"In Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night: and God said, 'Ask what I shall give thee.' And Solomon said….'I am but a little child: I know not how to go out or come in. And thy servant is in the midst of thy people which thou hast chosen, a great people, that cannot be numbered nor counted for multitude. Give therefore thy servant an understanding heart to judge thy people, that I may discern between good and bad: for who is able to judge this thy so great a people?' And the speech pleased the Lord, that Solomon had asked this thing. And God said unto him, Because thou hast asked this thing, and hast not asked for thyself long life; neither hast asked riches for thyself, nor has asked the life of thine enemies; but has asked for thyself understanding to discern judgment; Behold, I have done according to thy words: lo, I have given thee a wise and an understanding heart; so that there was none like thee before thee, neither after thee shall any arise like unto thee. And I have also given thee that which thou hast not asked, both riches, and honour; so that there shall not be any among the kings like unto thee all thy days. And if thou wilt walk in my ways, to keep my statutes and my commandments, as thy father David did walk, then I will lengthen thy days." (I Kings 3: 5, 7-14) There's a joke that I find amusing: 'In the Bible, Solomon asked God for wisdom. It was granted. And right away, he knew he should have asked for money.' Even as I was laughing at this, I knew the great falsity in its logic; for anyone who has ever had enough money knows that, whenever we're enjoying a time of abundance, the other evils of this world merely become more pronounced to our attention. The evils that money can't erase continue, like crime, sickness, hatred, persecutions, divorce…the list goes on. The wisdom to discern the good from the bad, (in some Bibles I think it says 'the false from the true') is really all any of us need, since it's the goodness of divine truth that makes us free of fleshly ills. We need to discern all the good things of God to which we are heir, in order to reverse the effect of belief in human, material inheritances. The effect of perceiving our divine provision of health and infinite supply, here, in this human experience, turns the negatives of our days into positives. It is also well to discern that our Christ Consciousness, our true, divine mentality, has already separated the good from the bad, the truth from all falsity. Knowing all spiritual truth, this divine consciousness within us knows that there is no material falsity that can deceive it. It separates the falsehood of material (fleshly) selfhood from the truth of its spiritual selfhood, whenever the lie of material existence comes to thought. Take, for example, the belief that you have a fault or tendency (possibly inherited from a parent). This fault seems to belong to you. The tendency could take the form of a mental inclination or physical condition. Whatever its name or nature, you've come to accept the notion that it is part of you and you must bear it, for some material reason. But concerning the claim that we must bear some flaw in body or character, our Christ-Self--our spiritual identity--knows better. It knows mortal, physical existence to be a mentally-based state of self-deception. This higher self knows fleshly life to be an illusion that hides, but never conquers or erases, our eternal, spiritual life, with all its goodness and glory. Being a falsity, our fleshly identity is a seemingly-real myth; but a myth has no traits, no conditions. It is entirely false in substance, form, and reality. The only conditions, the only traits we can have are our spiritual traits and condition. Spiritually speaking, our true mind knows only the truth, logic and intelligence of Spirit, because this is reality; and that which is real, never changes. The very substance of our bodies is spiritual and not fleshly forms. The substance of our real mind is spiritual rather than a material brain. There's no such thing as a fleshly body or a physical mind created by God. The Creator doesn't create mortal, finite people or objects. These physical forms are produced by the falsities we entertain about creation and all things--it's our perception of creation, not the true, underlying spiritual realm created by God. These forms are the symbols of reality, that we, ourselves, manifest. For instance: If I wish to bake a cake, I take whatever ingredients my human intelligence tells me will produce the finished product of a cake. Then I become a 'creator' of a material cake. Likewise, if I wish to build a table, I use whatever concept and form of a table I sense, for the concept of table is always with me in consciousness, and I re-produce this concept of table into a material form. I become a 'creator' of a table. But the substance of any table is not the material form, which is my own imperfect and perishable translation of the concept of table; rather, the true substance of 'table' is the immortal concept, in infinite variety, which God has given me forever. No one can take the substance of 'table' from me. Even if every form I build is destroyed, I can still 'create' physically another table, because the spiritual concept of this thing called table is within the consciousness of us all. It is part of the kingdom of God--one of God's creations. It's with us forever because, "Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine." (Luke 15:31). Our Christ Consciousness knows the truth of spiritual existence in all its aspects, and all the human effects this knowledge can bring us. Knowledge that our true bodies are just as perfect and immortal as the concepts or things of God's creation, begins at once to deny the "truth" of handicap, disease, injury, death. Why? Because these things deny our eternal, spiritual wholeness and soundness. That's why these physical aberrations were healed by Christ Jesus and his disciples. As a spiritual identity, living in the One, divine Intelligence, we're never less than whole to this spiritually-immortal Intelligence we know as God. We never leave the infinite Mind that created us. It never forgets our identity, or substance, (our wholeness, soundness, sufficiency, balance, order, symphonic rhythm of being) anymore than It (God) forgets a chair or a world spinning in orbit. It's just that the true essence, substance and reality, and thus the traits, qualities and conditions of all things and all life in creation are entirely spiritual--not physical, as our crude, finite concepts of identities and things turn out to be. The vision we hold in our human consciousness of things are the forms we live with; but the wisdom of Solomon, which resides in the Christ-Consciousness of each of us, knows how to separate the flesh from the Spirit, the good from the bad. It knows how to separate the finite, material creation of man from the invisibly spiritual and immortal creation of God, Spirit. It separates true righteousness, Spirit's righteousness, from the false