I AM THE SUN OF GOD Chapter 1

DO you desire above all things to live a serene, useful, successful life? Do you want to get out of the petty limitations of conventionality? Out of pain and sin and sickness? Away from the small hurts of every-day living? Do you really want to get away from them? Are you willing to work out the salvation that is in you?

Or would you rather sit still and grumble at the universe in general and everybody in particular? Do you desire health and prosperity, happiness and a wider usefulness enough to work every day and all day for them, as a man works who desires to be a great musician, or artist, or scholar? Or do you just weakly wish that somebody would carry you bodily “on flower beds of ease” to a heaven of happiness and prosperity? Are you RESOLVED to have health, happiness and material prosperity, and to be more widely useful, no matter what it costs nor how long it takes?

Then you will have them. You will, without the shadow of a doubt, get there. You could not fail if you tried. And I AM with you all the way and at the same time I AM already there, and I will tell you something that was an immense help to me in getting there. It was the sun. Shelton says the sun is God. I should not be surprised if he is right. But I am not sure he is.

However, the sun helped me to a realization of my Self, my all-wise, all-loving, all-powerful, serenely happy Self. Your self is just as grand as my self, and you are dead certain to find your self, when once you set about it.

The reason you have not already found it is that you have put in most of your time in watching the self of other people. You have been impolite to your Self. You have consulted every Tom, Dick and Harry before your Self. And you have called your Self all sorts of names. No wonder he has crawled into his shell and pulled the hole in after him! No wonder you think he doesn’t know much!

But he does, and he will do anything for you if you just be even half way civil to him! Be polite and respectful to your Self. Tell him he is a pretty good fellow after all – the best friend you have. Ask his advice, and use it. And let him do things for you. All he wants is RECOGNITION, and he will do anything you want done, and do it better than anybody else can do it for you.

The sun helped me to make a close acquaintance with my Self. He will also help you. Did you ever think how much alike are Son and Sun? Jesus was the Son of God. I studied the life of that Son for years, trying to be like Him. My success was indifferent.

But one day it suddenly flashed across my mind that I AM THE SUN of God! That was to me a glorious idea that took possession of me and literally transformed me by the renewing of my mind.

That is a little trick ideas have – give them a lodging and they will make a whole new house for you, a “house not made with hands.”

“I AM THE SUN of God” made me all over in no time.

I will tell you some of the changes it made in me: I used to be very “sensitive”; so much so that I didn’t know my own mind more than half the time; and I was always getting my feelings hurt; though I was generally too proud to show it.

I tried desperately to conquer my feelings and keep from being hurt, but success did not crown my efforts nor even perch upon my banner.

At last I grew tired of coddling my feelings and I told them, with considerable righteous indignation, to keep on feeling hurt till they got tired and quit – they would receive no more attention from me! They did get tired and quit. The sun warmed up my feelings and happified them for good and all.

This is the way of it: I said to myself, “If I AM THE SUN of Good, then my one reason for being is simply to radiate – to shine – to send out good thought.”

Now, you see, that is just where I had been making a vital mistake. I had always tried to be a Moon instead of a Sun. The Moon is cold, dark, sterile, receptive, only shedding reflected light. I had been all the time receiving everything – other people’s ideas and opinions, and even all kinds of hurts from them! And, as if this was not enough receiving, I daily besought God to give, give, GIVE me the Holy Ghost, not to mention the hundred and one other favors I begged! – of Him and other folks.

And all this time I was really a SUN, the Sun of God, made for the one purpose of sending out, instead of receiving. I had “life in myself,” as “the Father hath life in Himself.”

In order to outgrow entirely all that sensitiveness I had simply to remember, when my feelings were injured, that I AM a Sun made to shine, instead of a Moon made to receive hurts from without.

Every human being is literally a Sun of Good, made to radiate. If he will attend strictly to the business of sending out Good Will, as the sun radiates beams, he will soon find his feelings under his control.

