yet expressed as the individual personality that you find in yourself. Accordingly, Spirit is always personal in its nature, even though it may not have reached the stage where it is manifested as personal.

   You recognize your “personalness” because you have developed far enough to recognize yourself as having and being a personality.

The Law of Speech

 One of the open “secrets” of success that can be of enormous help to entrepreneurs is the Law of Speech. The Law of Speech says that whatever you speak about yourself, your family, circumstances or situations will come to be because you have God’s DNA, His power of speech. Everything that was created by God, except humankind, was created by God’s word—His speech. Speech is more powerful than anything else because it creates out of nothing whatever is consistently spoken.

Speech does not follow religious guidelines or moral laws. It is a universal law that is morally neutral. It is available to you and everyone else. Those who use the law well, prosper. Those you don’t, fail. What this means is that whatever you speak continuously will come into existence, whether the spoken thing is good, bad, or indifferent. The Law of Speech is one of the central laws that drive systems, products, and service innovations. New systems, products, and services begin their existence as non-material ideas that people dare to speak again and again. Invention begins with the rearrangement of known created things into a new form. It is the power source that God has placed in your hands that allows you to create your own future.

This understanding of the Law of Speech teaches you to promote your own health and welfare. Such positive speech sets the atmosphere in which all the powers in the universe are unleashed to create for you what it is you continue to speak. But there is more.

The Law of Speech requires that you not only speak wholeness but also commit your active intention—your focused life force—to the object of your speech. In other words, your speech must be accompanied by specific actions that are aimed at realizing or manifesting what you have spoken. Speech without deeds is useless in the same way that faith without deeds has no value. It is positive speech that must overcome the inertia of the status quo to produce the desired new outcome. That is why focused attention (intention) is the catalyst that brings about the birth of the created thing that has been set in motion by positive speech followed by positive action.

   

You must understand that successful entrepreneurs do not have in their vocabulary such phrases as I can’t, it’s impossible, I don’t deserve and I don’t believe. These are the limiting negative words that people who don’t dare to take responsibility for their own lives and livelihoods use to justify their enslavement in a prison of self-loathing, self-doubt, and unbelief in their own unlimited possibility as creators, inventors, and innovators.

If you are looking for a way to free yourself from the economic and social limitations that are affecting your life, then use your positive speech and create the future you want for yourself. Speak your dream, write it down, and then work toward it!

What has been your experience with the power of speech? Does the concept make sense to you? Has it worked, or not worked for you? Leave a comment below and let’s have a conversation about it.

Two Kinds of Submission

 "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery."

Galatians 5:1

  You must learn to distinguish between the two kinds of submission. There is submission to superior force, and there is submission to superior truth. The former is a demonstration of weakness, while the latter is proof of strength. The first exists by compulsion, while the second exists by choice. Submission to superior force is the definition of slavery, while submission to superior truth is the definition of freedom.

   If you were raised in a strict religious home, you were probably indoctrinated with the quiescent notion that it was wrong to question God, and it was right to accept your lot in life as the will of God. This false teaching—even after you grow out of and away from it—still affects the way you see the world. However, when you consider the circumstances of the masses of Black People, you cannot believe that what we have endured under Eurocentric racism for nearly 400 years could possibly be the will of God.

   Your mantra related to submission must be one of freedom and not of slavery. You cannot be a free moral agent who rules the mini-universe where you are the center, and be in submission to domination by another at the same time. 

   Your submission to superior truth calls you to revolutionary struggle—i.e., manifesting thoughts of liberty, social justice, and fullness of life for Black People of the I AM.

   Jesus never calls disciples and tells them to submit to Him. He asks them to abide, stay with, and be closely associated with Him if—and only if—they decide to become disciples. The relationship is one of equality that is built upon free choice and abiding, not submitting. It is easier for most people to remain slaves than to struggle to be free. Freedom requires personal responsibility and Thought—too much work for most people.

   The secret to your progress of transformation, expansion, and evolution is premised on your developing a habit of submission; but submission to superior truth, not to superior force.

   When you gain access to a higher truth, you will be required to rearrange the lower truths you already possess. You do not abandon lower truths, you just take them off the top shelf of your thinking and place them on a lower shelf. Truth is truth, but higher truth takes precedence over lower truth.

