Excerpts from

  Pathway of Roses
by Christian D. Larson




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Chapter 1

We are learning to expand our concepts of truth and of life as a whole; and so we are able to discern the way. Then, as we proceed, we discover, to our amazement, that life in the real is so large and so immensely rich that we will need eternity to live it all. This discovery is inspiring to a high degree. But what are the methods and the principles that we should apply so that we may continue to go forward upon this remarkable road? That is what we all are eager to know.

First, recognize the great truth that you have the ability to live your own life exactly as you may desire to live. You are the real master of your own existence and you, yourself, may determine how beautiful that existence is to be.

Your life is in your own hands. You may live as you wish. You may secure from life whatever you desire, because there is no limit to life, and no limit to your capacity to live. The elements of life can be modified, changed, developed and perfected to comply with your own supreme demand; the increase of life can be realized in the exact measure of your largest need; you are in living touch with Infinite life, and there is neither limit nor end to the source of your supply.

To live in the constant recognition of this great truth, is to rise continually into higher and higher degrees of that mastery of life that gives you the power to live your life according to your most perfect ideals. To reach the goal that every ascending mind has in view, this truth, therefore, must ever be recognized and applied. It is one of those principles that you shall always require, no matter how high you may rise in the scale of divine being.

You invariably receive what you desire, no more, no less. You get what you wish for if the power within that wish is as strong as you can make it.

The fact that you can have an ideal, proves that you have the power to secure it. The fact that you can formulate and appreciate a desire for something larger and better, proves that you can fulfill that desire. The great essential is to desire with the whole heart; that is, to give your desires all the life and power that you can possibly arouse from the depths of invincible being.

The true desire and the true prayer are synonymous. The true prayer is invariably some immensely strong desire expressed when your human mind feels the sublime touch of the Infinite mind; and the true desire must be in perfect touch with Infinite life in order to be filled with the invincible power of that life.

To cause every wish to come true, you must express all the power of mind and soul through every wish; but you cannot give expression to all the power within you until you awaken your spiritual nature, and you cannot awaken your spiritual nature until you begin to live with the Infinite. The largeness and immensity of the supreme spiritual life within you comes forth only as consciousness is spiritualized, and you gain spiritual consciousness by living and thinking constantly in the lofty state where you actually feel that God is closer than breathing, nearer than hands and feet.

We cannot desire too much, and when we desire with all the life and power that is within us, our desires shall positively be fulfilled. The wish must be whole-hearted, not half-hearted; it must contain all the power we have, not simply the limited actions - shallow thinking; and it must contain soul, not simply emotion, but that deep, spiritual feeling that touches the very spirit of limitless life and power.

Have faith in God, have faith in humanity, have faith in yourself, have faith in everything; and have faith in faith. When you have confidence in yourself you arouse everything that is stronger, greater and superior in yourself. In consequence, the more confidence you have in yourself, the more you will attain and accomplish. But the power of self-confidence is but an atom in comparison with the marvelous power of faith.

Faith takes mind and soul into the greater realms of life. It goes out upon the boundless, and awakens those interior spiritual forces that have the power to do anything. This is why all things become possible when you have faith.

It is the nature of faith to break bounds; to transcend limitations, and take life, thought and action into the universal. It is the nature of faith to unite the lesser with the greater, to unite your individual mind with the mind of God. Therefore, you shall always require faith; however far you may go into the greater, the superior and the boundless today, faith will take you farther still to-morrow. And that is your purpose; to realize your largest and dearest desires in the present, and then press on to the realization of other and far greater desires in the future.

Depend upon the superior spiritual self within for results, and give this greater Essence the credit for everything you accomplish. When you depend upon the personal self, you place yourself in touch only with the lesser forces on the surface; you therefore will accomplish but little; but when you depend upon the supreme spiritual self, you place yourself in touch with the greater powers within, and results will be greater in proportion.

When you give credit to the personal self, you ignore the interior spiritual self; you thereby fail to secure that greater wisdom and power that the spiritual self alone can supply. Instead of being led by that inner light that knows, you are led by the confusion of outer thought; you are turned away from the path that leads to truth, freedom and the perfect life, and your mistakes are many. Instead of being taken into the current of that invincible life that can carry you through to your very highest goal, you remain in the hands of mere physical energy, that energy that can do nothing more than simply keep your body alive.

Whenever you accomplish something worth while, and give the praise to your own outer personal self, you immediately lose your hold on those powers through which those results were gained; in consequence, failure will begin, and you will have to retrace all your former steps to again gain possession of that power that can do whatever you may wish to have done.

