Circle of Christhood

“Christian Science practitioners should make their charges for treatment equal to those of reputable physicians in their respective localities.” from The First Church of Christ, Scientist and Miscellany, by Mary Baker Eddy p. 237

This is the tradition which gave birth to Joel Goldsmith's Infinite Way.  One day, Joel decided that he would no longer have SPECIFIC fees for his services. This allowed the students to give from their hearts the amounts that they were able.  Many were so grateful for healings that they gifted Joel valuable property, art, etc.  Many gave him the equivalent of medical treatment. Joel tells us that he had more income from healings than books and classes. 

In an effort to re-establish this practice, please help to support our practitioners and teachers with generousity and gratitude.

For Practitioners:

Please send the practitioner a check for their time when you make a call for help.mWhen you get a healing, give the practitioner what you think that professional service is worth in the world as you would pay a doctor, lawyer, accountant, psychologist,  Our practitioners have invested enormous time and money into their tape and class studies and most have chosen to focus on this as their life's work.

For Teachers:

If you are asking advice about your studies, see how much time you are taking and be sure to pay the teacher for that time. It should be what other teachers of superior quality charge. How much is a good piano lesson? A good tennis, golf lesson?  An hour of a Physics or Calculus tutor?  One hour with a computer tech?  This is how we must function if The Infinite Way is going to survive in today's material world. Everyone has rent, living expenses, telephone, postage, internet.  Infinite Way workers will need to be supported if the message is to survive.

Ultimately, your support is a gift to YOU, your consciousness,  as you help to establish the work of The Infinite Way in the world and live the principle of supply:  I HAVE! There may come a day when you will be called upon to heal or teach. Help us establish the practice YOU would like to undertake.

FROM 1963 LONDON WORK TAPE 529 SIDE ONE

"Now, in some countries, it has not penetrated consciousness that a person cannot give their entire lives, days or nights, to the healing ministry, without still requiring food and lodging, transportation, telephone and so forth. And so, the financial support of that ministry has not been taking place. The letters that students write of their deep gratitude are wonderful to read until you remember that words so spill out so easily from the mouth and from the pen, and that when they are not backed with deeds that's just a little difficult to take them seriously.

But the point is that this very point shows us that we were right in the beginning in not setting up a healing ministry, because it leads again to that which lost the work for Buddha and for Jesus. It leads to a group of people who just write and phone every time there's an ache or an ill, and they expect you to be the Christ while they sit at the feet of the Master. And you give up your personal life for them. You give up your time, you give up your life, and they just accept the fruitage of it and nothing's expected of them but a letter of thanks.

Now you can see that eventually the ministry would be lost again, because, first of all, the practitioners would stop practicing. Who is going to give up their personal life for those who do not even think enough of the ministry to want, in some way or other, to perpetuate it?

Secondly, of what benefit is it to an individual who has attained some measure of the Christ, just to use it for making other people comfortable, if they, themselves will not, by that example, say, "Aha, you have proven to me what the Christ of your consciousness will do. Now I know that this teaching means there must be a Christ of my consciousness."

And so, inevitably, you are going to discover that our practitioners are going to stop practicing. They're going to stop being the healers for the rest of the world and say, "All we were trying to do by this healing was to show you that the one grain of Christ that entered my consciousness performs these miracles, so that you would be induced to seek the same grain of Christ, and why not two grains, why not three, so that you could be this blessing in your own household, in your own community, and thereby lead others to it."

And so, I foresee, this has only been revealed to me since I've been here in London, I foresee that our practitioner ministry will decrease. So that, those who are students will either decide that it's too difficult and go back to their material ways of living, or will be driven to find the secret that is in these writings, the secret that will open the Christ within their consciousness so that they may be a blessing, you, individually, may be a blessing to yourself and to all on whom your thought rests.