   The process of letting go of the lower for the higher truth will cause you some discomfort. It may seem that just when you get comfortable with a truth that is higher than what you held previously, another higher truth comes into your life requiring that you acknowledge its higher value and internal placement. This is called growth. Failure to grow is the cause of arrested development—a malady that you want to avoid at all costs.

   The Universal Principle related to this state of affairs is that the lesser degree of life must be swallowed up by the greater. You must accept that the smaller or lesser degree was only a partial and limited aspect of that which is more universal.

   Submission, in this context, means your intelligent recognition of the true nature of your own internal forces and of the laws by which your robust constitution must be built. Thus, your submission is no longer to limitations which drain you of your “aliveness” and against which you instinctively rebel.

   Instead, your submission is to the law of your own evolution which manifests itself in continually increasing degrees of life and strength. In the end, submission is the price you pay to expand. Your own growth requires that you submit to yourself. 

The Secret to Personal Expansion/Evolution

 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.

Proverbs 9:10

The fear or reverence of God is where wisdom begins. But beyond the beginning of wisdom lies a continuum of behaviors and ways of being that constitute its existential dimensions in your lived experience as a creative Person of the I AM. These behaviors include a disciplined lifestyle; the habit of functioning from a God perspective; a cultivated discernment to apply both natural and spiritual knowledge to concrete situations; and a determination to bring about only good on the earth.

If you are seeking personal transformation/evolution, then you will strive to live an ordered, intentional, and focused life in which you choose to function from a God mindset. 

Because you desire to become a transformed/evolved Person of the I AM, you will come to understand the importance of lifelong learning. You will never be content to live on what you learned yesterday, but will always be studying and learning from what presents itself to you today.

As a transformed/evolved Person of the I AM, you will one day be able to say as Thomas Troward once said:

"My mind is a center of Divine operation. The Divine operation is always for expansion and fuller expression. And this means the production of something that has not gone before; something entirely new, not included in past experience, although proceeding out of it by an orderly sequence of growth. Therefore, since the Divine cannot change its inherent nature, it must operate in the same way in me. Consequently, in my own special world of which I am the center, it must move forward to produce new conditions, always in advance of any that have gone before."

Until that day for you arrives, concentrate on positive, creative thinking that has the production of good as its focus. If you do this every day, one day at a time, you will be surprised one day to find that you are exactly what you always truly wanted to be.

The Image and Likeness of God

 God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

Genesis 1:27

Since you were created in the image and likeness of God, then you must find out what the image and likeness of God mean to find clues to your true identity. That you are a human being does not define who you are, it merely describes your ancestral heritage that goes back to the beginning of creation itself and the All-Originating Spirit of God, the Creator.

The image of God means that you possess certain attributes that mirror God's, such as will, creativity, and self-awareness. The likeness of God means that although you are only one individual, a single entity, you manifest yourself in three distinct ways just as God does: you are mind (God, the Father), you are body (Jesus, God the Son) and you are Spirit (God, the Holy Spirit). If you connect to God through your awareness of who you are, then you will be able to mirror God's character attributes of love, forgiveness, patience, and faithfulness.

You must reinvent yourself with a new mindset that sees you as God, the Great I AM, sees you--a constantly evolving whole person who lacks nothing nor needs any modification.

You are not to rule over people because people are created in the image and likeness of God, and you were never created to rule over God. You were created to rule over things and lead people, beginning with yourself. Your purpose in life is to maximize your personal development and highest and best use, doing the same with the resources you receive from others and the resources you create. However, you will not be able to do this without aligning yourself with the All-Originating Spirit of God and living with the knowledge that you are in an individual microcosm what the All-Originating Spirit of God is in a Universal Macrocosm.

The I AM IS ONE!

 "Very truly I tell you," Jesus answered, "before Abraham was born, I am!" 

John 8:58

  Just what does the “I AM IS ONE” mean? This means that there are not two Spirits, one that is yourself and one that is another. It means that there is not some great unknown power external to you which is motivated by an agenda inimical to your own, and who is poised to oppose you with overwhelming force, determined to crush you.

   There is only One Mind, One Motive, and One Power. Your conscious mind in all its movements is only the One Mind expressing itself as your own particular individuality. There are not two I AMs, but just ONE I AM.

   Whatever you can conceive the Great Universal Life Principle to be, that YOU ARE. You could never conceive the Great Original Originating and Sustaining Life Principle as poor, weak, sordid, miserable, jealous, angry, anxious, uncertain, or in any other way limited. You know this to be impossible.