To constantly depend upon the greater self, to constantly expect the desired results from the greater self, and to always give credit to the greater self, is to constantly draw upon the limitless wisdom and power of the greater self – the supreme spiritual self within you. You thereby become larger and stronger in all the elements of your being, rising ever in the scale, gaining ground perpetually, and passing from victory to victory. What you desire you will receive because higher power is working through you, and as you ascend in the scale, there is nothing that you will not attain and accomplish.

The principal cause of failure among those who are trying to live in harmony with real truth, may be found in the general tendency to think of the outer person as the power that does things on the visible plane. But it is the interior spiritual person that gives the power, though the outer person is required to apply it. And the more thought we give to the interior person, the more life and power we bring forth from within.

The interior person is the true self, created in the image and likeness of God; it is therefore evident that when you begin to live with the life and the power of the interior person, the expression of real greatness and real spirituality will begin. And from that moment you will not be limited to the power of the personal self; instead you will fill the personal self with that divine power from on high that is limitless, inexhaustible and invincible.

Do not work for yourself; work for the great idea that stands at the apex of your greatest purpose. The greater the idea for which you work, the greater will be your work; and it is he who does the greatest work that does the most for everybody, himself included. When your work is great you become a great power for good among thousands, and at the same time you do more for yourself than you could possibly do in any other manner.

When you begin to live and work for a great purpose, you get into the current of great forces, great minds and great souls. You gain from every source; -all the powerful lives in the world will work with you; you become a living part of that movement in the world that determines the greater destiny of humanity; you become one of the chief elements upon which will depend the future of countless generations yet to be; you become one of the chosen of the Most High.

To live for a great purpose is to live in the world of great ideas, and great ideas awaken great thoughts. You are as you think. Great thoughts produce great minds; from great minds proceed great works, and great works constitute the building material with which the kingdom upon earth is to be constructed.

When you begin to live for a great and good purpose, you place in action that law that causes all things to work together for good. Henceforth, nothing is in vain; every person, thing or event that comes into your world will add to the welfare, the richness and the beauty of that world. All things become ministers of the life that is real life, you have been giving your best everywhere, and you are receiving the best from every source in return.

To live for that which is high, lofty and sublime, is to walk with God; the love, the life, the power and the wisdom of the Infinite will ever be with you, and to have such companions is to be blessed indeed. Every moment will give you the peace that passes understanding, every hour will be filled with the joy everlasting, and every day will be as a thousand years in celestial kingdoms on high.

NINE STEPS TO THE BEAUTIFUL LIFE

There is only one will in the universe just as there is only one mind. The one mind is the mind of God, the one will is the will of God. Your individual mind is an individual or differentiated expression of the Infinite mind, and the largeness of this human mind depends upon how much of the one mind you may decide to appropriate. You have the freedom to incorporate in your own individual consciousness as much of the Infinite mind as you may desire; and as the mind of the Infinite is limitless, your mind may continue to become larger and larger without any end.

The will of your individual mind is a partial expression of the will of God, just as the force of growth that is in each branch is a part of the same force that is in the vine, and the power of your individual will depends upon how perfectly your mind works in harmony with the Infinite mind.

There is no limit to the power of the will of God, the divine will; therefore, when your will is as large a part of the divine will as your mind can appropriate and apply, your will necessarily becomes immensely strong; and since your mind can appropriate a larger and a larger measure of the divine will, there is no limit to the power of will that can be developed in your individual mind.

To develop the true will, the first essential is to realize that there is but one will, and that you will with the one will just as you live the one life and think with the one mind, though in your thinking, living and willing, you do not, as a rule, do justice to that part of the whole which it is your privilege to use. You think, live and will too much as an isolated entity instead of as a divine being eternally united with the Supreme.

The second essential is to realize that the divine will works only for better things and greater things. The path of the divine will is upward and onward forever, and its power is employed exclusively in building more lofty mansions for the soul. Therefore, the will of God does not produce sickness, adversity or death; on the contrary, the will of God eternally wills to produce wholeness, harmony and life.

The ills of personal life are not produced by divine will; they are produced by your inability to properly use that part of divine will that is being expressed in individual mind, and your inability comes because you have not always applied your will in harmony with divine will.

When you use your personal will as your own isolated power, you separate your mind more and more from the source of your power; in consequence, the power of your will becomes weaker, and you necessarily fail to accomplish what you have in view. You also fall apart from the one ascending current of life; you get out of harmony with the true order of things, and sickness, trouble, adversity and want invariably follow.

