Edna Lister’s Lectures, 1953

The Word: Your Magic Wand
Edna Lister outline, February 3, 1953, Tacoma, WA, Job 22:28

  “Thou shalt also decree a thing, and it shall be established unto thee: and the light shall shine upon thy ways.”–Job 22:28. A decree is “an order usually having the force of law; established law, or rule; a religious ordinance enacted by a council or titular head; a foreordaining will. In theology, a decree is the predetermined purpose of God, of an immutable Being, whose plan of operations is, like himself, unchangeable.”
  The decision of a court of equity (justice according to natural law or right) is called a decree; that of a court of law, is a judgment. Man’s courts judge by laws written for all alike, which all people must obey to protect the helpless and innocent.
  Personally, you are free to make the laws you desire to rule your inner life, and you do make your own laws every day. Today, you may choose to ascend in consciousness to receive more Light, to create good and joy. Or you may choose the negative, the low, some lesser expression—resentment, anger, grief, self-pity or the worst curse, just plain indifference.
  Instinct rules in the animal kingdom, but reason rules man, or at least it is supposed to. When you notice a person who constantly operates on instinct, you are really seeing a rudimentary creature consciousness in human form. Many people live by their “gut,” their subconscious, or by their hunches, but a Christed creator is ruled by intuition.
  Intuition means ruled by tuition within, an inner voice. Tuition means “being taught, also payment for.” Intuition is both the thing received and the payment for which you receive. How? “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”–Hebrews 11:1.
  God has given Light-as-substance the power to become, subject to Light-as-Mind, acting upon it, to condition it. With every inhale, you breathe Light, which you release as substance and the Holy Breath on your exhale. The Light you breathe always becomes something. Light as substance becomes whatever your Word decrees.
  God has given the rational soul of man the power of conscious direction and control over his own share of Light as individualized mind, substance and power, through the power of speech. However, to condition Light as substance, you must speak the Word as a decree. Substance cannot condition the Word. The Word conditions the substance.
  The Word in man is Oversoul’s I AM consciousness, the mind that was in Christ Jesus. Wisdom speaks only what it desires to say. Foolishness blurts out whatever floats atop its consciousness. With every word you speak you wave your magic wand of Light-as-power to create the good or the not do good.
  To speak properly, powerfully, and to create the good, you must remain uplifted in consciousness where intuition rules your life. From the heights, you listen to the Word, speak, and send forth a mighty vibration.

The Mystery of All Beauty
Edna Lister speech, March 4, 1953, Tacoma, WA, Matthew 6:33, Matthew 5:25, John 21:22

  “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.”–Matthew 6:33.
  “Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with him.”–Matthew 5:25.
  “What is that to thee? Follow thou me.”–John 21:22.
  The universe operates under regular and immutable law in every detail of its being. Since we are each a microcosm of the macrocosm, we, too, are subject to these same immutable laws. Therefore, we may experience physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual ill health if we disobey any of these laws.
  Yet, to understand law, we must begin with the laws of Spirit. The following three laws cover all phases of life, beyond the physical—“Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.”–Matthew 6:33. “Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with him.”–Matthew 5:25. “What is that to thee? Follow thou me.”–John 21:22.
  When you proclaim, “I have done this,” ask yourself how you did it. You can obey all metaphysical laws, follow a suitable diet and get enough exercise, yet still not become beautiful of face or form as a result. On the other hand, many women and men may be physically lovely or handsome, but utterly cold emotionally.
  Finally, you ask, What is the mystery behind real beauty? The answer is to mix all your soul’s food—all love, all thinking—all your soul’s lesser powers of being with the greatest power of heaven—joy.
  Beauty’s great secret is so simple—to do everything in life in joy, with enthusiasm. Joy, enthusiastic joy is beauty’s secret.

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Success Through Prayer
Edna Lister transcript, Ruth Johnson, scribe, July 7, 1953, Cleveland, OH

