Edna Lister on the Beatitudes

The Beatitudes
Edna Lister series outlines, December 8, 15, 22, 1934, January 4, 11, 18, 26, 1935, February 2, 1935, Buffalo, NY. Matthew 5:1-11.

  “And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him: And he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God. Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.”–Matthew 5:1-11.
  To be is an attitude. The Beatitudes, found in the Gospel of Matthew 5:3-11, include all lesser and greater initiations, except care of the body, especially the sublimation of physical excesses. You really begin living your vows the instant you know and ponder this. Then you live them for a long time before you really “make” and “take” your vows. The Beatitudes are nine lesser mysteries of initiation:
  “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”–Matthew 5:3. This is the first Beatitude, and one is the number that symbolizes the individual standing upright in the Garden of Eden. To be “poor in spirit” means giving up impulsive willfulness, possession of persons, and coveting riches. When you give up “things,” and your attachment to them, you give it all to God. Then you can use all that the Father has, and love all His children for Him.
  “Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.”–Matthew 5:4. This is the second Beatitude, and two is the number that symbolizes agreeing with God and adjusting to your fellow man. Mourning represents the soul’s grief about past mistakes and the time self has wasted. Your self-pity must become selflessness. One family had two sisters, one of whom made the whole family miserable, and finally lost her mind. The other devoted her life to caring for others. These sisters illustrate the two possible conflicting sides of one soul's character. To conquer self-pity, you must resolve to be finished with the past, and keep your eyes on the Light. Give up every iota of personality possession.
  “Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.”–Matthew 5:5. This is the third Beatitude, and three is the number that represents perfected personal expression. Meekness is an open-mindedness that does not insist that having its own way as the only way.
  “I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.”–Ephesians 3:14-19.
  This is the Prayer of Melchizedek, “I bow the knees of my heart unto the Father.” If you are of the Christos Degree, you cannot force or ask, but only work by releasing the power of love from the inner. Cultivate open mindedness and your vows of silence. Thus, by agreeing with God and adjusting to man, your outer expression becomes interesting and desirable.
  “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.”–Matthew 5:6. This is the fourth Beatitude, and four is the number that symbolizes service. To “hunger and thirst” means that the soul that is dedicated to service is always giving up self and receiving new soul substance under Light. Hunger is a gnawing pain, wanting to go somewhere, constant seeking until satisfied, or a physical weakness. Thirst is dryness, a secret calling, or a mental weakness.
  If you are always full, you cannot eat more, so you must empty out the self to receive. The law says that you must give freely to freely receive. Ascend in consciousness through the mental-intellectual faculties into the endocrine glands of soul knowing. You can develop the faculties you use in illumination through concentrated outer study in class or in books. However, you can “know” truth only by standing under the Light. “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.”–John 12:32. I draw all others higher as I lift self and ascend. Thus, I must intentionally lift all others to be released from all darkness.
  “Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.”–Matthew 5:7. This is the fifth Beatitude, and five is the number that represents freedom of choice under the law of Light. Mercy is real loving-kindness, and graciousness is the law of Christ Jesus, covering others’ transgressions freely with love and compassion. To cover for another means you must always be lifted up in consciousness yourself.
  “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.”–Matthew 5:8. This is the sixth Beatitude, and six is the number of the creator. To attain purity of mind, heart and purpose, you give up possession of self’s so-called individuality, or possessing one’s self. To give up possessing persons confers the ability to agree with God and adjust to your fellow man without being hurt or offended.
  “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.”–Matthew 5:9. This is the seventh Beatitude, and seven is the number of the Priest. To be a Priest, you must also be a peacemaker and a pacemaker. The number seven symbolizes the priest in the temple. At seven, you are quietly assuming responsibility in prayer. When you do not know the answer, declare, “Thank You Father. I am now under the Light and You, my God, know the answer.”
  The Priest is untouched, uncontaminated, protected and surrounded by walls. He or she is drawn out of the world to stand at the center of the storm in the quiet sanctuary. Peace is harmony. To unfold the word peacemaker, you must know that to make is to create after a pattern for some original good. A peacemaker is a pacesetter. Pacesetters seldom receive credit on the outer, but their inner rewards include riches, honor, life. God crowns them with life, glory and honor.
  “Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”–Matthew 5:10. This is the eighth Beatitude, and eight is the number that symbolizes God’s Power tying earth to heaven. To persecute is “to pursue with enmity, with the intent to do injury, to harass, worry or importune.” You can unfold the word righteousness as the “right use of Power,” which is better stated as to use right law. The way of trying to do it means death, or self-pity, like putting a black lining in a white robe. When you merely try, you put a stopper in the bottle to hide the stink of your stubborn disobediance. Declare, “I AM in the right place at the right time, saying and doing the right thing.”
  “Blessed are you, when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for my sake.”–Matthew 5:11. This is the ninth Beatitude, and nine is the number representing the mirror you become when you reflect others’ flaws. Seeing their taints when they look at you leads them to make false accusations. They insist that you are flawed. The eighth Beatitude was being persecuted “for righteousness’ sake,” but the ninth is persecution for Christ’s sake.
  Thus, you reach the end of the Beatitudes, but nine is not the number of completion, ten is. To conclude, apply a tenth Beatitude: “Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”–Matthew 5:12.

