Edna Lister’s Lectures, 1954

The Frosting on Your Cake
Edna Lister speech outline, January 21, 1954, National League of American Pen Women, Honolulu, HI.

  New Year’s vows seem to have gone out with horse-drawn vehicles and fainting sofas. The modern way is wise yearly planning and management of our material resources. We open bank accounts and formulate daily budget plans.
  Since the Great Depression and a Second World War, we have decided that we need a reserve fund in the bank to meet physical emergencies, besides our currency for daily activities. Have you opened this year’s bank account with life? Have you planned your time budget wisely, to redeem last year’s wasted time?
  We must also budget for our emotional and mental life. For our daily activities, we need an expectant attitude, a vivid imagination, and flaming desire. Our reserve fund to draw on in emergencies must include enough joy.
  We can’t afford putting off our plans for the future any longer. It’s never too late, only too soon. Now is the time to let your creative tools work for you, your flaming desire, vivid imagination, and expectant attitude. You must expect and demand ever more of your self, first.
  Beyond the clouds, the sun and stars shine on. Let’s look up and be as steadfast as the stars. Let’s rejoice that a whole new year stands before us, ready for us to use as we choose.
  As Christian Larsen said, “All things respond to the call of rejoicing. All things gather where life is a song.” You can shine and sing with the stars while you keep your chin up. Obstacles are just the frosting on your cake when you are rejoicing! Take delight in wherever you find yourself, for it is the most beautiful place you can occupy.

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Ascension Power
Edna Lister speech outline, May 4, 1954, Truth Temple Women’s Guild, Tacoma, WA.

  Proclaim with me, “I accept. I surrender. I arise. I ascend.” Lent is the time period we set aside to search our souls for the useless old traits and habits in our lives that we can sacrifice in surrender of self. The Power released is stepped up on Easter, to fill the space we cleared when we cleaned house during Lent. To this we add the forty days of releasing Ascension Power that will culminate on Ascension Day.
  We must accept our inheritance, and surrender to “let” Power use us. We must arise to go to our Father’s House, to dwell there forever. We must ascend to the Christ consciousness of the “I AM.” We have risen above the place of believing in enemies or adversaries. Now we know that if we judge others unrighteously, we create our own enemies and adversaries. The adversary gives us to the judge of conscience, who hands us to the officer of regret, and he throws us into the prison of remorse unless we ascend in consciousness.
  We are now becoming as perfect as the Christ shining through us is perfect. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the Lord shining ‘round about.
  Leonidas, the king of Sparta was asked by an ambassador why he had no protective wall around his city. Leonidas responded that he should come again the following day and he would see the wall. The next day the king showed the ambassador 10,000 warriors assembled on a plain below the palace, saying, “Each of those men is a brick in my wall.”
  God has a protective wall of Light around earth and each aspiring soul. The Light is invisible, but more real than Sparta’s soldiers.

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Principle and Personality
Edna Lister transcript, May 25, 1954, Cleveland, OH. Ruth Johnson, scribe.

  No matter what happens in the outer world, you always have justice on the inner. The rich man who donates an expensive stained-glass window to the church balances a few poor ones who can give only their service. This balance is a law and laws always follow principles. Neither laws nor principles can sin. They are always perfect, Godlike, whole and complete. Love is also perfect as is wisdom, loyalty, and all the other virtues of the soul.
  God is everywhere evenly present as principle and as personality. God as personality also takes on form. God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.–Genesis 1:27. When you speak of man being made in the image and likeness of God do not credit Him with man’s mistakes or sins he commits against principle.
  The world is quick to point out the mistakes and so-called sins of prominent men and women. The Allies have decided they don’t like Ike 1 because he has taken up religion. 2, 3 Truman did the best he could, and the best Truman could do was the best that America could have at that time.

1 Dwight D. Eisenhower, 34th U.S. president (1953–61), who was supreme commander of the Allied forces in western Europe during World War II.

2 Speaking extemporaneously on December 22, 1952, a month before his inauguration, Eisenhower said: And this is how they [the Founding Fathers in 1776] explained those: we hold that all men are endowed by their Creator... not by the accident of their birth, not by the color of their skins or by anything else, but all men are endowed by their Creator. In other words, our form of government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith, and I don’t care what it is. Of course, it is the Judeo-Christian concept, but it must be a religion with all men being created equal.

