Infinite Way Study Practice
April-June 2005



The following study practice is designed for those students who already have at least some background with Joel Goldsmith's Infinite Way teaching. My first recommendation would be that you go to the source text or tape where these messages are presented and listen to the original instruction.

Adapted From Joel Goldsmith's
"The Thunder of Silence" - Chapter 7 - A Rose is a Rose is a Rose

In our companion study practice for this quarter, we were given specific instruction and application on how to begin to rise about the mental inertia that predominates much of human consciousness.

For this study practice we will tred similar ground and this time we will look at a specific example of how world belief can bear down on us in a way that seems to make perfect sense from a human point of view. This particular example serves to show us how someone who is living a daily life of spiritual contemplation can receive a new way of thinking about an old problem that turns the whole world upside down. And how sometimes it takes turning the world upside down to see the faulty conditioned reasoning that we use to try to get by in life.

The following passage comes from Joel's book "The Thunder of Silence". A woman whose husband was an alcoholic came to Joel to see if he could do anything about her husband's situation. As Joel says in the writing, what happened next "was pure inspiration".

Read the following passage from Joel and consider how our conditioned way of thinking about problems such as alcoholism really can be a greater road block to overcoming the problem then the object of our discontent itself. Why is this? Because we are a product of our consciousness -- nothing more and nothing less. So until that idea in our belief changes -- until that false belief disappears -- we will continue to repeat the same battles with material problems, over and over again.

Now listen to Joel. Listen quietly and confidently to every word spoken within you. Then watch and see if there isn't something new to be beheld in your consciousness. Just watch and see...

"Several years ago a very interesting case was brought to me by a woman who told me in great tears and self-righteous horror that her husband had reached the place where he refused to work, that she had to support him, and that he lay in bed every day of the week except on her payday when he got up to go out to buy his weekly supply of whisky, using her hardearned money to pay for it. The entire situation was just a little bit too much for her to take any longer; but she had become interested in spiritual healing and wanted to know what I could do about it spiritually. It was pure inspiration that led me to say:

"'Do you know something? It comes to me that your husband is not an alcoholic at all: You are the alcoholic.'

"'I don't know what you mean.'

"'Well, you seem to be more afraid of alcohol than your husband is.'

"She looked at me uncomprehendingly and said:

"'Well, perhaps I am. Every day I see what it is doing. My husband doesn't think it is terrible; he likes it.'

"'There's a difference of opinion there. You really believe that alcohol is bad, don't you?'

"'I certainly do.'

"'And yet the whole basis of our work is that there is neither good nor evil. Now what are we going to do with that? I can put it to you this way: Suppose your husband wanted to use your money to buy ginger ale, would you object?'

"'No, I'd gladly go to work, and he could have all the ginger ale he wanted.'

"'So, ginger ale is good, but alcohol is evil. That is the appearance again, and there we are back with Adam and Eve. Now let's see who is at fault in this, your husband or you. Your husband thinks that alcohol is good and you think it's evil, so you're deadlocked, I guess, and that is where you are going to stay for a while unless you can begin to see what I see and that is that actually ginger ale isn't good, and whisky isn't bad, that there is no power in either one, if all power is in God. That's the vision and the way I see it. God is the infinite all-power, and besides God, there is no power for good or evil.'

"'Where does that leave me? What am I supposed to do?'

"'Suppose we agree that for the next week your husband can have all the whisky he wants, because we know that it has no power for good and that it has no power for evil, so we don't care what he does with it. You go right home and tell him that you've made a serious mistake and that you don't think whisky is so terrible after all, and that from now on, he can have all he wants of it.'

"That seemed to be going a little too far. She was shocked so she went outside and sat in my outer office for a while, but finally she decided that since nothing else had been effective, she would try this as an experiment, and she said to me when she came back into the office:

"'Well, I'm not getting anywhere this way; I can't do worse that way, so I'm going to do it; but it's a pretty hard thing to ask me to do.'

"'Try it and see.'

"She went home, waiting for the proper moment, and when her husband wanted whisky, she said:

"'Oh, yes, sure, here it is.'

"He looked at her in surprise, but made no comment until a few days later, when he came to her complaining:

"'You know there is no use drinking this stuff. They're making that wartime whisky again, and it has no punch, no effect--there's no power to the stuff.' And that's how he was ultimately freed. He couldn't drink it any more because it no longer gave him the satisfaction he had heretofore received from it.

"From my observation, I believe that the majority of alcoholics suffer from alcoholism not so much because they think that its indulgence is evil as because they think they are going to derive some good, that is, some pleasure from it. With the realization that alcohol is not good, their taste for it disappears."

So here you have it. The man who had a drinking problem had a belief about it 180 degrees opposite from that of his wife. And the spiritual solution is not in a better understanding of either the belief in good or the belief in evil. The solution is in the word IS -- neither good nor evil -- just IS. When we stop taking thought for the things of 'this world' the negative situations in our life will dissipate and dissolve, and they will always do so in proportion that we dissolve our former beliefs that no longer serve us.

Thank you for being you. All is Will. Thy Will be done.



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