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The Beatitudes are Be-Attitudes
Edna Lister Bible study outline. Sunday evenings from February 12, 1956 to April 8, 1956. Tacoma, WA. Matthew 5:1-12.

  “And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him: And he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God. Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.”–Matthew 5:1-12.
  “To be” is an attitude of expression toward the world. The beatitudes set a keynote for your conduct: they are lessons in gentle manners.
  “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”–Matthew 5:3. The first Beatitude represents the fourth dimension. In Jesus’ time, pride ruled the upper classes. The Pharisees prayed on street corners to show off their gifts to the Temple and parade their wealth. They had pride in possessions, pride in self and pride in things.
  This beatitude should read, “Blessed are the poor in the spirit of possession.” I own nothing. Of myself, I am nothing. “Not I, but the Father…the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.” This is the first “be-attitude,” the first giving up of self, your first consciousness of your individuality. Until today, everyone has identified with their body. “I am sick. I am my body. I am hurt.” Give up this body identification to “let” the Christ consciousness possess you, to act as you. Give up pride in self, pride in things and the “idea” of possession.
  All things belong to God. You can use all He has, may draw on all He has, and can dare to live on all He provides now. Charles Spurgeon, a London minister in the late 1800s, said, “I am on fire for Christ. And when I preach, people come to watch me burn.” Declare, “My faith is steadfast, glorious, free and conquering.” Do not try to conquer faith. Let faith conquer you.
  “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”–Matthew 5:4. The second Beatitude is in the fifth dimension. First, let go of the urge to possess things, then you can let go of the desire to possess another personality. Mourning in grief can lead to self-pity, stagnation, and crystallization. Some live in a vale of grief where their tears, heated by the fever of self, create a thick mist. Self-pitying mourning of a personal loss can cause a consuming fever that nothing can quench. Streamline your emotional life. Stop trying to possess people and things, and start a new record. Then you can start anew and be comforted. The second beatitude is the second surrender of self as a soul sacrifice, where you agree with God that this is good, and adjust to your fellow man. By mating intuition with illumination, the Light breaks and you reach the knowing state.
  “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”–Matthew 5:5. “I accept” is the keynote of the third Beatitude in the sixth dimension. Meek does not mean subservient to man, but having an open mind and heart because you have given up adversaries. This is the seeker, the searcher, whose open mind and heart invoke the greatest of all laws, nonresistance, which causes faith to fill molds. Passivity, which many think is nonresistance, attracts darkness. Active nonresistance attracts Light until one become a burning flame of glory. You either stand for truth or you will fall through your weakness.
  Life is immortal. Life is a school. Life is a playground. Life is the great teacher. Life is what you make it. Move onto the rod of Power, which is an axis of Power that sparks a vital personality, vital everything until you become a magnet of attraction. Nonresistance is “letting” all things be added, to inherit the earth and all good. You collect your inheritance, one good thing at a time, one step at a time. Rest on the surface of the River of Life, and it bears you home.
  “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.”–Matthew 5:6. Spiritual hunger is the keynote of the fourth Beatitude in the seventh dimension. When the stomach is full, you have no craving, so it must be empty before you want more. When all the body’s cells are calling for help, it creates a consuming desire. When you are craving food, you are constantly seeking to go somewhere. When you thirst, you feel dry.
  Spiritual hunger becomes a gnawing pain until every cell is finally crying out for food, for water, until the last breath is a great consuming craving for the bread and water of life, and you cannot think of anything else. To seek God with a consuming desire, you cannot think of anything else, but yearn constantly for greater understanding, to crave, to need more spiritual Light. Then you brood over your creations, to love them and sustain them.
