"A Key to Happiness"
by Joel S. Goldsmith
U.S. News and World Report - September 20, 1971
(Conscience is undoubtedly, the means by which God gives us guidance, but some people disregard what they know to be right and instead resort to selfish ways of life.
Joel S. Goldsmith began writing in the early 1950's a series of books on spiritual understanding, emphasizing the presence of God within ourselves. On this page are given some quotations from one of these volumes, entitled "Living the Infinite Way," published an copyrighted in 1961 by Harper & Row in New York.
The simple truth as set forth therein, if taken to heart by many people, could be effective if it reached those who have strayed from the sacred Commandments. Obedience to these could mean a better world and individual happiness for the millions who are involving themselves in crimes and in acts that strike not only at their neighbors but at their own families - David Lawrence, Editor.)
You begin with realization that God is omnipresent. I know that to many there is no feeling, no awareness, or no sense of God's presence. Many, many people in the human world are living as if they were completely cut off from God, as if they were getting along wholly by their own efforts. Many are praying for God's help, God's love, or God's presence, not knowing how to find it, because they are seeking it where it is not be found - whereas it could be so easily realized by quiet, peaceful contemplation of the Master's great truth, "The kingdom of God is within you."
The kingdom of God is to be found through meditation and prayer. There are two stages of meditation, each serving a distinct purpose. The normal or natural man lives entirely in the external - working and playing physically and mentally. His laws are legal, physical, and mental. His instruction and knowledge come mainly from persons or books. At some period of his life, however, an interest in God is awakened, and he find himself pondering the significance of this statement, "The kingdom of God is within you." This, then, is his first meditation.
Can you not follow him as he first realizes that a kingdom is a realm in which a king lives, rules, governs, directs and protects? Ah then, if the kingdom of God is within me - then God's government, God's law, order, and wisdom must emanate from within me....
A whole new world has opened to this student - the realm of God within himself. As this meditation becomes a daily experience - two, three, and four times a day - an expansion of consciousness takes place, and as more and more of this infinite storehouse of wisdom, law, and power is revealed, he learns to depend less and less on outer forms of force, power, law and knowledge.
Finally there dawns in consciousness the tremendous experience of understanding that since the kingdom of God is within, and the King, God, is ever within His realm, direct impartation of wisdom, direction, law, and power can come from within; and he remembers the words of the boy Samuel, "Speak, Lord; for thy servant heareth." Consciousness then becomes a state of awareness, attuned to the inner kingdom - the deep withinness - and gradually the student becomes consciously aware of inner guidance, direction, and wisdom. This is the culmination of the first stage of meditation wherein the student receives assurance, confidence, healing, and illumination from within his own being whenever he meditates....
The Master never told his people anything that could not be verified in Hebrew Scripture, because he knew that it would be unacceptable to them and they would not be able to understand it. All of Jesus' teachings can be found in the Old Testament, repeated in the same, or similar, words in what we call the New Testament. The two great commandments, "Thou salt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy sould and will all thy mind," and "Thou shalt love they Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul and with all thy mind," and "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," which were the most important to the Master, were both taken from Hebrew Scripture. He also told his followers, "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill."
Watch the miracle when you introduce the word of God into human consciousness, into child-consciousness....
Watch this, because it is revelatioin that the kingdom of God is within you, and you cannot make it so: You can only come into the realization. No spiritual man or woman who has ever voiced or written what he or she has discovered has said other than that the kingdom of God is within, and that through meditation it is discovered there and brought into inner realization. No one has yet found God in a mountain or in a temple, or in a far-off country. No, no, no! Many have found or written or spoken about God, but God, Itself, has always been found within one's very own being.
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