  The Lord’s Prayer covers everything the embodied soul needs. In seeking and rejoicing, prayer is man’s ultimate expression of his desire to identify himself with his Source of Being. The soul has no God-anchored identity until it identifies with its Source through prayer. Although denial of a diagnosis is wrong, since it strengthens the idea of illness, encouraging another to not say “my” to an illness or condition is essential in getting his mind off the diagnosis or a poor state of affairs. Emotional or mental negativity comtributes to an acid imbalance within your body. The “air” you breathe is Light as spiritual substance, which is alkaline, meaning it acts to counter acidity. To draw this alkaline substance into your body you must breathe through your nostrils and through the crown of your head; only then does your breath balance the over-abundance of acid.
  The same sort of miracle happens the minute you become conscious of knowing Truth, and it becomes law in your life. As the goal recedes and becomes higher, your ultimate expression of prayer increases and rises higher. From birth, you’ve been climbing on a constantly ascending expression of prayer. The minute you find soul identity with God, you comprehend the necessity of applying law to your life and you begin to become law.
  You throw self into a shaft of fire and say, “I’d rather be annihilated than carry this burden further!” When you are shoved into the mud, you may go down a step, but the minute you ask for aid, your Oversoul Star is filled with greater Light as substance ready to manifest. That substance is faith. When your faith is complete, it is unconquerable! Say, “This is good,” to win whatever you need or whatever your goal.
  You have only now, so love now and keep declaring “This is good! Let there be Light!” You can’t live next month now, you can live only this moment now! When you step into the next hour, it is now. When you worry about the next hour, you grey-out the gold in that next hour. “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” Worry is a useless expenditure of your energy, your emotional life. All you can use of substance is that which flows over you and through you right now!
  Love is a combination of Almighty Wisdom, Love and Energy, the streams within the great River of Life that is flowing from and back to the Throne of God. It contains the Son’s Energy, which is named Joy. This is an ascending vibration. From creature to Creator, there is no limit to what you can accomplish when joy is your fuel and motivator. Anything mind can conceive, you, by identifying with your Source, can do!
  Are your hours filled with love? Have you declared it good with every tick of the clock today? “Good” is God’s name for material things. We are leaders among the Elect, yet we have not stood in unfaltering, absolute love and good in that time called the now. Eternity stretches in every direction from this place in the now. All you have or need is where you stand now!
  The Lord told the Israelites that they could have every square foot of ground they trod upon, but to retain it, they’d have to defend it. Each time you make a high vow, someone challenges you within two days. One of the eight great powers of Being is knowing that you are immovable. When you are challenged, do you quit and run, or do you stand in the Light, immovable? When your children or anyone else in the family rebels loudly, raise your hands and pray out loud. They can’t withstand prayer.
  “I will arise and go into my Father’s House and stand under the Light to work out my salvation here below.” This is your ultimate expression at the time you need to move up in consciousness. “God first” means to move up into your room of Light. You cannot do this alone, not with “little self’s” pathetic identity, which is weak. Look up with your mental eyes of soul and you become immovable, because you are anchored in Light. You become a pillar of Light in prayer!
  But you can’t “see” the darkness and remain a pillar! So long as you have inner conflicts, you remain sunk down in the mud and must climb out again. When you even think something is “wrong,” you descend from your room of Light. We are here to declare all God’s Creation good! To do so you can waste no time in seeing evil! We see no bad people—see only children in kindergarten, doing the best they can. Imagine Jesus when he called Lazarus from the tomb. If you say it stinks, it will! Declare it good!
  Law is immutable. God stands behind His Law of Good. We must call Senator Joe McCarthy 1 good. He causes Americans to become indignant, who would otherwise remain indifferent. God knows how to use a good disintegrator to tear down old forms. We are the best God has even as we are struggling to give up the little self. If God can limp along with us as we are, what could He do if we stood straight, knowing the truth?
  You don’t need more rest. You need more life! We, the Elect, must release the Power that is pulling the world up into peace. Like cooking jelly, when the scum rises to the surface, you skim it off to make pure jelly—you don’t curse it and push it back in. So we should not curse the McCarthys of this world. Cursing causes you to fail God and to lose place.
  If we want to cure earth, we must move up in consciousness to our room of Light so the Master can heal earth through us, by using us! You love each and all souls, and don’t curse anyone. You can love the Communists in Russia and Red China objectively as being good, you can love them impersonally, but kick them north—up into heaven at the same time! Act in a manner that ensures that the Master can use the Power you release for good. Do as the Master does when he lifts his hands and blesses, which is a gesture that declares it good!
  The rewards are great. We pray in secret and receive the reward of humility, which is an open mind, the mind that was in Christ Jesus. If you declare the dark ones are evil, you go against your God-consciousness, against the Christ mind!—that is the ugly, critical way. We, the ascending creator Elect, are rulers, and we are responsible for letting the world fall into this mess. Stand! Love enough! Psalm 91 says, “A thousand may fall at your side, and ten thousand at your right hand; but it shall not come near you.”

1 Senator Joe McCarthy alleged that hundreds of Communists had infiltrated the State Department and other federal agencies.