3 Eisenhower became a Presbyterian in 1953, after his first election, and sponsored prayers at cabinet sessions and held prayer breakfasts.

  In every age, with each new civilization, the fallen high souls—the sons and daughters of Belial, the Father of Lies—have to incarnate. Abraham fathered the fallen Ishmael before he fathered Isaac. God could have removed all of the fallen ones 25,000 years ago, but the hidden others stood before Councils and vowed to take on flesh to prove that love would fulfill law and that Light would replace darkness. Love has, is, and shall continue to conquer. Those who have been touched by love are those Elect who now are making it impossible for dark ones to do their dirty work.
  A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.–James 1:8. We have all had lives in which we’ve gone up and down in consciousness, so no one is totally innocent or without sin. Every sentence you speak, every word you utter goes out and orbits earth at the speed of thought, much faster than the speed of light. What negative thoughts did you entertain last week? If you’ve had none, you didn’t contribute to the darkness in the world. Send out love, and your thoughts will return as doves. Send out anger and curses as crows and they will return as black eagles!
  We have dissolved Belial’s forms, but not his mind or related thought forms. Thinking and doing enough evil can wipe out a soul’s identity. God never makes anyone be a disintegrator, but He will use one, so He allows those who tear down old forms to do so as their work for the Light. They pay a debt for the force they use, but not for the darkness their use of force renders powerless. Darkness is periodically sacked by certain of the Christ Legions and taken to deep freezes in the void. At the end of a great period, when this substance that was part of mind misused as evil has been cleansed, it will be incorporated in the glory of a new Creation.
  The fervent prayers of the Elect during Christmas week, Lent, Holy Week, Labor Day, All Saints Day are collected and used to drive darkness into the Light where it is bound together to be burned for a time and times until it is purified. Thus Light is always absorbing the darkness of evil. One day our love of God will be so great that the evil be lifted with none left to plague the little ones. So we, the Elect, must stand and declare that the Armageddon is almost finished. There will be petty wars, and skirmishes to take the remaining sons of darkness from their bodies. They will destroy each other, but our prayers will keep the worst of the wars from us. Every life spark cleansed of evil regains it first name of good, even in the evil ones. As they leave their current body, their lifesparks are put in the common stockpile of substance used to lift darkness.
  The news story of how Ike gave schoolchildren visiting the White House gifts from his desk drawer spawned other stories criticizing how Ike was going soft. But his giving really highlights how a new age of love and compassion is dawning. The Master said, “Suffer the children to come unto me,” and Ike was o’ershadowed by the Master to give. By this we know that our Ship of State has a good pilot. The opposition of dictators is the keynote of Ike’s life, which signals the opening vibration after Belial’s dissolution into Light, beginning the reign of Christed Light.
  God needs the Elect to reach a higher state of God-consciousness, awareness of the love of God through the mind that was in Christ Jesus. The prayers of the Elect must be more dynamic to fill the vacuum our lifting creates! You have to love God so much you don’t know how you could possibly increase your capacity!
  It’s the glory of God the Fathers and Mothers to take the evil that has dominated our planet for 500,000 years, and instead of cluttering the void with it, make it a miraculous performance to show us how love as Light can absorb darkness! Every breath we draw, every time we pray, have aspiration, we expand that glory! Pray that anything that has hate in it shall be consumed. Put Pillars of Fire around the nation, upholding a Dome of Light. If you are in right place at right time, you are used, if you love God enough. Hell fire is simply the eternal flame, which purifies. Belial’s substance is in that fire right now!
  From Easter to Ascension Day, Power is doubled and tripled. The release of Power is sustained at the rate the Elect could tolerate on Ascension Day, and held at that point until Labor Day. We, the leaders of the Elect, are left alone to run on the Power being released by us and through us. Of course our Guards are with us, but they are not permitted to prompt us to right action unless we ask them to do so. Allow no lesser mind or vibration to derive power from your lukewarmness or that of the righteous Elect. Declare that the Armageddon is being set aside as much as possible. And most important of is the remembrance that the soul that loves never loses its eternal substance, only the memory of its identity.