You see, what has to happen is this, either those who enter the healing ministry will have to be financially supported by those who receive the benefits of it, those who ask for help will have to acknowledge that if you're going to dedicate your life to me, I will at least have to dedicate a part of my life to you. Or, as Paul said, "If I share with you my spiritual graces, is it unseemly that you share with me the temporalities that will make my ministry possible?" In other words, when the churches couldn't support themselves, they turned to Paul and he was able to demonstrate supply for them. The Master, Christ Jesus, had a treasurer who cared for all of the money to support the activities of his group, of his ministry.

And this is an inevitable thing for two reasons; the very practical one that when a person, let us say a housewife, becomes very active in spiritual healing, they cannot give the same attention to household duties they did before. Not only their heart and soul isn't in it, but they haven't the time for it. And therefore, they must hire help to have it done. Also, businessmen who receive this grace, find that eventually they have to give up their business as I had to. And, for this reason then, it becomes a practical thing that those who receive the benefits help support the activity.

But this is actually the minor point of the whole picture. It is a necessary one but not the most important one, because I can assure you of this, that any person who has attained spiritual grace will find their supply whether or not their patients and students will give it to them. If necessary it'll come out of the sky or they'll find it buried in the ground, but never doubt that a person who attains even a grain of spiritual consciousness will be well supplied and always able to share twelve basketsful, so that the first point is the minor one of the two.

The most important point is this. Anyone who receives spiritual grace, spiritual healing, spiritual supply, spiritual anything, and whose heart and soul isn't opened up in love has not received the Christ. All they've received is a physical healing. Now, I remember one time, when I received a metaphysical healing, an outstanding one too, and I paid my practitioner bill. But you know, that's all I did pay. It never entered my mind or heart or soul to do anything else for anybody. Oh, I had my healing and I paid my bill and that was all there was to it. But you see now I know just why. My heart hadn't been opened. My soul hadn't been opened. My spiritual center hadn't been opened and as a matter of fact it was seven years later before I was spiritually opened. Ah, but when I was spiritually opened, then I wanted to give away everything I had. I wanted to give it to the practitioners, I wanted to give it to the church, I wanted to give it to wherever it could be used. The soul was just flowing, flowing, flowing with give, give, give. And of course, the more you gave the more you got, because that's the spiritual law. Not that if you give it you get it, but if you pour it out it flows back.

You have the principle of that in The Infinite Way writings, since there is only one Self you're really giving it to yourself.

Now, when students receive healings such as I have witnessed in every part of the world, not only through my work but through our practitioner's work, when you witness healings like that and then see people without a sign of give in their hearts, without a sign of giving-ness in their soul, you say to yourself, "What are you doing, merely changing a sick body into a well body? Not touching these people's souls at all, not opening their spiritual centers? This cannot be, this cannot go on."

Well, I perceive the reason for this. Of course for years I made this same mistake. That's why I'm able to point it out to you now. When we are called upon for help and people say, "Oh it's my heart," "Oh it's my leg," Oh it's my head," instead of answering them and saying, "Look, I'm not interested in your body, I'm not going to heal it. My function is to reveal spiritual grace to you, the kingdom of God, not to heal your body. If you're interested in healing your body I think you'd better see a doctor. But if you'd like to know what spiritual health is, if you'd like to know what the kingdom of God is like, I can give you help."

I think that if we made that a point of our answers we would convey to these people that we are not just doctors with a different system of healing. When someone writes to us, "I am unemployed, will you pray for me?" I know that if you would write back and say, "Heavens no, I'm not an employment agency and neither is God. I will be glad to reveal to you God's grace and God's abundance if you're interested in that. But if what you're merely seeking of me is employment, seek somewhere else."

When we are asked for help for supply instead of saying, "Supply, just what do you mean by supply?"

"Money."

"Oh, no, we're not in the banking business. No. Our supply is God.The only supply we recognize is God. If you want a supply of God, I will certainly help you to the attainment of that Supply, but not the supply of money. That's out of my department. Probably you'll find that Jesus really knew his business, when you discover that if you find God you'll find that the money is one of the added things, for that's what he said."