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Success Through Divine Action
Edna Lister transcript, Ruth Johnson, scribe, July 14, 1953, Cleveland, OH

  Active means the exercise of the muscles or different faculties of mind, thinking, forming pictures in imagination and emotions. You must exercise different faculties to get action. The great Principles of Mind, Substance and Power are necessarily involved in all action. Conscious mind mental activities, faculties, imagination (which is forever active), the emotional life, and subconscious are some of the tools with which you go into action. A mindless one has no emotions at all, is a clod, takes no action or responsibility. One of the greatest necessities is to get all the tools working together, coordinated as one. Lack of coordination in action is the cause of wrong action. How do you get coordinated? Move up and do “faith with works.” Kahlil Gibran said that “Work is love made visible.”
  Seek to comprehend the Divine until your use of Mind, Substance and Power are coordinated. That’s how to bring into action the tools you have to accomplish your goal. If you leave out your emotional life, doing nothing to lift it, you reach a point where something stops you, because you have coordination in everything but your emotions. So you can’t consider just physical action. A man may play good golf because he has perfect physical coordination, yet be dishonest in his business life. Being inconsistent in your integrity is not enough. This is why for some prayer, at its best, seems to be a slow, fumbling process.
  You can see examples of this everywhere. Watch drivers at an intersection: One driver takes off as soon as the light changes, while another fumbles and finally gets going after a process of starts and hesitations. One has good coordination of mind and body, the other doesn’t. The coordinated person is easily able to enter the Golden Silence and receive illumination for his business and affairs. Many enter into metaphysical Truth work and experience miracles for weeks, then suddenly hit the bumps because they have fallen from a high state of consciousness and lost their spiritual coordination. Spiritual coordination makes your actions instantaneously effective, not a slow process.
  Skull bumpers think they are doing all the good work. If you think above your skull, you can apply discernment, discrimination and discretion, making the impulsive appetitive soul the servant in your house. When you mate your will to your desire, you stop drawing negatives into your life—your subconscious antennae can then reach out and tell you what to do. Housecleaning the subconscious mind frees your perceptions. You can then discern what clutters your mind, and better judge worldly wrongs from what’s right. When you descend from your “tower room” in consciousness you lose coordination.
  Those who see darkness first, before calling it good, have turned their imagination downward, not upward. When you look up, you instantly say, “This is good! Let there be Light!” If you cut your finger, it takes five seconds for the nerves to relay the message to the brain and send back a pain reply. In that time, you could hold your hand up and declare, “This is good! God’s substance is filling this cut and it is perfect!” This is an act, not a process of healing. Declaring it good does the work.
  Anything can be healed—new eyes, ears, legs, arms, etc., if you first stand in the Light! God used Light and His Mind working together in coordination to create the universe. What else do you need to produce perfect creations? If you think you need more, where will you get it? The Master said, “All the works that I do, you shall do and greater works than these.” Take up your cross and follow him! The Light of God contains everything you need. Read the first chapter of the Gospel of John for instructions.
  Your coordinating keys to life are love, the now, and the good. Am I good enough? Declare everything good and discipline self not to “see” darkness. You can crystallize evil within five second, and though you declare it good afterward, it takes weeks to unfreeze it. If you “don’t like this,” you can fail to pass a high initiation. The right action is to declare it good. Do you think God can fail? Stalin, Molotov, and Mao Zedong are good and very good! God wants them healed. The only way to heal or change anyone is to declare them good.
  Do I love enough? If you declare things good, you can’t have enemies. If you still have enemies, you don’t love enough. Remember your coordinating words of life: Love, now, and good. When someone lies or gossips about you, you could rememdy it in ten words, but to speak those ten words is not covering the lie with Light or hiding the other’s transgression from the world. You are not Success Through Divine Action until you can cover others’ transgressions. Read Kipling’s poem “If” to discover the attitudes that lead to being strong enough.
  There is no situation, no individual in your life who could not come up and be healed. Act more strongly and keep declaring it good. “This is good now. I love you.” The time comes when every last fear of the ages is melted, dissolved and absorbed, and you stand free. Light is enough to create anything the world needs for perfect expression. The Light of God moves through you as you love God. We are entering the most revealing, glorious time in all centuries. “Faith Unconquerable moves in and possesses me this hour.” From now on, recognize only the now!
  “This is good.” How many times a day do you say, “I love You, God”? Say it a thousand times a day! It will bring any person or situation from defeat to success. How dare we fail God in telling Him how much we love Him, thanking Him for all the miracles and for everything that is happening in he world?

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From Accepting to Obeying Law
Edna Lister outline, September 2, 1953, Tacoma, WA, Romans 12