   Because the I AM IS ONE, then what applies to the I AM equally applies to you, because you are in an individual microcosm precisely what the Universal I AM is in Macrocosm.

   To fully grasp the magnitude of the I AM in yourself, you must first learn to distinguish your true self from the mental and physical processes that you can physically observe as the instruments you use whenever you express yourself.

 Then you must learn that your true self controls these mental and physical instrumentalities. As you advance in this self-knowledge you will know that you are unlimited and that in your microcosmic world where you are the center, you are the very same overflowing “aliveness” that the Great Life Spirit is in the Universal Macrocosm. The I AM IS ONE!

   As the “I AM” who starts the series—“I AM, therefore, I can, therefore I will”—you have your head in heaven and your feet planted firmly on the ground. Operating from this Divine Perspective, you are a perfect Unity, having a range of ideas that far exceeds and transcends the tiny “Lilliputian” ideas that are limited by the requirements of day-to-day living.

   The requirements of each day are real while they last. So, since your manifested life can only be lived in the present moment, your task is to harmonize and synchronize your life of expression with your life of purpose. Thus, by realizing this in yourself, you will live a life of the highest purposes and fullest expression.

   This approach to living your highest and fullest life is the ultimate meaning of prayer. Prayer is not some foolish practice of attempting to change the Mind of Supreme Wisdom, but an intelligent seeking to embody that wisdom in your thoughts. The end of such true prayer is to more perfectly express that Supreme Wisdom when you express yourself.

   As you slowly grow into the habit of finding this Inspiring Presence within yourself, you will realize its forward motion in all your truly healthful mental actions. If you persist in your realization of this Inspiring Presence within you, it will become second nature to have all your plans, including their most trivial details, be washed in the “water” of Universal Intelligence.

   A great sense of peace and harmony—"at-oneness”—will overflow into your life, every dissonant chord of “noise” will be silenced, and you will find yourself controlling all things into the forms you desire. You can do this because you are One in Spirit, changed in your thinking, and aware of the deep knowledge of yourself.

You Are Already Complete!

 and in Him, you have been made complete, and He is the head over all rule and authority;  Colossians 2:10

    One of the issues that has caused confusion among Black People of the I AM, in particular, is the errant religious notion that argues that you are not complete in yourself. This is a quiescent hold-over from your past enslavement that says you are not complete now, but if you do what you are told, you will be complete one day.

   Through a mistaken (ignorant) quiescent understanding of the Bible, many unaware theologians still teach the notion of your imperfection in books, sermons, and hymns.

   If you are to be successful in doing any work or achieving any goal, you must believe that you are a Whole Person concerning it. Your completed work is the outward manifestation of a corresponding inner completeness in yourself.

   This is true at all levels. When you believe that there are no conditions that you cannot master that stand between you and your completion of whatever you intend to accomplish, then you are complete for that thing.

   Your recognition of your completeness is the measure of what you can do. Accordingly, your knowledge of the fact of your completeness is of urgent importance. You must grasp two fundamental truths: 1) Spirit is Life, pure and simple; and 2) external things are the result of internal forces. You will not find it difficult to see why you are complete. To think otherwise is to believe that the All-Originating Power of the universe is either unable or unwilling to produce the complete expression of its own intention in the creation of human beings in its image and likeness. To believe that the All-Originating Spirit of God was unable to fulfill its own intention is a negation of its creative power. To believe it unwilling to do so is to slander that Great and Glorious Name.

   In forming humankind, the All-Originating Spirit of God must of necessity have produced a perfect work. Thus, your perception of yourself as imperfect can only be the result of your own ignorance of who you really are. So, your advance in transformation, expansion, and evolution is not a process of adding to yourself what you lack, but rather bringing out into action powers unused before that are already in existence within you. Because of false teaching which has impacted your view of yourself, you have always taken for granted that you are by nature defective in some of the most important faculties necessary to fit you to your environment.

   You are left, then, with the truth that you must seek these extraordinary powers within yourself. You are not to go outside yourself for these. They are yours by birthright. This is the Great Secret. You are not to go outside yourself to look for power. As soon as you do so, you will find, not power, but weakness. To seek strength from any outside source is to make an affirmation of your weakness, and by now, you know that road leads to slavery and Death.

   You are complete in yourself. If you fail to realize this fact, it is because you do not yet understand how far your self extends. You are One with the All-Originating Spirit of God. Everything that can be done at the Universal Macrocosmic Level, you can do at your individual microcosmic level.