  Thirst for study to awaken brain cells to function as the beauties of Spirit for illumination. Then stand under the Light, where it can fill you. When you have turned the little self upward to service, you give to receive. This hunger and thirst are moving you up from being sons of man to become sons of God. Each is in his own place, and each must start from where he is now. The waves of the outer world-life are overwhelming. The waves of the life and Light of God are uplifting and overcoming, bearing you above the outer waves.
  “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.”–Matthew 5:7. The fifth beatitude is in the eighth dimension. Five represents freedom, where you are free to choose your course, up or out, in or down. You are free to ascend to the I AM, where you contact Power. Mercy is “the act of treating an offender with less severity than the offense deserves, forbearance to injure others when one had the power to do so, the disposition to relieve suffering.” To grant mercy is to give another the benefit of the doubt, to forget your revenge ideas. Where you have the power to hurt, you are too gracious, too generous, too loving to pay any attention to the offense.
  If you ignore the offense, what does this do to the offender? Ignoring the chronic offender leaves him in complete frustration. He can see and feel how jealousy, envy and sharp words affect his past quarry. It spoils his game, which is no fun when you do not wiggle. “Disposition” means that something is out of place, which describes the desire to hurt another, or to retaliate. To wipe out the offense, you are simply too great to take offense, and withhold judgment to cover the transgressions of others. What virtue is it to love only those who love you? To love your enemy, you must be willing to forgive him seventy times seven in one day. This is the metaphysical interpretation of how to obtain mercy. God sends as you give.
  “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”–Matthew 5:8. The sixth beatitude reveals the ninth dimension, where “they shall see God,” despite the statement, “You cannot look upon the face of God and live.” “Pure in heart” means purity of heart, mind and purpose. The heart is the gate of universal Spirit flowing through your emotions and feelings. The mind is the Oversoul’s Christ consciousness using your thinking, imagination, and creative tools. Purpose refers to your plan molds and creations, your body and affairs. Love is the magic power of attraction. Wisdom alone, without support, limps along—and love alone, without supporting action, can do nothing. Purity’s one outstanding feature, or attribute, is “Honor above all things.” When you hold honor to God as your highest soul value, the Christed I AM consciousness holds the selfish subconscious emotions and feelings under perfect control. You attract whatever you need because desire, as the Love principle, fills the molds, and will, as the Wisdom principle, does the pushing forth.
  Light as Mind uses both your thinking and imagination, the twin faculties of the soul. The conscious mind then becomes Wisdom’s tool for thinking. Imagination then, as Love’s tool, can form pictures through the universal substance of the Holy Spirit. Your use of these creative tools must be perfect. The subconscious mind runs like clockwork on a twenty-four-hour shift. Conquer your imagination and thinking, and never let them dictate to you. To condition your life, conquer your emotions and self’s psychological use of your creative tools, acting as a brake on the Light as Power moving through, or otherwise misuse it. You can do this by making your purpose clear to the subconscious mind, forming your plans and molds through Wisdom, and filling your creations with Love.
  You achieve purity by accepting purity as the need to cleanse your heart, mind and body, and your thinking, imagination and emotions. Then perception becomes apperception. To perceive is a mental act. Apperception is an act of the soul. Perception is mental “seeing,” the mind’s thinking ability. Apperception is a knowing that results from the mind’s mystic eye of the soul.
  “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.”–Matthew 5:8. This is the sixth Beatitude in the ninth dimension, and six is the number of the cosmic Father and Mother. Six is the number of the feminine on earth, while nine is the number of the masculine. Together, they form the double trinity of balance, as love and wisdom. Purity of heart is the perfect balance of Love and Wisdom in action in you, through you, and as you. In Marie Corelli’s novel, The Life Everlasting, a young woman’s spiritual teacher instructed her to bend a climbing rosebud toward her by using her powers of mind alone. She succeeded by loving the rose to affect its growth.

