Expansion

Noah Webster defined "to expand" as "to open; to spread; as, a flower expands its leaves; to spread; to enlarge a surface; to diffuse; as, a stream expands its waters over a plain; to dilate; to enlarge in bulk; to distend; as, to expand the chest by inspiration; heat expands all bodies; air is expanded by rarefaction; to enlarge; to extend; as, to expand the sphere of benevolence; to expand the heart or affections."

Expansion is defined as "spreading out, unfolding, opening out, anything that is spread out, an expanse, especially the expanse of heaven, the firmament."

Expansion is a component of a trinity including the principles of contraction and equilibrium. Expansion is an absolute and abstract principle rooted in the Love Emanation, a law of being and a law of doing.


Edna Lister on Expansion

Unconquerable faith, unquenchable love and invincible joy are active principles. Love's fire has never been put out, faith has never been conquered, and joy has never been weakened or diminished. – Edna Lister, February 12, 1941.


Mother Love, which sustains and nourishes all our creations, polarizes into positive and negative expressions — selfish love contracts, subtracts and divides into small parts, whereas, selfless love expands, adds and multiplies. – Edna Lister, Enemies, May 28, 1941.


God runs His whole universe on the expansion principle, and when you comply with His laws of expansion, your life begins to expand in all directions. All expansion comes under His divine pattern. – Edna Lister, Five Keys to the Kingdom, September 1, 1945.


You can expand and ascend only on love. – Edna Lister, August 15, 1949.


The space within the universe contracted on involution, and it can expand only on evolution. Thus, ascension must occur on the subsequent raising of vibration and expanding substance. – Edna Lister, July 27, 1951.


When you live under the laws of expansion, you have no time to "think about it," but hear, accept and ascend to gain comprehension, which is illumination, an act of God. This is a natural universal law — you hear, accept, ascend, comprehend and become. – Edna Lister, July 27, 1951.


The Love of God is the universal heat. Burning desire, faith and love produce miracles because they raise the vibration and expand substance. Any retrogression will eventually contract substance and consciousness to the ice stage. Cold burns worse than heat, and lowering a vibration to its iciest point is practicing black magic. – Edna Lister, August 2, 1951.


As you give up more self on earth, your soul expands in heaven. – Edna Lister, The Golden Silence, September 28, 1952.


God's Creation has all the potential of good, but God's manifestation is in a state of flux. Principle never changes, but God expands when He becomes personality and form. We must expand as love to return to God after our experiences. – Edna Lister, July 19, 1954.


Love each who comes to you "best" and "most" to expand and increase your capacity for love. – Edna Lister, Twelve Cosmic Magnitudes, July 10, 1956.


Yesterday's ideas contract to tomorrow's opinions and prejudices unless today's new ideas expand them. – Edna Lister, New Thought, a New World, June 29, 1958.


We may only raise or lower substance or consciousness in vibration. Ascending or descending, expanding or condensing is how substance or consciousness functions for healing. "Becoming" means expanding consciousness and substance into all good, like the miracle of the loaves and fishes. – Edna Lister, God as Personality and Principle, June 9, 1959.


Manifestation is a philosophical term for Mind, Power and Substance expressing through form. Mind acts on Substance and causes Power to send it into a form-mold for manifestation. – Edna Lister, God as Personality and Principle, June 9, 1959.


Truth is expansion and growth, yet one man's opinion of truth is not another's. Life is graded, and many occupy the same step in each grade. All life exists according to its degree and kind: A rose can be no other flower, but it can grow. You can follow this law anywhere and observe the idea of expansion. – Edna Lister, August 24, 1959.


Contraction and expansion were among the first fundamental principles God established as universal laws, and they condition your thinking, imagination and emotional desires. Simply stated, the absolute law of expansion dictates that you may raise the rate of vibration of spiritual consciousness or physical substance, and it expands. You may lower the rate of vibration and contract consciousness or condense substance under the absolute law of contraction. – Edna Lister, What Is Healing? May 17, 1960.


Metaphysics incorporates the laws of attraction, expansion, cohesion, contraction and repulsion as laws of being and doing. – Edna Lister, How Can I Help Myself? May 31, 1960.


Forgiveness is the greatest primary law under the great law of expansion. Peter asked Jesus, "Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him?" – Matthew 18:21. Jesus answered seventy times seven. – Edna Lister, How Can I Apply Law to My Life? June 7, 1960.


You receive to grow and learn under the law of expansion. When you are at home in the kingdom of heaven, you open to receive love and expand under the love of family and friends. – Edna Lister, How Can I Apply Law to My Life? June 7, 1960.


Give love for. "I must give to receive" is the law. After scrubbing another metaphysically, tell him how glorious he is. Light shines and he expands. – Edna Lister, How Can I Apply Law to My Life? June 7, 1960.


Praise operates under the law of expansion. Fear of having no one praise you comes under the law of receiving. If you want praise but are uncomfortable when praised, you have given the self credits in the past, and fear that self-praise may rear its head again. – Edna Lister, How Can I Apply Law to My Life? June 7, 1960.


Breaking law is easier on an expansion vibration because you tend to forget attention to details. Exaggeration and wild, unruly imagination lies on expansion's negative side, and you can get in trouble with an enthusiasm that becomes forceful. – Edna Lister, How Can I Apply Law to My Life? June 7, 1960.