   You know that the whole of anything consists of all of its parts, and not only some of them. Yet this is just what you do not seem to know about yourself. Every person, including yourself, is a specific, individualized concentration of the All-Originating Spirit of God into an individual consciousness.

What Are You Going to Do Now?

  It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age, and who have fallen away, to be brought back to repentance. To their loss, they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace.  Hebrews 6:4-6

    You now realize that the Life-Spirit you seek is at the core of your own Being. It is not above, below, or outside of you. With this understanding, you are on a new journey—a journey toward the infinite possibilities that await your coming.

   You are now part of a Living, Vibrant, New Order where old things are passing away, and new beginnings are taking their place. Learn to live in this new place, no matter how strange it seems. Becoming accustomed to your freedom will take time.

   So, what are you to do with this new awareness of your creative power? Are you to seek to invert it by using it to manipulate others, or to get people to do what you want? Your answer must be an emphatic “No!”

   Any attempt to invert your creative power to do good and channel it to unscrupulous and destructive ends will end in your own destruction. The same power of the Universal I AM within you will turn against you and destroy your localized individuality. Understand clearly that the knowledge you are gaining is subject to your living by a higher standard than those who lack this knowledge.

   There is a standard you must meet, and that standard is the Universal Law of Love. Put simply, that law requires that you do harm to no one, do good to all, and forgive yourself and others for wrongs committed against you.

   Thus, to hate yourself, do harm to yourself, or otherwise negate your own value, or refuse to forgive yourself is as great a sin as thinking, saying, and doing the same to others.

 Your Oneness with the All-Originating Spirit of God precludes you from consistently violating the Law of Love. If you habitually violate this universal law, and find no space to repent (change your mind), you are indeed crucifying the Son of God (Who includes Yourself!) afresh and bringing shame and denigration of the Name in which your own name is ensconced. Yours is not a thoughtless game of life to be played, but a thoughtful existence to live into. If you do not have the stomach to live such an existence, perhaps it would be better for you to return to your old life now.

Think Yourself Free

  So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will  know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”  John 8:32

   You are a reproduction in individuality of the same Spirit which produces all things. Your own Thought in individuality has exactly the same quality as the Divine Thought in Universality. Accordingly, your Thought has first cause creative power—not just second cause constructive power.

   You may argue: “This is not my true experience. I am surrounded by circumstances that I do not want.” Yes, absolutely! You are always deploring your circumstances, and by so doing, they become worse. Your Thought Power is focused negatively, rather than positively. You focus on your current circumstances, instead of creating in your Thoughts the circumstances you desire, and in doing so you are constantly exercising your Divine prerogative of creation by Thought. However, because you are unaware of your power of Thought, you are using it in its inverted, negative (sinful) form. That is why you worry, are fearful, and are always waiting for the other proverbial “shoe” to drop.

   That is why the Bible constantly repeats, “Fear not, doubt not,” because you can never divest your Thought of its inherent creative quality. The only issue now is whether you will use your creative power in the ignorance of unawareness to your own detriment, or in the wisdom of truth to your own benefit.

   Jesus summed up his teaching in the aphorism that knowledge of the truth would make you free. He made no pronouncement of anything else that you have to do, or of anything that anyone else has to do for you for you to be made free. Jesus’ statement was not future, but in the present Eternal Now.

   Truth is what is now and not what is promised hereafter. In essence, Jesus said, “Know what truth is now, and you will find that the truth about yourself is that you are free now.” If knowing the truth makes you free, it can only be because you are free in truth now, but you are simply unaware of it. 

   In practical terms, you are free to reproduce on the scale of your individuality the creative power of Thought that first brought the world into existence. Take a flying leap of faith. Confidently claim your birthright of creative Thought power fearlessly, and dare to think yourself free!

Your Time to Grow Up

 Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.  Philippians 4:8

    Your thought determines the quality of your actions. Consequently, it is free to direct itself to the highest principles that reproduce themselves in your outward acts. Such highly principled thinking and acting are in harmony with the great universal laws. Your principled alignment with these laws becomes one in purpose with the Universal Mind of the All-Originating Spirit of God.

   You will then begin to realize that you are no longer in bondage to the consequences of your former deeds, done in the time of your ignorance of your own creative power and of your relationship to the All-Originating Spirit of God.