  The pilgrimage from the first time you hear about God to being like unto God is long and arduous. You must leave the Land of Egypt with its darkness, famine, lack of initiative and weakness, to enter the Land of Promise, where you are inspired to make and pay your vows and promises to become like God. Your original Garden of Eden is the high place, the tower room, the prayer closet, the golden silence in which you may hear the voice of your Oversoul I AM consciousness.
  The twins, acceptance and obedience, must accompany you in your search for truth. Truth is not what you are “trying” to become, but, “I hear. I accept. I become.” The story of Abraham and Isaac illustrates the perfect sacrifice to God’s will without being unwilling or grudging. Accepting God’s will is a process of four stages. The first stage is, “Who am I?” In this phase, young zeal is still slumbering, saying, “Leave me alone! I’m happy where I am,” when you disturb it. The soul remains a skull bumper in prayer.
  In the second stage, the soul experiences its first awakening, saying, “I hear you, but you are wrong!” The embodied soul has progressed to being a ceiling-bumper in prayer. Such a person may be frustrating, but cannot learn unless he first sees what is wrong outside himself somewhere. He is learning what is wrong and what wrong is.
  In the third stage, the soul finds its will, which is self-centered at this point, insisting, “Do it my way.” Here, the soul still firmly believes that “I” and God form the overwhelming majority. This type uses self-will and intellect as force because he is unconsciously seeking to strengthen will as determination and concentration. Now the soul has progressed to the star-grabber stage. At last the soul is now off earth!
  In the fourth step, the soul faces the crucifixion of self-centered will. The story of Abraham sacrificing Isaac on Mount Moriah illustrates this perfectly. At this stage, the soul becomes a throne-seeker, moving from “I am what I am” to “I AM THAT I AM.” The throne is the seat of consciousness in the higher creative center, in your head. “I AM THAT I AM” is engraved on the lintel of God’s Reserve Bank for miracles.
  A little five-year-old boy called his aunt to watch something special. He said, “See me?” as he spread his arms. “Every day now I practice flying,” he crowed as he hop-hop-hopped as high as possible. “I don’t know how to fly yet,” he added, “but I’m learning!”
  You can declare, “I AM all acceptance and obedience! I hear the Voice, still and small. but loud as thunder, I hear!” “I AM THAT I AM” is your soul’s last name. “By their fruits ye shall know them.”–Matthew 7:20.

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The study of psychology, by itself, leaves one suspended in uncertainty, with no unifying source. The five great departments of life—psychology, metaphysics, science, philosophy and mysticism—are inseparable. Since nothing comes from nothing we understand that the mind of the individual must have a source common to all mankind. Psychology is the science of the nature of soul as mind, studying its actions to determine what the unconscious parts of mind are doing. Psychology is the science of dividing the soul into phases for study. In metaphysical terms it is the study of the Mind of God as man in three parts: conscious, subconscious and super-conscious, or as impulsive appetitive soul, rational soul and Oversoul. However, we must first grant the existence of a Source to study anything at all.
  Academic psychology deals with absolute and abstract primary law that must givern all Creation from the Source. Practical psychology describes the concrete and relative secondary laws available to us to apply to our daily lives. Academic psychology deals with man’s relationship to the Source, whereas practical psychology treats man’s relationship to others and to his world.
  Psychology studies the actions and reactions of our physical senses—seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling and feeling. You can’t see or feel a mind, yet you know you have one yourself and you can see the evidences of mind, the results of mind operating in the bodies and affairs of everyone around you. Once we establish our relationship to God as the Source, and the laws flowing from that Source, we find that balance automatically governs our relationships to and with all other embodied souls.
  We cannot divorce psychology from metaphysics. To do so creates only confusion compounded by incomprehension and misunderstanding. Metaphysics means “beyond physics” and thus names the realm just beyond the physical realm discernible by mind and the senses in a body, an embodied soul. We study Mind through our mental faculties of logic, reason, discernment, discrimination, and discretion. This is how we are able to discern, to identify the Ideas of the Absolute, the Abstract, the Invisible and the relative generalities regarding Reality and how it Appears in the physical universe. Our difficulty come in understanding how we ourselves physically relate to that metaphysical Reality. Religion reveals that there is a Tree of Life, which draws upon the abstract absolute Light of All That Is as we should and can do using prayer to contact our Source, God.
  Science also deals with the abstract absolute made concrete and relative by use of measurements which we comprehend through mathematics and all branches of physics. The origins of illness and disease remained a mystery until science developed the “cell theory” and could provide proof using improved microscopes. Mary Baker Eddy, founder of Christian Science in the mid-19th Century, denied the physical reality of disease although its form is an outer fact. It’s simple for us to understand that water exists as ice, liquid, steam and vapor, all the same matter in various stages of expression. The “cell theory” is provable by measurements, step by step, back to the primordial Light, which appeared when God said, “Let there be Light!” Science grants a universal Source of the galaxies, and solar systems with planets that populate space. The universe itself is held in balance by hypothetical rays of repulsion, and cogs of force.
  Philosophy: Love of Wisdom and Knowledge. Study of absolute, abstract, ultimate principles of reality, granted by science as Source. Mysticism: Yesterday’s mysteries become today’s miracles by accelerating the action of law. Drugs-Atomic Bombs.
  We can apply absolute principles to bring perfect results. (Mathematic Problems, Faith a Principle). Mysticism describes God as Personality. Philosophy describes God Principle. Psychology describes God as Personality, the Mind of God as man. Metaphysics studies the scientific application of secondary laws to our practical living. Science is the ladder between outer-lower, upper above higher.

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Coming soon.

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