human, conflicting views of what is right. This wisdom was always within Solomon, even before he asked for it. Thus, the wisdom of Solomon is within each of us to tap, just as it was a hidden presence within Solomon's own being. Until he asked for it, however, this innate characteristic of God's own children didn't come out, or manifest humanly for Solomon. Christ Jesus said, "…ask and ye shall receive…" (John 16:24). Why? Because all the good and useful things, qualities, traits and healthy conditions of God exist forever within each of us to be manifested. But if we don't realize that, if the falsity of a limited, fleshly, mortal identity controls our view of ourselves, we'll never 'ask' to call these good things forth into manifested form. We'll always believe we lack some good thing, some good quality of God, leaving us a negative trait, such as: anger instead of peace; hate instead of love; fear instead of confidence; poverty instead of abundance; sickness instead of health; conditions of inadequacy instead of wholeness. When Christ Jesus characterized physical healing, "Behold, thou art made whole:" (John 5:14) he was, no doubt, referring to man's immortal trait of wholeness, untouched and undiminished by any thing, any occurrence, in this false, physical sense of existence. When he said, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your father which is in heaven, is perfect." (Matthew 5:48) was he not telling us that heaven (everlasting divine harmony) comes from God, Spirit, our divine Source of origin, and that we can be as perfect as God, because in our true, spiritual Self, which is the very image of God, we're incapable of being anything but perfect? Now, just so you don't think that I speak with a forked tongue on this issue of possessing negative conditions and traits, here's an example (known by everyone who knew me in my youth) of the wisdom of Solomon that triumphed over a depressing condition of the flesh which I lived with for a long time: From puberty until my mid-thirties, I had a bad complexion. My skin was very oily, and I longed for the smooth, beautiful complexions of almost everyone else around me. Now, from about the age of thirteen, I had accepted this lot in life. It seemed to run in the family, as two of my brothers also suffered this, well into adulthood. In high school, it plagued me; when my face broke out with a new rash of acne, I often stayed home from places and events, out of embarrassment. I even heard people say things (thinking I was out of ear-shot) like, "She'd be pretty if it wasn't for that awful skin." By college time, I had learned to cover my skin with a rather heavy foundation lotion. This helped a lot. I went to make-up sessions and learned how to hide the ever-occurring blemishes. I used alcohol on my face to take out the over-abundance of oil. Still, my face broke out into my thirties, and I accepted it as a condition of being that belonged to me. I even entertained the thought that it was God's way of keeping me humble. Despite my bad complexion, I had always enjoyed the role of leader, throughout my school years; and I thought maybe this made me somewhat privileged. Maybe I was arrogant. Perhaps God was trying to send me a message to bring me down in some way. Or maybe this was just my cross to bear. But by the time I was in my thirties, I had joined a new religion (for me) called Christian Science. Spiritually, I was on a journey that was sweeping all negative things away from my life. One day, I realized that I had been accepting this falsity of a bad 'condition', when I was really God's spiritual daughter…not fleshly at all. My lot in life didn't come from the flesh; my lot, my entire lot in life, came from God alone. Thus, I realized, one day, that the wholeness I'd often been demonstrating over sickness and injury, also applied to personal claims of traits and conditions of the flesh--of bad things or states which seem to belong, personally, to us. So I claimed my spiritual inheritance as purity, goodness, and perfection. Nothing was polluting my true, spiritual body or skin. No part of my real self was unbalanced with an excess of something called oil. I mentally reviewed all the qualities of spiritual health: wholeness, soundness, sufficiency of all substance, balance, divine order, and symphonic functioning. In so doing, the divine trait of balance became apparent. I had always accepted that my physical body was producing too much oil for my skin to be all right. Now I saw that I'd never, actually, possessed a physical body to be balanced or unbalanced in any part or element. My only body was spiritual in substance and essence; this body was made and maintained by the intelligence of God. The harmony of my real, spiritual embodiment, whatever its form, was in perfect balance and always had been, because God's intelligence was behind it's presence. This episode or spiritual realization took only about an hour, to my recollection. But within a few days, all breaking out on my face ceased, and in about two weeks time, I was stunned to see myself in a mirror. The excess oil had stopped. My skin had cleared up. My complexion has been clear of blemishes ever since (twenty-five years later). In fact, I regularly swim at the YMCA, and recently as I was getting into the pool, a couple of the ladies said to me, "We were looking at your skin--it's so smooth, even on your arms and legs." I felt their comments were God's communication, reminding me once again, of Its divine balance over all things. So, in my case, did God suddenly have mercy upon me and take away the oily skin? Not at all. God had never given me oily skin. I never had it--that was the point to see. When I cleared up the belief in a fleshly falsity out of my own consciousness, and let the divine truths of being come forth, and when I embraced these truths over the falsity of physical existence, the new light, or spiritual truth, took over the form I was manifesting as my body. My skin cleared up when my thinking cleared up. This change in thought and belief about myself altered what the physical form was doing. We really do control what form our concepts and beliefs take, even though it seems like physical 'laws' and things external to us are causing the damage. There are so many wonderful things that enlighten our mind as we open ourselves to the spiritual base of all creation. When we seek the truth that God knows, we are seeking true wisdom. From the already-present well of spiritual knowledge within us, truth pours its light into our conscious awareness. With each enlightened moment, something in our human experience changes for the good. This is not miraculous; the material change for the good is a natural result of a strong change in thought. I remember an Old Testament quotation of God speaking through the prophet Isaiah, that I've always loved: "Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands:" (Isaiah 49:16). If we belong that much to God, can anything bad really belong to us?
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