Chapter 7

The Inner Life IV

IT does not matter how “tangled up” our life may be, nor how filled with disharmony and trouble, if we make daily use of the secret place for quiet meditation upon, and communion with, our Divine Source, everything will, in time, become harmoniously adjusted. Divine Order is inherent and is the reality. The disorders of life are due to a violation of Divine Law which causes a disturbance or rupture. This disturbance subsides when we cease producing it. We cease producing disharmony when we turn to God and meditate upon His Divine Perfections. The effect of meditation is to change us into the likeness of that upon which we meditate. It is easy to recognize one who practises daily meditation. The face is calm and spiritual, showing forth the fruits of the Spirit rather than the desires of the flesh. For the reason that we cease disturbing the Divine Order and violating Divine Law, and, instead, meditate upon the one Source of Harmony, the disorders of life cease. The inherent Divine Order appears of its own accord, as a natural consequence.

It is only by the cultivation of the Inner Life that the outer life can be made harmonious, happy, and truly successful.

All attempts at altering the external life by means of mind power, mental.’’ treatments,’’ or even prayer, only have the effect of making “confusion worse confounded’’. It is a good many years since mental science and similar vogues started, and the adherents of these various cults are now to be numbered in millions, yet the world is as diseased and discordant as ever. Such people have continually to be making what they term “demonstrations”. As soon, however, as one “demonstration” has been made it becomes necessary to make another. And so the weary business for ever repeats itself.

Through lack of wisdom it is possible for one possessed of a certain amount of knowledge and power in prayer, or “treatment,” to go on making “demonstration” after “demonstration,” each one not in accordance with the Divine plan of his life, until at last there is a terrible catastrophe which sweeps everything into ruins. Without wisdom we are far more likely to ‘’demonstrate’’ that which is quite the wrong thing for us than that which is the right, consequently the more “demonstrations” are made, the greater becomes the disorder of the life.

Contrast this unsatisfactory and futile method with that of true meditation upon God, the Cause of all Harmony, Wholeness and Perfection, or, rather, Who is these things, and the advantage of the latter is at once seen. By meditating upon God, finding Him in the Secret Place, the Presence of the Most High, into which mortals, who are sufficiently in earnest and pure in motive, and who can be trusted, may enter, the inner life becomes harmoniously adjusted, so that it conforms to the Divine Order of the Spirit. The natural consequence of this being that Divine order and harmony become reflected in the external life.

This does not mean that we are not to take our troubles and difficulties to God, but rather the reverse. If we take them into the Secret Place and meditate upon God as Wisdom, Guidance, and so on, allowing God a free hand to solve our problems in His own way, and being willing to be led entirely by the Spirit, everything works together for good and the only possible right course is taken.

The great error we are at first prone to fall into is in jumping to the conclusion that we must have this thing, or that, in order to get free from certain limitations and irksome conditions, and in using all our mental and spiritual powers and the great power of prayer in an endeavour to bring to us the thing which we think we must have.

What we think we must have is probably the worst possible thing for our happiness and well-being. If we succeed in demonstrating it, great disorder and unhap-piness are the result, and it seems necessary to make more and more demonstrations. On the other hand, if we are not successful in “demonstrating” that which we think we must have, we are unhappy because we cannot have what we think is vitally necessary, and our whole life is filled with failure and discord, because all our energies are directed into a wrong channel.

Instead of saying that we must have this thing or that we should go to the Fount of all Wisdom, and by meditation become filled with wisdom not our own, so that we are led to do the only wise thing, and to take the only right course possible in the circumstances.