China Eggs

Hens lay eggs to make little chickens, not to provide your breakfast. If you remove all the eggs from a hen’s nest, she will quit laying. For centuries farmers have put smooth stones and china eggs in a hen’s nest to trick her into laying more eggs for human consumption.

The chicken can’t tell a China egg from a real one, but the farmer can. Farmers also know something else about China eggs: They will never hatch.

What do China eggs have to do with consciousness? Some ideas are like China eggs — they will never hatch. Be careful not to sit on a China egg too long.

Learn to identify the China eggs in your consciousness; otherwise, they will cost you valuable time and resources, and make you unproductive. A China egg is a useless mental construct. When you identify a China egg, cross it off your mental list and move on.


Edna Lister on China Eggs

God created you for His Mind to use, but you cannot progress by living on passive animal instinct. Most people use faith as a seat cushion of spiritual comfort, but this won’t work. China eggs never hatch, no matter how long you sit on them. — Edna Lister, The Messiah’s Mantle, October 12, 1952.

"I must recognize my need to use, to apply my own faculties and abilities. I must act to make them my own. I must choose to make room for the new. I can starve to death just waiting, so I recognize that I must work hard and be strong. I must give up old ideas and old ways."

You just can’t keep some people from settin’ on a nest full of China eggs, a bunch of crystalized ideas they’ve held for thirty years! Nothing has happened, nothing is happening, nothing ever will happen without hard work. — Edna Lister, The Greater You, February 5, 1956.

Some people hear truth and want to be “saved,” but expect to ride into heaven on Jesus’ coattails. They sit on a nest of China eggs of hope and desire, expecting him to do all the work of hatching for them. Their fears arise when the road through life runs rough and they wonder why he is not helping and protecting them. They think they know truth, but are just sitting on the nest, resting themselves to death.

Such people ascended in consciousness during a former life, entered this life with trusting but naive innocence, believing every word they hear is truth, and are gulled by their gullibility. They kick against the pricks when simple belief and faith fail because they must act from a point of soul strength. Then they may curse God, saying He has allowed life to betray their beautiful faith.

You must build your faith to the point of inconquerability, and you can do it through plenty of prayer and thanksgiving. The more you pray, the more darkness you uncover within the appetitive soul. Some build a shell around themselves like a hermit crab and hide within it saying, “I just want to crawl back into my safe shell.” They have miracles when Light enters, but their lingering doubts can still confound their weak faith. — Edna Lister, Unquenchable Love, December 7, 1958.

God’s abundance is waiting for you and it can manifest. Back all your ideals with wisdom and love, which form and build your prayer molds. Balance love with wisdom and hold the mold before you as the ideal; this is idealization. You cannot separate your love from your wisdom and get anywhere, because you need both. Together, you can nourish invincible principle (your ideal plan) with love. Wisdom thinks and plans your mold, but you must nourish and sustain it with your love of God. Wisdom, backed with just a materialistic “hanging on” or fickle love, is like a hen on a nest of eggs. Having no wisdom, she gets off too soon, loses her eggs, then tries to push other hens off their eggs. You can write your own philosophy by observing life. — Edna Lister, Idealization, May 10, 1959.

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Edna Miriam Lister
1884 –1971
The original Pioneering Mystic,
American Idealist, Founder, Society of the Universal Living Christ, minister, teacher, author, wife, and mother

../Edna Lister


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