Only wisdom, as a foundation in life, and understanding the nature of principle can build love into the Life Everlasting. Wisdom instructed Corelli’s heroine, but love created her success. You must balance six, as the number of the creator on earth, with the masculine and feminine principles. Wisdom is the Father, who thinks and plans. Love is the Mother, who nourishes and sustains. “Abstain from all appearance of evil.”–1 Thessalonians 5:22. The only evil, the source of all evil is to misuse thinking, feeling and imagination. The only unforgivable sin is to misuse the Holy Breath, Holy Ghost, Holy Spirit as the principles of Mind, Substance and Power.
  “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.”–Matthew 5:9. The seventh Beatitude is in the tenth dimension. Seven is the number of the Priest who assumes responsibility. It is the number of soul expansion and expression as peace. Nothing about such peace is dull, static or negative. It is an active, progressive, working peace. Peace is your storm center in the midst of life’s chaos. While everything is swirling around you, you are standing still at the center, releasing Power. This is what makes you a peacemaker after the I AM pattern of Oversoul consciousness. The Priest is a peace-making pacemaker, never taking credit for, but receiving an inner reward that is greater than the outer could give. You receive riches, honor and long life, as God granted Solomon at Gibeon.
  To do all this you have to synthesize your five sense—sight, hearing, feeling, smell and taste—into a state of apperception, in which you no longer induct from the outer or let self rule. This is a long path, and you spend your life climbing it to conquer self. Inevitably you reach a series of drab places in the midst of the burning sands of the desert. Yet you may never lose hope or remain there too long. As a child of God, you are a joint heir of the kingdom. All that the Father has is yours to use, just as soon as you collect your inheritance and let His Power as Light use you.
  “Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”–Matthew 5:10. The eighth Beatitude is in the eleventh dimension. Your kingdom of heaven is right where you are now. Do you like it as it is? If not, what are you doing to change it? “Blessed are ye” means you, right now, right where you are. No matter where you are, you are in your particular kingdom now. Being what you call “myself,” what kind of “self” are you? Your kingdom can only follow you as its pattern. What kind of pattern do you follow? If you are completely satisfied with your outer kingdom, your outer pattern is fine.

Do you know what your pattern is? How can you know what it is? For one week, you can stand aside from your self, follow your self around and notice the impression you make. When you watch the other fellow’s eyes every minute, every time you speak, you might discover a few things. The other fellow’s first swift glance tells the whole story of the pattern of your kingdom—all about marriage and parent-child relationships, for example. Sometimes just changing your tone of voice will make your kingdom more beautiful. A grunt, a lift of an eyebrow, a cynical mouth twist or a shrug of the shoulders can show contempt for the other fellow, and does not endear you to anyone.
  When you give offense with a mannerism or idle words, you insult the other fellow’s intelligence and invade his kingdom. This is how you breed resentment, rebellion and downright hatred, and these taints fester. What does it mean to be “persecuted for righteousness’ sake?” Righteousness is your highest vision in action, living by principle as the servant of all Power. It is living up to your principles with no self in it. To perfect your kingdom, stand in love and compassion, freeing others of you, declaring, “This is good! You are right! I am joy! God is all!”
  “Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.”–Matthew 5:11. The ninth Beatitude is in the twelfth dimension. To revile means to call someone evil names, to abuse them. To persecute is to pursue with enmity, to injure. Nine is the universal number. Life’s path is like a great meadow with good ground, swampy areas, quicksand in some places and mud holes in others. You choose where you walk. You are not blessed when you call yourself names. Self-righteousness, a virtuous smile, a smug look and a shrug of contempt all call forth name-calling, and you are not blessed. If the scales zero out twenty-four hours a day, where is your balance? “For my sake” is Christ consciousness. When you are blessed for his sake it means something further—rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven. Your heaven is here and now in this time and place.

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