The true use of the will is to apply your individual will in the full recognition of the oneness of the human will with the divine will. Your will is as much of the divine will as you are using now, and it is your privilege to use as much of the divine will as you may desire. To constantly think of your will and the divine will as the same will, is to place your mind in such perfect harmony with limitless power of divine will that you can appropriate this power in larger and larger measure, and the more you appropriate, the stronger becomes the power of will in you.

When your individual mind is in such perfect harmony with the Supreme mind that the divine will can be given free and full expression, the will of your individual mind becomes invincible; the secret therefore of developing a powerful will is found here, and here alone.

The true will is never domineering nor antagonistic; neither does it ever apply the force of resistance. If you are antagonistic or have a tendency to resist everything that is not to your liking, it is proof conclusive that you are not in harmony with divine will. You are misdirecting your power, and are forming obstacles and pitfalls for yourself.

The divine will does not attempt to overcome evils and obstacles with antagonistic or domineering forces; the divine will does not fight wrong, it transforms wrong. It works in silence and serenity, but goes so deeply into the elements of things that it undermines the very first causes of all adverse or detrimental conditions. It does not resist the surface, but goes calmly beneath the surface and transforms those undercurrents from which surface conditions proceed.

The divine will, by going into the deeper life of all things, transforms all things into harmony with itself; and can transform all things because its power is supreme. Therefore when you are in the midst of adversity, you should not rail against fate nor antagonize those conditions that seem to work against you. You have within you the power of divine will, and this will can change everything for good.

But it not only can, it will. It is not the will of God to keep any person in adversity. It is the will of God to set every person free, and every person will be set free when he places his life completely in the hands of divine will.

When the individual mind can say, from the heart, Thy will be done, the individual life has been placed in the power of divine will and that life will at once begin to pass out of adversity, sickness, trouble and want, into the world of freedom.

To live the life of God, think the thought of God, and will with the will of God – that is the secret path to the highly developed individuality; and it is such an individuality that becomes a master mind, a son and daughter of the Most High.

When the individual mind declares, Thy will be done, consciousness must fully recognize the presence of Supreme power, and must realize, with depth of thought and feeling, that Supreme power invariably ads to higher ground – the world of freedom and superior existence.

When the mind gives up to divine will in an indifferent, submissive, self-surrendering attitude, it is not giving up to divine will; it is simply giving up to the surrounding forces of fate. Such a mind will permit the forces of adversity to have their way, thinking that it is the will of God that much suffering must still be endured, and will consequently drift with circumstances, accepting whatever comes as a necessary chastisement.

This method, however, weakens the mind, and places the individual more out of harmony with God than ever before. You always place yourself out of harmony with God when you accept evil as coming from God, and you weaken your own ability to use divine will when you permit adversity to exist thinking that it was sent from God.

To give the mind over to divine will is not to give up at all, in the ordinary sense of that term; you simply place yourself in that position where you can use the power of the one true will instead of a mere imitation. You blend your own desires and aims with that power that you know can see you through, and you work in the realization that whatever is detrimental in your plans will be eliminated as you press on towards the great goal in view.

Your mind that is aimless, waiting for the will of God to take you where you belong, You will drift with fate. You are not in the hands of divine will, you are in the hands of circumstances because you have not given divine will something to do. God does not tell you what to do; God has given you the wisdom to know your own desires and your own tendencies, and has given you the power to fulfill those desires, but you must take individual action; this is why you have individuality and free individual choice.

However, when you do take individual action, God will work with you if you enter into harmony with the divine, and when God is with you, failure is impossible.

Then you must will to press on, knowing that you are using divine will, the Supreme will of the Most High, because this is the only will in the universe. It is the will that eternally wills the higher, the greater and the better – the will that is invincible, and always does what it wills to do.

To the minds of the many the true meaning of the Will of God has not been made perfectly clear; therefore, the majority, even among those who have strong spiritual tendencies, hesitate to give up to the absolute direction of higher power. There is a slight dread in the mind of the average person whenever he thinks of entering the uncertainty and the mysteriousness of the seeming void, and as long as things are reasonably well he does not care to give up to some power he knows nothing of. And as a true understanding of higher power can not be found among the many, there are, accordingly, but few who can actually declare, with the whole heart, "Thy will be done." We frequently pray for His will to guide us, nevertheless we inwardly expect to use our own wills in mostly everything we do. But such prayers are not true to the spirit, and therefore they prevent the soul from actually discerning the real meaning of God’s will; and also prevent the mind from becoming a perfect channel for the expression of His will.

