Edna Lister’s Lectures 1968

The Law of Agreeing and Adjusting

Edna Lister lecture recording script, January 1968, Tacoma, Washington.

The most important word in our law of agreeing and adjusting (Matthew 5:25) is quickly. It means to respond instantly to another’s demand for an argument. Quickly does not mean next week, tomorrow or even an hour from now; it means right now.

To agree quickly is seeking first the kingdom of heaven, to make sure you are in complete contact with your I AM center of consciousness, the only place from which you can hear the “still, small voice” when it directs you in any situation.

Next in importance is “while you are in the way with him,” meaning you must stand still and wait on the outer. This involves agreeing with God that the situation is good, and lending yourself with a joyous smile to whatever is being done, to whoever is presenting us with this lesson for your soul growth.

Agreeing and adjusting also involves being grateful to the person or situation for showing you your weakest point in your ascension work. Someone or something is giving you the opportunity to discover exactly how much you have learned to love, how well you have surrendered the pride of necessity always to find your own opinion right, though the whole world finds you wrong. You become so interested in conquering that you move easily into the third important phase of this law — agreeing.

The only true freedom of soul comes when you reach that point in ascension where you learn to agree and adjust without having to think about what you are doing. Today, now, quickly, agree — these become your words of conquering. Vain arguments are but a waste of God’s time, since those who desire an argument have made up their minds, with no intention of changing. They want to be thought right, they want the last word, so give them the first word and save all your words and time.

As you smile, you reach up quickly, grasp your own Rod of Power and hold fast to it while you smilingly wait for the arguer to run down. It is worth the effort to be silent and smile when you see the facial expression of one who realizes there is no opposition or reason for more speech. This law always works.

To agree and adjust does not mean you are obligated to like what anyone is doing. You are not obligated to go their way if it is against your own laws and principles. God asks you only to love others for what they are capable of becoming, not for what shows on the outside in words or actions.

It is good policy to manage your life by agreeing and adjusting, since God pays no attention to your disagreements with anyone. He does not take your personal opinions about anyone or anything into consideration in His final judgments.

God rewards each of us according to our personal earnings and no more. But not less, either! Although your nearest and dearest family members and friends sometimes tell Him all about our lacks and limitations, He does not grant your credits based on what others think.

What anyone else thinks about you cannot change your balance sheet. God compiles that sheet from your own daily ledger, which takes into consideration the perfection of your desire to be perfect, and is not wholly based on your daily practice of law.

When you want to agree, leaving yourself free to make beautiful choices, freeing others to live as their own Christed consciousness dictates, you realize what the whole law means: When you agree quickly with God, you can do nothing but agree with others. You suddenly realize that you have never had any enemies or adversaries on the outer.

Standing in your garden of love, bathed in the golden silence becomes the dearest action of your life, and from here you are free of any desire to disagree with anyone about anything. At last you learn the art of “keeping silence before Him.” God has become too important to us for the lesser levels of hurt and resentment to enter into your consciousness.

It is wonderful to understand that you create your own adversary every time you acknowledge an enemy. You discover that you assume the role of “judge” when you think in terms of enemies, and those so declared surely become adversaries who then judge you.

Since the Bible is our textbook and the Sermon on the Mount holds every law we need to obey to learn our earth lessons, we take this step from Matthew 5:25: “Agree with thine adversary quickly, whilst thou art in the way with him.” Not hours later, not tomorrow, but right now. It has been thought by some to be a stupid law. It has even been interpreted, in some instances, and used to avoid telling the truth. It does not mean lying to agree with an adversary.

There is no need to be dishonest or cover up the truth for anything. There is no dishonesty in saying to the person, “I can see how that seems to be the truth to you,” even though the statement might be an outrageous one. All you need to do is to keep silent about your own ideas. Your opinions are not interesting to any adversary. To want to argue to convince another is only being a show off. Smile, be silent, saying mentally, “Let there be Light!”

Several lesser laws are involved in this truly great one of agreeing. The first one to learn is that you never can know, by any means, exactly what is right or wrong for another. God has made this impossible for you to do. Your business with this law is to know one thing only: When adversaries approach, you are supposed to know instantly what is right or wrong for you, then to stand silently and hold fast to your own right way.

There is no law saying that you have to speak. Silence does the agreeing, in the Light, with the adversary. Any words can shatter your own high vibration of Light. Hold fast to knowing that divine Mind never gives you the right to know what the other fellow really needs. Each is in his own place, learning his soul lessons, and disagreeing with anyone is sure to disturb the very plan of life lesson being presented to him.

You dare not forget, when agreeing with an adversary, that to declare Light is one thing the Power needs to make the lesson mean ascension for him. An adversary, and his reason for being one, is the most unimportant thing in your life.

To agree demands that you ignore the adversary’s intent to hurt or wound, and to quickly find some reason for praising him. To say, “How wonderful you are!” to an adversary lifts you out of slavery to the world and into your own sun center of Light, where nothing can touch you. To use praise for an adversary frustrates him until he forgets his original intention and departs.

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God’s Magna Charta

Edna Lister speech outline; Truth Temple Woman’s Guild, Tuesday February 13, 1968, Tacoma, Washington. Scripture: John 1:1-4.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men.” — John 1:1-4.

“In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God and the Word was God” in action as Mind. God used Mind to condense Substance until the Word exploded and Creation opened. The Word was a planned, controlled explosion, a rhythmic pulsing vibration filling all space, all the universes. Mind, acting on Substance, condensed enough Power to last for an entire Day of Manifestation.

God, as principle, first created a place for creation, then filled it with personality. Principle and personality combined to form the Magna Carta, which holds all plans from beginning to end. It is still known; God still knows. Do you believe this? Do you know this? Behind the scenes, God’s ability to know and to hold everything in His hands has proven greater, not lesser. Evil was not included in the Word. God has added to His wisdom through the combinations of evil that men have produced, which has caused delay, but no change in the Word.