Ascension is under the law of love and its subordinate law, attraction. Yet at times you may ascend under the law of repulsion, which operates under the contraction principle. – Edna Lister, How Can I Apply Law to My Life? June 7, 1960.


"Only my own can come to me" under the law of attraction. You apply attraction by loving and drawing all our earthly creations home to the kingdom of heaven consciously. – Edna Lister, How Can I Apply Law to My Life? June 7, 1960.


You must apply every law you hear until you become that law. You attract what you send out, and your chickens come home to roost. To hear, then ignore or forget a law attracts every old vibration associated with that law to come home to roost. When you finally become a law, you no longer need to think about it. – Edna Lister, How Can I Apply Law to My Life? June 7, 1960.


Attraction, expansion, cohesion, contraction and repulsion are five great absolute principles in action as primary laws of nature. They are a Tree of Life, a coordination of categories of law. Hearing, receiving, acceptance, application and ascension are secondary laws. You hear under the law of attraction. You receive under the law of expansion. You accept under the law of cohesion (suction). You apply law under the law of contraction. You ascend under the law of repulsion. – Edna Lister, How Can I Apply Law to My Life? June 7, 1960.


All desires occur under the expansion principle, which explains why restricting certain desires is necessary. – Edna Lister, Is Praise Necessary? July 5, 1960.


The expansion principle, operating as the primary law of increase, governs personality's desire expressing as growth. – Edna Lister, Is Praise Necessary? July 5, 1960.


You tend, under an expansive Power release, to break laws that God intended to help you maintain equilibrium. If you over-apply the law of repulsion, you may lose too much and close out your good. You reach balance under these principles and laws. If you fear to receive praise, you are not applying the law of progression under the law of ascension. You hide your memory of using self praise as subconscious fear of receiving praise. Once burned, you fear that self-praise will rear its head again. Carried too far, fear memories breed repression under the contraction principle. – Edna Lister, Is Praise Necessary? July 5, 1960.


Joy is a principle, the aspect of the expansion principle as it applies to consciousness. Praise is a law. You can fulfill law only under the joy principle. Love is the substance, but its adherence to joy opens the door to love and starts it moving forth. Love fulfills law and causes substance to adhere to principle. – Edna Lister, Is Praise Necessary? July 5, 1960.


God releases Power only under the expansion principle. Joy and praise are high, fast rates of vibration that fill your creative molds with substance under expansion. – Edna Lister, Is Praise Necessary? July 5, 1960.


Pure love can do anything. Love liberates the physical energy powers and, unless it expands, energy stagnates until you have less and less energy. – Edna Lister, Do You Trust Your Own Decisions? June 20, 1961.


God adds and multiplies the good. Darkness subtracts and divides the good. If darkness is being multiplied, identify its creator and and speak the Word for God to lift it from the world. – Edna Lister, Power for Rebirth: Seven Breaths, November 27, 1962.


Repulsion pushes things away from you, but when the law of love fills your aura, it repulses only evil. – Edna Lister, December 17, 1962.


Contrast your low point with your high point and get back to the center point. You must contract positively this way daily. Keep your comparative contrast in mind, and take time to be whole. – Edna Lister, December 19, 1963.


All scientific formulas fall under the principle of wisdom, all humanities under the principle of love. – Edna Lister, October 5, 1964.


"In the beginning, God created." – Genesis 1:1. Stated as philosophical principle, "The unqualified undifferentiated Godhead contracted to beget the qualified differentiated, and by this action created infinite expansion and contraction to produce the first absolute divine tension." Tension is part of a system of equilibrium, a balanced relation between strongly opposing elements, an ability to stretch. – Edna Lister, I AM: God the Triune, God the Absolute, God the Sevenfold, October 20, 1964.


Mystically stated, pulsating life sparks of universal substance filled all space, half of which the Godhead breathed into the First Source Center to beget God as personality deity — the Father, Mother and Son — and the principles of expansion and contraction, the quickening that accelerates the life sparks' action. A cosmologist would say that the original singularity imploded (contracted) to finally explode (expand) into the Big Bang. – Edna Lister, I AM: God the Triune, God the Absolute, God the Sevenfold, October 20, 1964.


Contraction helps the soul to acquire the power of reasoning and intelligence. As a servant of all Power, you operate on the vibration of expansion and release, which endows you with logical and contemplative faculties and helps you to acquire the power of action and expansion under law. – Edna Lister, May 25, 1965.


You need your own mental and emotional consent to live the principles of expansion, explosion, and expressing for creation. From the first expansion-explosion vibration, God never lets go of the Plan of Creation, but we let go as individuals. – Edna Lister, May 6, 1968.


All your growth and expansion occur under the primary law of increase, operating in you as desire. – Edna Lister, Perfect and Glorious Ascension, June 14, 1970.

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


Edna Lister


Etymology of expand: Latin expandere, ex- "out" + pandere, "to spread."



Expansion is an absolute principle, rooted in the Love Emanation.

Expansion is a law of being.


References

The Compact Edition of The Oxford English Dictionary: 2 vols. E.S.C. Weiner, sed. Oxford University Press, 1971.

The Holy Bible. King James Version (KJV).

Webster, Noah. "Expansion,"Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language. New York: S. Converse, 1828. This work is in the public domain.


Related Topics

See Contraction

See Equilibrium