The universe is orderly from center to circumference, and everything is established upon the firm foundation of eternal right and universal good. There is a power that lives and moves throughout this vast immensity, and all those things that have a permanent place is the cosmos, or that are instrumental in any way, in promoting the purpose of life, have their source in this one power. All the laws and forces in existence spring originally from this power; it is therefore the center and source of all that lives and moves; and this power is the will of God. Accordingly, to do the will of the God is to enter into harmony with the universal order and promote the great eternal plan.

The laws of life are all expressions of Supreme will. God wills eternally the right and the true, and the act of His willing originates and perpetuates the sublime plan of life that harmoniously thrills the entire cosmos during endless eternities. God’s will is constant and changeless; therefore all the laws and principles in existence remain ever the same, as they are all the expression of the One Will. All that we see in the life of the universe is the eternal coming forth of Divine Will, and the perpetual returning to the One Source.

The true will in every soul is an individualization of Infinite Will, and the true use of the individual will means the doing of the will of God. The Infinite Will does not seek to control things, but seeks eternally to give itself to things. And here lies the secret in correctly using the human will, and in placing the human will in perfect harmony with God’s Will. When you can say with the whole heart, "Thy Will be done," you are not giving up your own will, but you are placing your own will and the whole of your life in oneness with God and in harmony with the universal order. Therefore, when you do the Will of God your own will becomes right, and becomes infinitely stronger than it ever was before.

When we act in perfect accord with the laws of life on all the planes of being, we are doing the Will of God because what we call law in life is the Will of God in expression in life. He who lives in perfect harmony with nature, who fully appreciates her grandeur and her beauty, and who daily seeks to be inspired by the loveliness of her presence is doing the Will of God in the natural world. He who rightly employs all the elements of mind and body, and who furthers the purpose of his own being in constant growth and unfoldment is doing the will of God in the human world. He who searches the deep things of God and enters into that high state where God becomes "closer than breathing, nearer than hands and feet;" he who lives and moves and has his being in the infinite sea of divine light, and ever ascends higher and higher into the greater glories of God’s kingdom, is doing the will of God in the spiritual world.

Whoever can say with his whole heart "Thy will be done," has placed the whole of his life in perfect accord with God; and henceforth he will seek to live in perfect harmony with all that is, because all is of God. To do the will of God is not only to place one’s life in the hands of God, but to be at peace with all the world, and to give one’s whole life to all the world. The will of God seeks eternally to give itself to things – all things; the will of humanity, to be in harmony with the will of God, must do the same.

However insignificant a law may seem to be, it is God working in that part of the spiritual universe; and as God is everywhere, manifesting spiritual power everywhere, we must live and work with God in all things, even the most trivial, if we would be in perfect accord with the spiritual life and always do God's will. A law in life is a path to greater things; in truth, an open door through which we may pass more closely into God's presence. We can meet God at every expression of life, and whenever we are in the highest state of harmony with our expression of life, we have met God in that place. And also, when we use that expression of life in entering into a larger measure of life, we do the Will of God in that place. Therefore, whoever meets God everywhere, and does His will in every place, will realize the fullness of life at all times and under every circumstance. And to realize the fullness of life is to realize the allness of the good.

The incompleteness of human life, in general, is caused by our failure to enter into perfect accord with all the laws in our sphere of existence. We may be wholly right in some things while the very opposite in other things. We may be scrupulous in regard to the right use of some laws, and at the same time continually negligent in regard to others. There are many who take perfect care of their bodies, and comply most rigidly with all known physical laws, yet they violate the laws of mind nearly every hour of their existence. Others are very careful so as to think only the truth, and do their best to remain continually in the most beautiful states of mind; but while aiming to live in mental ideals they are wholly indifferent to the welfare of the body. Not infrequently we find people who live in perfect accord with intellectual laws but violate daily the moral laws. Also, too many who are the reverse. In brief, the majority do the will of God in some realms while living entirely at variance with His laws in other realms. And here we find the simple answer to many perplexing questions.

When some misfortune comes to you that you do not think you deserve, do not think that God is unjust or that fate is unkind. You have simply failed to do God's will in all things. Do not blame others, do not blame fate, do not even blame yourself; simply proceed to readjust your life so that you may become one with the divine in all things. Then all ills shall disappear, and you shall not only regain what you have lost but you shall, in addition, receive much more. Live in accord with all the laws of life physically, mentally and spiritually; do all things in the consciousness of God; do all things to the glory of God, and follow the light of His spirit in every thought and deed; then you will always do the Will of God.

"Pathway of Roses" by Christian D. Larson

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