   You will come to see the truth that you are the expression of the Universal Undifferentiated Spirit in your differentiated individual personality. You are a free “partaker of the Divine nature.” As such, you are becoming more and more fully yourself with the potential to move toward greater expansion. This greater expansion will lead you to ever-widening perfection on an evolutionary trajectory of infinite possibilities.

   This knowledge is hidden from most people by design. Only those who desire to know the secrets of the kingdom of God get to know them. It is their desire that drives them forward. That is why Jesus spoke in parables and not in plain, understandable language.

   Remember your own development to this point. If you believed in God at all, you viewed God as external to you, who was opposed to you, and needed to be propitiated. Or you may have taken the view that God was neither for nor against you but required you to use your begging or cajoling skills to get God to give you whatever you needed.

   Now is the time for you to grow up. Your infantile beliefs about God carried over from your childhood, are due for a complete overhaul. Advance in your growth by thinking of yourself to be emancipated from bondage and freed to live free of fear and full of hope.

   Your freedom rests on a firmer foundation than the conventional interpretation of traditional religious dogmas. Rather, its roots are in the great laws of nature, which are sure and predictable.

   Further, your freedom is rooted in the unchangeable laws of Mind. That is why you must be presented with ideas that you can grasp and internalize. Only then can you have a personally satisfying basis to change your mental attitude from infantile to adult, from fear to faith, and from hate to love.

Your Life Must Be Motivated by Love

  “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’  Matthew 7:21-23

   The dominant point that Jesus makes from verse 21 to verse 23 of the above text is that no one will emerge triumphant from the last judgment on the basis of right words or spectacular deeds of spiritual power. Only a life motivated by love and justice will prevail.

   This teaching of Jesus is a warning to, and wooing of, you. You have power within yourself to do mighty things. But if your motives are wrong, your power will be inverted—used as means and ends to deceive, manipulate, and otherwise lead people astray from the path of “aliveness” in order to achieve goals inimical to the ultimate well-being and evolution of humankind.

   In essence, saying good things to people to produce good things for yourself but bad things for them will produce bad things for you. Thus, to operate in duality—to refuse to be aligned in Oneness with the All-Originating Spirit of God—is to ensure that the personal, nonaligned power you wield will turn and destroy you.

   This is the ultimate teaching of Jesus regarding false prophets. You are a prophet by your having been created in the image and likeness of God. Whether you realize it or not, to prophesy is to tell forth or tell before it happens what will happen at a later time. Thus, every thought that you create and share with another related to what you intend to manifest in the future is a prophecy—your foretelling of a future event.

   The difference between a true and a false prophet is the difference between the former who is aligned in Oneness with the All-Originating Spirit of God and the latter who is not.

You ARE the Center

 “I and the Father are one.” John 10:30

   You ARE the center of your own universe! There is no way that you can get around this fact of Life and the reality of Spirit. The source of energy in your universe comes from you. Even the power you attempt to delegate to your environment is a manifestation of your own thoughts.

   Once you dare to live up to your Oneness with the All-Originating Spirit of God, you will begin to realize that the Eternal Life Principle that flows through you is yours to externalize in any way you choose, so long as your motives are pure. It is from this place of power that you can and must control your world.

   Lean on your own Being as united and in Oneness with the All-Originating Spirit of God. This is your place of power, creativity, love, joy, and peace.

   Never take your current circumstances so seriously that you forget who you are. You are not the passive, acted-upon one: you are the energizing actor who creates, forms, and controls all that spins rapidly around your powerful nucleus.

   Accept your quintessential spiritual nature and you will function not in weakness, but in strength. Your personal experience of strength will come when you understand that every act you perform, which is motivated by love, is supported by the All-Originating Spirit of God with Whom you are in Oneness.

   At that point, you will discover that your control over things is part of the necessary order of the universe.

   The disorder that you have experienced in the past was a direct result of your refusal to accept that you were personally responsible for your life and all that you allowed into it.

   You must awaken from your dream state and take charge of your life. No longer can you blame others for your failure to be adequate within yourself. No longer can you make excuses for failing to rule your own world by making excuses and lying to yourself and others.

   Now that you understand your place and space in your world as the essential and powerful agent—aligned in Oneness with the All-Originating Spirit of God—you can never again—nor will you ever again—cede control of your world to any other. You are positioned to think better thoughts, do better things, grow fuller faster, and evolve with the intention to be the fifth estate of humankind more swiftly.

The Essential and the Incidental

  A major stumbling block that affects most people is confusing that which is a constant with that which is a variable—that which is essential from that which is merely incidental.