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The Golden Silence
Edna Lister transcript, June 18, 1954, Buffalo, NY. Edna Catherine Bender, scribe. Ms. Bender was executive secretary to Lewis G. Harriman, president of Manufacturers and Traders Trust Company, headquartered in Buffalo. Her shorthand notes are remarkably complete.

  “When you pray, go into your room and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father, who is in the secret place.”–Matthew 6:6. The whole process of entering the golden silence is learning how to ascend to your room of Light and close the door on the world. You have five physical senses, and to ascend in consciousness you must deliberately hold them under your conscious direction and control. Then they become your rays of sensitivity, like wearing a belt of radar beams over your solar plexus to protect you from head to toe. Drawing the senses in is the first step in entering the golden silence. The whole process is to enter your private prayer room and close the door—you draw in the body’s five ordinary senses, but not your soul’s radar screen.
  Personality is what the world can see of the soul. The closer you get to God, the more radiant your personality grows until it becomes a vivid glow. To have the Light moving through you in this degree, you must first withdraw your personal reaction to emotional sensitivity, the part of self that gets upset. Focus your attention on the truth in what’s happening to create an impersonal reaction to life, to be immune to the little self’s expressions of blame or condemnation. Freedom from self is the only impersonality you can achieve and it takes hard work!
  As you ascend into the Light—which is pure principle descending as number, color, tone, joy, faith and all soul powers—it intensifies and sharpens your perceptions. The five senses ordinarily gather nothing more than messages that feed the impulsive self of the appetitive soul at the expense of the rational soul’s mental leadership. We call this matter over mind, or letting the body dictate to the soul. However, the soul who has really learned how to enter the golden silence, you become a balance of love and wisdom emanating as compassion in the world. This is how you open the soul faculties of illumination and intuition, acting as apperception.
  Once you have learned how to enter the golden silence by focusing your desire and will on God's desire and will for you, you can easily indraw the senses and synthesize their perceptions into apperception. Under the influence of apperception, you become a balance of intuition and illumination, of mind over matter and body.
  As you raise your hands, palms turned inward, level with your ears and eyes—this action automatically opens the 1,000-petaled lotus {a crown of Light centered on the junction of the skull’s coronal and sagittal sutures}—the brain’s nerve endings and the mental body lotus centers, little lights which whirl above the head like a halo. So, apperception, which is really the soul’s memory, its recollection of its past, enters as Light enfolded within the etheric currents coming through the crown of the head.
  The world vibration, the subconscious composite world mind, whirls up through the magnetic currents that enter your body through your feet. If you live in this low state of body-based consciousness you will pour out sympathy when you hear of a need instead of compassion, which is born of the Christ consciousness. When a soul unconsciously lives life in the magnetic currents, he opens himself to the world mind of the masses, the collective unconscious, not to the glory of the mind that was in Christ Jesus.
  You can use imagination in only one way at a time. You may turn your mind into the abstract by visualizing beauty. The instant you think of something vast—imagine the radiance of a sunrise or sunset, the majesty of a mountain range, the riotous color of a distant hillside in autumn—your subconscious mind becomes so interested in what you picture that you automatically draw in your senses; your five-rayed radar sweeps out and your mind opens to the pure mind of Christ.
  If you wish to concentrate clearly, perhaps to read for retention, this is how to prepare your mind. Move up in consciousness first and imagine yourself in a cloud garden—this is the first step in reaching the silence—go to your garden first then sit still until you feel yourself in this garden. Then you will be there as pure Mind, and can use your faculties with no interference from the subconscious mind. Read anything you like from this state of mind and it will not be mere words—you will read the truth of it from above.
  To work from your garden you must hold an unwavering sense of gratitude and praise for God and what He has given you. Thank the Father that His mercy flows as Light forever and ever and is never turned off. I think of God as both the Father and the Mother whom I worship and praise as personality in form, and as unfailing principle—unfailing because Light is the ultimate principle, which can never fail or be evil. Make yourself sit still in that Light until you can see yourself in the garden. At this second step you are there.
  Your garden is your work space for prayer, praising God and offering healing treatments, and you must be so full of life, love and vitality that you can do the prayer work you came to do. You lift the world by speaking the Word to increase the degree of Light, life, and power glory of God flowing through all souls and their affairs. How can anyone who is weak or drained of vitality offer anything more than just beautiful words in prayer? How can you strenthen your soul and body to increase the Light-as-power and vitality being realeased through you?
