Chapter 24 Making a solid ankle joint flexible and usable

MAKING A SOLID ANKLE JOINT FLEXIBLE AND USABLE CHAPTER 24

In the matter of spiritual healing let me make myself clear to you at the beginning of this section. Spiritual healing recognizes God as All and Everything and puts the truth into practice, using every thing, -but every thing only when idealized. Spiritual healing does include material means, but material means only as spiritual manifestation. I am well aware that spiritual theorists differ with me in this: they say that depending upon material means limits my thought of God. There are two mistakes in this statement. First, spiritual healing does not depend upon material means but it does use them and use them only when idealized. Second, I answer that those who criticize limit their thought, -for they first insist that the patient accept the truth that God is All and Good and secondly insist that he or she must not use the truth that God is All because some of God's manifestations are not good.

Having read the three chapters of the section entitled The Spirit of Matter, you now know that denying that so-called matter is a manifestation of God is the same as denying that infinity of space, infinite attractive energy and infinite activity are of God. In those three chapters you learned that density of matter is but God's infinite space, that solidity of matter is but God's infinite attractive energy, and that matter is but etheric aliveness, infinite energy ever present.

I, then, in Spiritual Healing, adhere in practice to the truth that God is All and use not only God's Spiritual Ideal but God's Spiritual Manifestation as well -that is, God as All and Everything!

Take first a case of healing that has to do with that which is most difficult to handle -the changing of bone structure. When I was three years old my left foot and ankle were crushed between the rollers of a one-horse sugar mill. The foot and the leg -half way to the knee -were so badly injured that, when the rollers were reversed, it was necessary to lay me sidewise on a board to prevent the crushed foot from dropping off. The doctors molded it back into form as best they could and put it into a cast. But the irregular bones of the ankle were so crushed and mashed that they grew together as one single solid bone. When the cast was taken off, I could not move the ankle at all; I could not flex it any more than you can bend the bone of your arm half way between elbow and shoulder.

As the leg from knee to toes was as stiff as a carved piece of wood, it was necessary to use a cane or a crutch and to hunch my whole body upward in order to swing the other leg forward. Today, I can move the left foot up and down at the ankle as easily as I can move my right foot. I do not even limp! My step is springy and certain. Friends say that my walk is more like that of a man of thirty than that of a man of sixty-five. Certainly, -with the small bones of my ankle grown together as one solid bone, -I was compelled to do something with my consciousness of the “solidity” of matter.

To get rid of the idea that matter is COMPACT, DENSE and SOLID is the first step in all healing. So long as you think of a cancer -or a tumor, or an abnormal bone growth -as compact solid matter, so long will you doubt the power of mind and spirit to change it. Throughout all the ages, individuals have been healed by prayer, faith, mind, love and spirit. Each such case proves it can be done. Yet today, not one person of each twenty million of the world's population is healed directly by such methods. We cannot account for this, by asserting that the world does not know that God has healed. We cannot account for it by asserting that millions do not wish to be made well by spiritual healing. If, at any time during the ages, we had held to the truth that God is All and known that matter is spiritual manifestation, the knowledge of the results of our spiritual healing would have swept the world and everyone would now accept and use them.

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We have ideals of God, spirit, and spiritual healing. We have no ideal of matter, the thing to be healed. Our failures have been due to our partial and very mistaken ideas of matter. Some have tried to get around matter by calling it an illusion. Think of matter as an illusion as much as you please but -if you have a cancer on the end of your nose -deep in your heart you know that you cannot deny that your mind recognizes that that cancer is there!

So long as you call matter an illusion, you admit there is something to be called an illusion; and that something makes you doubt to one degree or another the possibility of the healing. Others try to get around matter, by denying its existence. So long as you find it necessary to deny matter, your very denial is your admission that there is something to deny. Is it consistent to deny the existence of the matter we call a cancer and then to turn our minds topsy-turvy in a second and demand that universal supply be manifested as matter in the form of money and means of material existence -food, clothing, houses, etc.

Demanding the presence of one kind of matter and denying the existence of another indicates a partial but not a complete conception of spiritual manifestation. And so long as our conception of truth is incomplete, we heal -now and then -but not always. Christ never denied matter. He changed its manifestation by spiritual power: water to wine, for instance. But He never denied the water or the wine. He increased the number of loaves and fishes and, in teaching His disciples the lesson to be drawn from the miracle, He called specific attention to matter for He emphasized the fact that there were but a few loaves and fishes before the change and many thousands afterwards.

God is All: Everything that is true in spiritual existence is true in material existence and vice versa. If God is holy, then all of His manifestations are holy. "If the root be holy," writes Paul, "so are the branches." Your body is composed of cells. Cells are composed of atoms and atoms of electrons. Christ did not deny the existence of the body; He called it a temple-a place of holiness. Cells, atoms and electrons are God in manifestation, just as much as thought is! God is ALL.

How did I change a solid anklebone to a flexible and usable joint? First, I idealized matter exactly as I have done for you in the three chapters of the section entitled “The Spirit of Matter.” Read them again, read them a thousand times if necessary, for the idea that matter is dense, solid and motionless has been accepted millions of times by your mind. What, then, if it does take a thousand readings to dispel the mistaken ideas?

Second, after idealizing matter in general, I idealized the particular matter of the ankle joint. I knew it was composed of cells, each composed of molecules -millions of them. I idealized a molecule as it truly exists, -a mere etheric spherical space in which atoms whirl at a tremendous rate. I idealized the atoms of every molecule of that bone structure, knowing each to be but a smaller etheric spherical space composed of electrons. Then I idealized the bone structure as composed of electrons. I idealized these elections as being far, far apart; I idealized them as moving at stupendous speeds; I idealized the electron itself as only an infinitely small whirling hole in space. Then my anklebone became infinite space energy, formed and held together by infinite attractive energy, -no more dense nor solid than infinitely active holes in space.

Was this all I did? No, this was but my ideal of the substance of which the ankle joint is composed and of the process of infinite energy in operation. Hence, third, I idealized every process and means of developing muscles to move the ankle and of developing nerves to move the muscles; I rubbed the ankle; pulled it; pressed it; tried to turn it this way and that -used every means of which I could conceive, anything that might induce motion. Never, however, did I for a moment think of it as dense, solid and motionless. I knew that bone to be infinite energy. I knew that my soul could control and direct that energy; that it could form, re-form, and create anew the bone structure itself. I knew the structure -as all great scientists were then beginning to realize -to be only infinite energy under my control.

No matter what it is to be healed, your first step is to idealize matter; idealize it as it truly is, made up of infinitely small, whirling holes of energy held together by the infinite attractive energy of God. Being only infinite energy, matter can be changed by the Infinite Will and Spirit residing in each of us.