   That which is essential is the center, source, and acting agent of your life, while that which is incidental is that which is created, formed, or acted upon by the center. You are the center of your life and the acting agent within it. Therefore, you are absolutely essential. Without you, your world, and the “aliveness” within it becomes nonexistent.

   What you deal with or face in life is not essential: it is merely incidental. When you mentally conceive of what faces you—problems, puzzles, concerns, and worries—as essential, you relinquish your rightful role as the captain of your ship. Then you relegate yourself to become the oarsman who attempts to row the 1,000-ton vessel that is your life to shore all by yourself.

   In everything you do, there will always be two factors that confront you, and two major choices that you must make. In every case, you must decide and fix upon that which is essential and that which is incidental—that which is the constant center and source of action, and that which is the variable circumstance that is acted upon.

   Whichever of the two you choose to be essential, the other will automatically become the incidental. The variable, the incidental, is always present. So, too, is the essential always present. Confusing the two, however, takes all the “aliveness” out of life—its joy, hope, and steady equilibrium.

   You must keep in your mind—the center of your thought-life—that in your microcosmic world, you and only you, are the essential, the center, the source and only acting agent. All else is the variable, circumstantial, and purely incidental.

   Think about your Oneness with the All-Originating Spirit of God until you begin to understand that, because of your Oneness, you are essential. When you begin to live up to what you have practiced thinking, then you will exercise the creative and ruling power that has been bequeathed to you. On that great and glorious day in your life, you will no longer believe that you are essential: you will know it!

Spirit in Universal Macrocosm and Individual Microcosm

  “I and the Father are one.”  John 10:30

    There is an eternal connection between the Spirit in the Universal Macrocosm and the Spirit in the individual and particular microcosm.

   The source and inside of all things is Spirit. You are a reproduction in your individual self of the Intelligence and Love which rule the universe. Because of this reality, you can send out your thoughts to produce any effect you choose.

   By now you should have passed from the infantile conception of two opposing forces—good and evil—and have come to see that the duality you see around you is just the opposition (The Law of Polarity) of the inside and outside poles of a single unity. Under this essential unity, your thought has limitless creative power. It is free to go where no one else has gone before without fear of reprisal.

  Your mind’s own independent creative power can find its way out of the imprisonment that its previous ignorance of the Highest Law has caused.

   Your recognition of the Unity of the Spirit will ultimately result in your freedom of thought. You will no longer be tethered to your present inverted outside-only thinking.  You will be free to see things from the inside out.

   Thought always determines the quality of action, and when thought is free, it can direct itself to the highest principles that reproduce themselves in external actions. When your thoughts and actions harmonize with the great eternal laws and become one in purpose, they are in Unity with the Universal Mind.

  At that point, you will realize that you are no longer imprisoned by the consequences of your former thinking and behavior when you functioned in ignorance. You will begin to see yourself as the perfect expression of the Infinite Spirit in your individual personality. This will lead you to see yourself as “a partaker of Divine nature” without ever losing your identity.

Change Your Paradigm with Your Power of Awareness

 And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.  2 Corinthians 3:18

   You must become aware that your paradigm is a mental program that has almost exclusive control over your habitual behavior—and almost all of your behavior is habitual. But you cannot change your paradigm by fighting your existing reality. Change your paradigm by building a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.

   The power of awareness will teach you that it is not who you are that holds you back: it is who you think you are not!

   There are two things you must be aware of to change your paradigm so you can grow by expanding from the inside out. The first thing to be aware of is where you are now. The second thing you need to be aware of is where you are going. But if it is this simple, why are so many people stuck? So let us think a bit about why so many people are stuck.

   Paradigms and Cybernetics are both control systems and operate essentially on the same principle. Both systems maintain a definite course of action and will not deviate from the course that has been established. You must alter the paradigm if you desire to achieve improved results. Both companies and individuals have operating paradigms.

   Let me help you visualize in your mind how this works. Imagine with me that there is a circle in front of you. Now imagine that there is a horizontal line halfway down the circle. The top half represents your conscious mind, while the lower part is your subconscious. Your intellect or thinking mind is up in your conscious mind, while your paradigm, your habitual behavior is down below in your subconscious.

   Your conscious mind can choose what to accept or reject, and what to originate or create. Your subconscious can neither reject nor differentiate between real and imagined.