  Singing is the highest form of praise and rejoicing known to man because it releases God's power and glory. Someday the Elect shall enter the Silence on music, singing, playing an instrument, listening to a beautiful symphony, or whatever you can do to raise your personal rate of vibration and that of those who are on your lines of Light and responsibility. Singing is one form of rejoicing that lifts you above the puerile physical body that lacks the power to heal a sick mouse!
  When you enter your garden through visualizing beauty and offering lyrical praise, your radar screen is operating at peak efficiency. Speak the names of everyone on your prayer list; include your family and your worst favorites first, for these souls need your prayer the most. The Master said he came to save sinners. Your worst favorites are those you believe have sinned against you, have done you wrong. Blame, criticism, and condemnation are curses that go forth to create after their degree and kind. Your belief that someone has wronged you is blame; you increase the degree by criticizing and/or condemning the sinner. So you need to save your own sinners first! Put them on a cloud continent of Light for healing; see them surrounded by and filled with Light.
  All you can do for healing a person, a group, a situation or an event is to speak the Word, for in every case that needs healing God releases the Light-as-Power to do the work. You cannot make the Power do anything for anyone. Nor can you abandon a sinner by leaving him out of your healing work to wander in a dark alley. God does not requite you to love sin, but you love the soul who sins into the Light because he or she is a son or a daughter of God, just as you are! You do not have to like the ugly things people do but you may not blame or condemn them for their acts or words.
  I can’t make anyone do what I think he should do, nor can I make him perfect, or put him into a grade he has not earned. But I can sit in my garden and see him on a cloud continent of Light and call the divine fire down upon him and declare that Love’s fire cleanses his desires, thinking, and imagination! I can see him as he is, a glorious soul seated on a cloud—and when I have held him there long enough, when I have loved God enough, he will be healed! I have the privilege of sitting in my own garden, in that Golden Silence, lifting everyone I know. Because I have done this myself many, many times, I know that you will have calls for help from people who need it, and you can be as successful in treating them in prayer as I have been, because God’s love never faileth, and it really is God who is doing all the work though you.
  After you move up into your garden, thank the Father and praise Him enough, you then look up and wait upon the Lord. Here you enter the place of seership and prophecy! I assure you, you will have an ecstasy of soul that you may never experience in any other way. You simply move forth from your garden—at first it will still be your living-room, bedroom or wherever you choose to do you work. It will seem just a bit unreal as you begin, but gradually as the substance of your praise for God builds the form of your garden—a little of you stays there with your every visit. We call the result God-consciousness because you are using the mind that was in Christ Jesus to do all this work until you finally have the mind of Christ! The whole process of building your own garden and quickly going there at every call for prayer turns your faculty of imagination upwards instead into glory instead of downward into doubt and fear.
  Move into your garden when you study, when you read, and as you do so you turn lens of your imagination upward to the place of silent contemplation, the source Divine Mind. Your purity of being, your whole capacity to do God’s work depends upon your dedication to turn your kingly faculty of imagination UP to God. God is the source of your strength, and what you call down upon the millions moves through your soul and your body first! When you return to outer consciousness you don’t descend from the silence. You don’t come down from the High Place. You turn your attention outward and remain in the High Place, in contact with God, knowing God is there, knowing His Light is moving through as Power.

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Edna Lister on the Golden Silence

  Don’t make a production of entering the Silence. Move up! Love God enough! Act up! Mere process attracts events and thoughts to distract you and keep your consciousness under your skull. The act of a miracle is to say. “Father, move in! Here I am! I love You!” and to ride to the Source in your soul’s exaltation.
  All your life you have been using words to enter the Silence, to try to commune with God. They have records of all our lengthy prayers in the Hall of Records, prayers we have to listen to over there. You can release enough love by helping others to erase those records. You don’t need a process of words to take you back to God. Just go in love and kneel at His feet. Praise God in all you do on three levels at once. Go about your business and tell God you are always looking and listening, waiting for the next miracle. Edna Lister, What Is a Miracle?, May 24, 1960

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