If you can handle your ministry in that way, probably you will find that there will be not merely the same amount of healings, and probably more healings, but that there'll be fewer people looking upon us as if we were a branch of a bank, or an employment agency, or a different type of doctoring. In other words, we'll heal and save them the trouble of an operation or the expense.

Now, all through The Infinite Way writings it has been made clear that the ministry of The Infinite Way is not a metaphysical practice of saying, "Come to us to be healed or supplied," but it is a mystical teaching which says, "Come to us that we may reveal to you the kingdom of God, the spiritual kingdom; that you may learn to live by the grace of God, not by bread alone, or money, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God."

Then, two things should happen. First of all, as long as there is a need for a practitioner ministry, students will feel led to support that ministry so that it can continue as long as it is needed. Secondly, it will be need for a shorter length of time because each student will realize that they have not been led to a teaching where they can just go round to the Master on Sunday and say, "Heal me," or call up on Monday and say, "Heal me," but where, from the start, they are going to be directed to the books, to the tapes, to meditation, until the kingdom of God is established within each and every one."

"As long as a practitioner ministry exists, patients and student must recognize that it is part of their function to support that activity so that it can go on, and secondly, that they must not feel that you can buy healing, because I will not allow you to believe that you have enough money to buy a healing. I can tell you that in our Infinite Way activity around the world we have quite a few millionaires and near millionaires, and if healings could be bought, I can assure you they have enough money to pay for them and would gladly do so. But I can assure you that regardless of how much money you ever pay to this ministry or anyone in it, you are not buying a healing. You cannot buy a healing and you never will have that much money that you can buy a healing.

Anything that you ever give to a practitioner, a teacher, or any other function of the ministry will merely be your gratitude for the existence of a ministry that can lift you out of mortal consciousness until the day when you, yourself, achieve and attain this, at least a measure, of spiritual attainment. Do you see this? Do you see, please see that no one ever buys a healing? No one ever buys a favor from God. This you cannot do. You could give a million pounds to a church, to a practitioner, but you are not buying one grain of favor from God. Nor does the practitioner have it within their power to do any more for you if you gave them a hundred pounds than if you gave them one. They are giving you their ultimate at all times. Therefore, money has nothing to do with the results or the fruitage that you receive. Money only has to do with that part of maintaining a ministry in existence in the human term.

Well, you know that, I've told you the story of the man who called me once, also a man of means, in a certain city and said that he was going to go through my class but he heard they were charging three pounds for it, and then he wouldn't go through the class because he thought it was a sin to pay for a spiritual ministry. So I said, "Well you know, you're not complaining with me because I agree with you. I have that same feeling." And I said, "I'm glad that a man in your high position feels that way because I can't do anything about it but you can." "Is that so?" "Yes, you come down here to the hotel and you tell this hotel manager how you feel about this so that he'll give me a receipted bill. And then we'll go over to the air office and we'll convince the manager that it's a sin for them to be charging me air fare when I'm on a spiritual ministry." Oh, he didn't mean that. I said, "Oh, I think you meant just that you think it's a sin for you to pay, but you don't mind if I pay."

Well now, we don't mean that at all do we? Not one of us really means that. We know exactly what we mean, that spiritual truth is without money and without price. No one ever needs to pay for spiritual truth. All we'd have to do is to sit home in meditation long enough and we'd get all the spiritual truth from within ourselves. But the moment that we expect somebody else to help us in attaining the kingdom of God, well a telephone bill enters in, or a postage stamp enters in, or a railroad trip or something else. So that, please see this with me won't you, that money itself plays no part in a spiritual ministry. It is merely our own sense of gratitude expressing itself for the maintaining of a ministry while it is needed. We're not buying favors with it. We can't buy favors with it. Therefore it has no such connotation.