   You can shift your paradigm by understanding the Law of Vibration and obeying it. The Law of Vibration states that everything that exists is energy that vibrates at different frequencies. Solid substances that are visible to the naked eye vibrate at a much lower frequency than things you cannot see—like molecules and atoms.

   When you want anything that is not in your present reality, your Spirit is vibrating at a higher frequency than that of the situation you may be currently in. As you hold that “want” in your conscious mind, the “want” and you are vibrating at the same frequency. The result is that you are then attracted to what you want and what you want is attracted to you.

   The key that will shift your paradigm is increasing your level of awareness. The most direct route to increasing your awareness is effective education combined with professional coaching over a reasonable period of time. Everything you are seeking is seeking YOU!

What You Think is What You Receive

 He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy

    and to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8

   The lesson you should learn from the relationship between what you think and what you receive is that there are no external limitations that can pull you down, hold you back, or deny your dream. Any limitation you have, you created in your own mind and in your own thoughts. You must come to understand that you alone are the master of your own future and the captain of your own soul. But it does you no good if you do not see yourself connected to the Spirit of God who created you as your source of supply for everything you want, need, or desire in life.

   This means that you must realize that you were not just created in the image and likeness of God and left here to fend for yourself. You have never been left alone. The Originating All-Powerful Spirit of God has been with you from before you were born. He was there at your birth and He is with you right this instant.

   But for you to know and appreciate God’s presence with you, you must contemplate who you are in Him. This God-thought that you undertake does not require elaborate cultic ritual practice or religious observance of any kind. It simply requires you to think and meditate on the fact that the Spirit of God is with you, will never leave you or forsake you, and is available to you all the time.

   Your awareness of God’s presence with you will develop as you think thoughts about Him that confirm his presence with you. As you remember situations and circumstances that caused you to cry out for help and God helped you, acknowledge Him within yourself and express gratitude and thankfulness to Him. As you continue to remember, the awareness of God’s presence with you will grow and expand. 

The Law of Change

  ^“You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” John 3:7-8

   The Law of Change—that changing yourself internally develops your character—is another Universal Law. What this really means is that you must go through a violent internal revolution that tears down all notions in your mind that put the love of money, the desire for power, and the need for self-actualization above meeting the needs of hurting people.

   The words of Jesus related to your need to be born again take on a political tone when you consider that you were born and steeped in Eurocentric capitalist thinking. The radical shift from a learned and inherited Eurocentric mindset to a born-again Universal Mindset involves cataclysmic change. This change does not come simply because you read books or attend lectures. Rather, the shift from selfishness to selflessness is a revolutionary internal change that is mediated by no less than the Holy Spirit of God who lives in you.

   You are not born again by choice in the same way that children who are born do not choose their ethnicity, parents, or where they will live. The born-again experience is a Spirit-directed and Spirit-perfected process that comes to those who are the called and chosen ones for the All-Originating Spirit’s purpose of creating only good in the world. Your desire to create only good is proof that you have already been chosen.

   Although you cannot influence or manipulate the Law of Change, you can attest to the material effects and results produced by it. The Law of Change is responsible for evolving selfish people into generous and giving people. It has influenced naturally arrogant and small-minded people to evolve into humble and open-minded people. It can also inspire you to care deeply about serving last, least, and lost people.

Today is a Good Creative Day

 God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

Genesis 1:4-5

    You will have a good creative day when you can look back over it and know that what you created today was good. There is always light—illumination—that shines in every good thing that you create. It leaves you feeling good, wholesome, and satisfied.

   There is no depression, anxiety, or other dark emotion or feeling that accompanies your good creative day. The light you created is distinctly separate from the darkness that may be all around you.

   Just as the original creation took days to accomplish, so too will your creative work take time. But you can take pleasure every single day in producing every piece and part of the whole creation that will emerge after today.

   The creative movement that you began will keep you illuminated with hope, despite your present circumstances. Your decision to think, say, and do something good will always generate enough light for you to see, no matter how dark your outer world becomes.

   Because you have learned that you have the power to generate your own light by engaging in creative movement, you will never have to depend on anyone else’s light to do what you need to do for yourself and those you love.

   You are freer than you have ever imagined. You have the capacity to make yourself happy. You are finding that you are the center of your own universe—a localized microcosm that is modeled on the Universal Macrocosm.

   As you keep your mind focused on the good, the beautiful, the noble, and the kind, you will notice that your thankfulness and gratitude for being alive will spring up as living water.