Garden of Eden

Wisdom from the Masters

I’m starting a new series where occasionally I’ll be posting quotes from the authors I’ve been reading. Todays selection comes from Joel Goldsmith and his book; The Government of Eden: Spiritual principles for living in peace.

And of course some original photos by me inspired by Spring flowers and thoughts of the original creation, the Spiritual Creation from Genesis 1.

Eden: The State of Divine Consciousness

The Garden of Eden does not exist in time. It does not even exist in the future for you, and the Garden of Eden does not exist in space. There is no place where you will find it, even those spots on the face of the globe where it is claimed that the Garden of Eden once was.

No, it never was there, because the Garden of Eden is a state of divine Consciousness, and we live in it now and here in proportion as we can discern man, the nature and character of man as he is in the image and likeness of God, as we can discern the mountains and the valleys and the trees, the streams and the oceans as they are as God’s creation. God’s creation is spiritual, and therefore, as this inner faculty is developed, you will begin to see spiritually, hear spiritually, and know spiritually, all of which constitutes discernment.

“Hast thou been with me so long, Philip, and hast not known?8 Whom do men say that I am? Who sayest thou that I am?”9 Do you see how all of this goes back to the Master? Are you seeing Jesus as a man? Are you seeing me as a man? Are you seeing your wife or husband or child as man, woman, or child? Or, do you have eyes that really see? Do you have ears that really hear? Do you have a power of discernment that transcends the five physical senses?

Now on this point hinges the entire spiritual life, and on this point hinges spiritual healing. With the five physical senses, with the human mind, we would be more than foolish if we said there is no sin or disease or death in the world, or if we were to say there is no lack or limitation or no stupidity. But once spiritual discernment has been attained, even in a small measure, we begin to perceive God’s creation right there where mortality appears to be, and this constitutes the healing consciousness. All there is to a student who is doing spiritual healing work and the rest of the world is that those doing the healing work have attained enough of spiritual discernment to see through the appearance to the world, the man, the law of God’s creating.

You see, then, that we build this power of spiritual discernment, this capacity of spiritual discernment, in the moment that we agree that God’s universe is wholly good, God’s universe is wholly spiritual.

You know that Christhood, the full Christhood, is the measure of your being. You also know that you cannot claim to have fully attained, but since you know the goal and since you know that the only way of attainment is the further development of this spiritual capacity of discernment, you know that it involves practice, practice, practice constantly.

Fortunately, we have the opportunity throughout our waking hours, and in a measure carrying it over into our sleeping hours, we have the capacity to consciously remember, every time that we invest anything with a quality of good, to immediately withdraw it and say, “No, no. Father, reveal to me the true quality.” And every time we invest anything or anybody with any quality of humanhood, positive or negative, withdraw it and turn to this power of discernment that is within you and ask for light, and then you will receive light on its true nature. As this develops, by beholding more and more of Christhood, we become more and more of Christ.

In The Infinite Way, this is called the middle path: neither good humanhood nor bad humanhood, but spirituality; neither healthy humanhood nor sickly humanhood, but spirituality; neither young age nor old age nor middle age, but eternal age, immortality. In other words, we are withdrawing the qualities of good and evil, up and down, sick and well, rich and poor. We are withdrawing all of this and then letting spiritual discernment reveal to us the spiritual nature of creation.

Goldsmith, Joel S.. The Government of Eden: Spiritual Principles for Living in Peace (p. 43). BookBaby. Kindle Edition.