Suppose every time somebody on this planet grumbled at Old Sol, he were to curl up within himself and fail to send forth his rays. If he were “sensitive” like most people that is what he would do. But Sol is too wise a god for that. He attends strictly to his own business of shining. So positively does he shine, and so fully is he absorbed in doing his best, that he shines upon not only the “just,” who appreciate his shine, but he shines joyously on the “unjust,” who only grumble in return. So positive is that blesses old Sol that he never feels a grumble! His shine just meets the grumble and transmutes it before it touches him.

The reason we get hurt by the unkind words of those about us is that we forget to shine.

There is a real sun center in us, the Solar (or Sun) Plexus. This is a great nerve center situated in back of the stomach. When this central Sun, from which all the nerves of the body radiate, is in its normal condition, it steadily radiates a real energy, just as the sun does. This energy vibrates through the nerve highways and byways of the body out toward the surface of the body in all directions (the mucous membranous surface, as well as the outer skin), and is thrown off in a real halo or atmosphere, which always envelops the body. If this radiation from the Solar Plexus is positive enough, the influence of another person cannot disturb its steady, harmonious vibrations in the least.

And a person who is thus positively radiant wields an immense power for good to those less positive than himself. His presence alone, without a spoken word or even a definitely directed thought, stills the troubled minds with which he comes in contact.

In all human beings, who have not yet learned the law of being, the Solar Plexus is in a cramped condition that prevents the steady flow of life, or “nerve ether,” to all parts of the body. From this cause comes every disease of the human race – mental, physical or environmental.

ALL one’s “feelings” are due to the action or inaction of this Sun-center. Good feelings are due to free action; ill feelings to contraction. Pleasant sensations are caused by the outflow of “nerve ether,” energy, Life; unpleasant sensations by an interruption of the steady outflow.

In every human being there is a steady radiation of Life, or Love, or Good Will from the Solar Plexus, except when the individual himself interrupts the radiation when he contracts the Solar Plexus, thus diminishing the outflow, or interrupting it altogether as in death.

A continued contraction of the nerves results in a chronic state of nervous collapse. The nerves literally collapse, as does a soft tube from which fluid is withdrawn.

The nerves are tubes for the conveyance of Life to all parts of the body. Contract the Solar Plexus and you withdraw Life from the body.

The Solar Plexus is the point where life is born – where the Uncreate becomes Create; the unorganized becomes organized; the unconscious becomes conscious; the invisible appears; that which is dimensionless becomes measurable.

There is positively no limit to the amount of life this solar center in the individual is able to generate, and no limit to the rapidity with which it may be generated.

But this omnipotent sun-center is a generator of blind energy, all-mighty but unintelligent in any high sense.

The Solar Plexus is a SERVANT to the brain. No more life is generated (i.e., made visible) than the brain of “God in the highest” dictates. Every minute contraction and expansion of the sun-center of Life is in obedience to the brain. No lightest fancy of the brain but is responded to instantaneously by the Solar Plexus.

Do you perceive why and how it is that “of every idle word shall ye give account?” And how ye shall be “rewarded according to the deeds done in the flesh?”

What you sow in imagination you will surely reap in the body. What you have sown in thought you are reaping now.

Conscious thought is master of the sun-center, from which flows the life of your body; and the quality of your body, including the brain, determines the quality of your environment. You are your own lord and master, the arbiter of your own destiny.

Now do you see why a “sensitive” person gets “hurt” continually? He thinks he is a Moon instead of a Sun; he receives from others words or tones or acts which displease him; he contracts the sun-center of himself, stopping his radiation of Good Will.

“It is the stoppage of his own radiations of life or good will that hurts him, NOT the thing that was said or done. And he alone is the Lord of that Sun-radiator; therefore he hurts himself. I made this discovery by actual experience, and have demonstrated the fact that nobody on earth has the power to “hurt my feelings.” By studying the action of the real sun and remembering that I AM THE SUN OF GOD, I quickly learned the art and acquired the habit of shining. “What I do ye may do also.”