You are on your way home to the Source. From creature to creator, from instinctive intelligence to conscious intelligence, each soul is under the original plan, his personal Magna Carta. The principal law is obedience. Everything and everyone must obey universal law. For example, spring is coming, and it operates under three great laws of expansion, explosion, and expression.

Every living thing obeys nature’s laws to expand through appropriating the life surrounding it. Earth produces countless tons of verdure from the soil with no lessening of its creative capacity. In a human embryo, the cells expand from two to four and onward in a cubic progression. When you breathe, your atomic mental body appropriates atomic energy to expand and explode that energy as Power. You grow cyclically, just as do plants, fruit and flowers.

Your brain cells awaken in the areas you determine by your expression in life. You have no potentials of your own, but you can contact God’s limitless potentials for expression. Do you believe that you are the instrument of God’s expression? When you use your creative tools of thinking, desire and imagination in the name of Jesus the Christ, all things are possible.

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You are an Ambassador of Peace

Edna Lister speech outline; International New Thought Alliance 53rd Congress, Sunday July 28, 1968, Denver, Colorado. Scripture: John 1:1-4.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men.” — John 1:1-4.

“In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God and the Word was God,” and the Word still is God. "In the beginning, God created." This is our postulated point of origin, by which we must live. This “God-created” point is the essential anchor to which we can cling, stand on, and hold fast. When we lose this point, we have no identity. Whatever else you forget, remember, the Word is still God, your Word.

For nearly a century, two lines of conflict and debate have raged between Christians and agnostics, two theories, Creationism and Darwinism. Darwinism is based on evolution, which could not account for the soul of humanity, although Darwin did stipulate that there was an earth with life on it before evolution.

The Creationists, who base their beliefs on the Bible, finally forgot Darwin. They entered a conflict with science as being against the Bible when scientists announced their findings that it had taken six billion years to create earth as it is. Creationists stuck to their belief that the earth was created in seven days. Some Creationists began to ask where the planets had come from and so began arguing among themselves about the length of each day of the seven, whether it was twenty-four hours or longer. However, they always insisted on the supernatural origin of the soul of man.

At about the same time, science worked out its first two theories to account for creation, the super-dense theory and the steady state theory. They soon dropped the latter in favor of the super-dense theory. 1 Six billion years ago, matter and energy gathered into a mass at ultra high temperatures, resulting in an explosion. The speed of the cooling-off process increased the whirling motion of centrifugal force, which met gravity, pulling matter together to form the planets.

Mystics declare that divine Mind inhaled Holy Breath into a center, drawing together enough invisible particles of Light to condense until an explosion formed a great space contained within magnetic walls. Within this space, a whole Day of Manifestation could fulfill itself.

The plan formed by divine Mind was contained within that original Word that was God. The Word is the divine Magna Carta of God, containing every idea or need for all universes, the beginning, the end and everything between. The second phase of creation from Light was to populate space with beings in God’s own image and likeness, who are the descended creator gods of today. We all moved out from eternity into time and space. All our difficulties arise from this urgency now possessing us to move back, from time and space into eternity. We reach for eternity without accepting our full responsibility for our own immortality, here and now.

The Mind of God rules eternity, but the minds of men rule time and space — one pulls up and the other down. The atomic age is raising the whole world vibration, from the lowest levels of form. Even the creatures respond to the challenge of eternity. The Christ-like urgency erases old patterns of time and space, and reconditions our lives to live eternity now. We have no time to talk it or think it, for we must live it.

Science teaches that one universal atomic matter exists, and we know that the one God has one Mind, one Substance, one Power and one plan for us. Eternity is our challenge.

Hear this! You are tomorrow’s challenge for peace. St. Paul stood and challenged the centuries just past him. We stand and challenge those just ahead of us. Our challenge to bring peace must be great enough to entice the masses into desire for peace. It must be enthusiastic enough to challenge the world. To the ancients, enthusiasm 1 meant “possessed of a god.”

“And for me, that utterance may be given unto me, that I may open my mouth boldly, to make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in bonds: that therein I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak.” — Ephesians 6:19-20.

Declare, “I am an immortal, living in eternity now. I am become an ambassador in bonds of peace, a bold challenge to the world.”

Your Mount of Transfiguration

Edna Lister article; The Prayer Circle newsletter, December 2, 1968, Washington, D.C. Scripture: Hebrews 11:1.

“Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” — Hebrews 11:1.

What is Transfiguration? It is to be changed, to ascend. The whole purpose of life is to ascend. Ascension is earth’s final high initiation.

To reach your Mount of Transfiguration, you must apply two laws, acceptance and obedience. Every law you learn enfolds a mystery within itself. You respond to the law in obedience, and the soul responds by moving upward with the Light.

You can approach the Mount of Transfiguration only through and by the principle of faith. “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” All substance everywhere is faith, for faith is Light. “Let there be Light” released that original Power of faith when God spoke the Word.

Using your common sense, you know that you have to apply what you know to what you do, to what you practice. To reach up with your live wire of faith gives you your identity with your Source.

Ascension means a higher state of consciousness. The prefix “trans-” means “over.” Transfiguration resurrects you from old "figures" or "patterns." Light then pours through your soul and into the depths of self, cleaning and erasing all old ideas, and patterns.

When you stand in the Light, you have it made. You are in. Light fills you, and Power uses you.

Endnotes

1^ The super-dense theory is now called the Big Bang.

2^ Greek enthousiasmos “divine inspiration,” from entheos "divinely inspired, possessed by a god," from en “in” + theos “god.”

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