04 Apr Material Mastery #8
Continuing our discussion on material mastery, here is a Teaching that addresses this issue. Jesus said: “If you fast not from the world, you will not find the Kingdom; if you keep not the Sabbath as Sabbath, you will not see the Father.” (Thomas Gospel #27)
It is very hard to find the Kingdom of God if you are constantly in the everyday pursuit of material objects in the material plane to fulfill an internal desire. You pursue the material through work, and then there is television constantly bombarding you with advertising, stimulating you to want food, new clothing, cars, a bigger house, and if that does not fulfill you (and it never will) then there are drugs or some other forms of escape or pleasure.
Those are some of the things of the material world. If you do not “fast” (deny yourself ) from them, if you do not cut off the distractions, the sensory input, the conditioning, the programming to be more, buy more – if you do not fast from that stimuli, you will not be able to find the Kingdom.
The Kingdom is within you, and in order to go within, you literally have to disconnect from the without, and the without is the world. So, you truly must fast from the world in order to have the time and the place to go within and discover how to attain true freedom because at that time nothing and no one is seeking your attention, and then you can direct your attention inward.
By directing your attention inward, you will eventually come to the Kingdom of God within yourself and everything that the level of understanding and being leads to, because part of the process of getting to the Kingdom within is understanding yourself. Identifying and resolving your subconscious barricades, your defenses that you have constructed in your life that keep you from truly getting into your deeper Spiritual Self.
People think that the barricades, the defenses, are there to protect them. But they are barricades, so they also keep the God Force within from manifesting. Understanding that is the first process of going beyond the defenses so you can enter the Kingdom within.
You need to understand about acquiring the time and place and learning how to relax yourself, about disconnecting from the material world through the beginning processes of meditation. That is one aspect and benefit of meditation, the ability to quiet the mind. That should be the stepping-off point. Get into your meditation. Get into a relaxed state. Now that you are there, grab your shovel, grab your pick axe, and begin to work on the barricades, on the defenses, so you can tear them down to let the true Light that you are shine from the within to the without.
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