Video: youtube.com/watch?v=khsiO1iYWwg · Channel: That Lotus Chick · Length: 59:04
Overview
In this recording from the closing session of his Kailua class, Joel Goldsmith asks his listeners to drop their “mental walls” and listen as if they had gathered “in an atmosphere of God,” not to hear a man. His central message: God is spirit, and God’s creation is already spiritual, perfect and whole. What we experience as sickness, lack or discord is the way our own conditioned mind interprets that creation. Healing, then, isn’t about fixing a body or a situation. It happens when the mind goes still and stops judging good and evil, so the spirit can come through. He also describes the two halves of the spiritual journey, the cost and reward of sharing grace with others, and gives simple practices for nighttime, morning and healing work. The recording ends mid-class, as he breaks for a rest.
Key Teachings
1. We never see the world as it is, only our concept of it
Goldsmith says there are three things to consider: God is spirit; God’s creations are spiritual, not material or finite; and yet they appear to us as physical and limited. The reason is that our mind interprets what we look at. His example is a vase of roses. A colour-blind person sees a different colour, and someone with “rose fever” sees a cause of asthma. In the same way, one visitor to a gallery sees “daubs of paint” while another is moved to ecstasy. Our concepts are shaped by four things: prenatal influence, early environment, education, and later personal experience. If we keep meeting harsh people or loving ones, those four influences are behind what we meet. The ground we stand on is holy ground either way, because “all that is in heaven is on earth.”
2. Mind is an instrument of awareness, not a creator
In the human picture, the mind “creates” good and evil. In the spiritual life, he says, it is never used to plot, plan, scheme or make evil into good. It is an avenue of awareness. Faced with a blank canvas, an invention or a plan, the answer is not to rack your brain but to be still (“Speak, Lord, thy servant heareth”) and let the idea arrive, so your mind and hands can carry it out. He states that there are no discords in heaven or on earth. Any discord we notice belongs to our own state of consciousness or to the consciousness around us. He adds that even teachers suffer by taking on the beliefs of the people around them, which he relates to the Master “taking on the sins of the world.”
3. “Mind forms”: how outer experience takes shape
Goldsmith stresses an important distinction: mind does not create, it forms. Creation is already here, spiritual and perfect. Our mind forms our experience of it in line with how it has been conditioned. A mind free of judging good and evil forms harmonious, successful living. A mind still full of those judgments produces experiences of both good and evil. Nothing new is ever added to creation. The loaves and fishes weren’t “more supply”; mind multiplied the visible forms to meet the need of the moment. As the mind “receives the light of knowledge,” appearances come closer to their pure form. He calls the belief in good and evil “hypnotism” and says this is what so-called mortal mind is made of.
4. How healing happens
When someone reports a diseased body, mind or “pocketbook,” they are seeing creation through limited material sense. The practitioner closes their eyes, ignores what the patient sees and feels, remembers that the mind is only an interpreter, and gets still until an inner assurance comes, such as “Thou art my beloved child” or “This very place is the kingdom of God.” A practitioner who passes no judgment on the problem (good nor evil, sick nor well, rich nor poor) is not using mortal mind but “that mind which was also in Christ Jesus,” and that mind dispels the illusions of sense. But he warns that someone still steeped in the knowledge of good and evil, or who believes they have power over the devil, is “the blind leading the blind.” The foundation is realising that God is the only power, presence and reality.
5. Not physical healing but transformation of consciousness
Goldsmith is emphatic that the Infinite Way is not a physical healing ministry. It lifts a person out of materiality into some measure of the atmosphere of God, and that new atmosphere transforms the body. Healings without an inner change are temporary, like the multitudes who were fed one day and hungry the next, or tent-meeting healings where people fall ill again a week later. In 27 years, he says, he has never sought a patient. His function is that those who find him receive some spiritual illumination, and that transforms their lives, finances and bodies. In the end, how far each person overcomes the sense of good and evil is something “you have to determine for yourself.”
6. The two halves of the spiritual journey
In the first half, by listening, expecting and living “not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit,” discords lessen and almost disappear. During this stage our problems are blessings, and we don’t really progress until we are grateful for every trial, because trials wake us up. The second half, “where our troubles really begin,” comes when we see that health and plenty are only human good, which can change in a moment. They are markers on the way, not the goal. This is the “I say unto you” of the Christ teaching. It isn’t enough to refrain from stealing or adultery outwardly. The inner desire and the sense of duality must go, leaving resistance to no evil, inner freedom, and reliance on grace.
7. Sharing grace, and forgiving the past
As harmony grows, grace itself “makes demands upon us that we share it.” This doesn’t mean forcing it on anyone. It means sharing with those who are reaching out. That costs some personal peace, as it did for Jesus and Paul, but it brings a deeper inner grace. Your world, he says, is “either healed or removed”: people and circumstances come into harmony with your consciousness or drop away, unless you insist on carrying yesterday’s patterns with you. Toward the end he turns to past mistakes. We can’t erase them while we hold a sense of good and evil. But when we realise that in God’s kingdom there is no evil, and that God holds no one in bondage (the thief in paradise, the woman set free at once), we can see past wrongs as “the effects of ignorance” and forgive ourselves.
In His Words
“We never see what is before us… We only see our concepts of what is before us.” ~ 9:00
“In the spiritual scene, the mind is never used as a creative activity. It is used as an avenue of awareness.” ~ 14:35
“The whole secret lies in making the transition from a thinking, plotting, planning, scheming mind to the ability to have a restful mind and let divine ideas flow in.” ~ 16:00
“Spiritual demonstration begins with gratitude that these afflictions are upon us.” ~ 24:50
“It doesn’t say that mind creates. Mind forms.” ~ 41:15
“Healing is a very easy process… Remember, you have no healing work to do.” ~ 50:50
“There is no such thing as outer harmony without a transformation of consciousness except as a temporary measure.” ~ 54:10
Practical Guidance
- Several quiet periods, day and night. Take no thought for what you will eat, drink or wear, or how a need will be met. Adopt a peaceful, receptive attitude: “Speak, Lord, thy servant heareth.”
- At bedtime. Instead of lying awake planning tomorrow, rest in the realisation that “He” goes before you and does what is given you to do: His grace is your sufficiency, His strength your strength, His understanding your understanding.
- On waking. Recognise at once that He brought you through the night, and commit your ways to Him “in quietness and in confidence.”
- When problems come. Resist not evil, agree with your adversary, sit back and wait patiently for the spirit. Be grateful for the trial instead of rushing to outer remedies.
- In healing work. Get quiet. Don’t judge, criticise, condemn or advise the patient. Don’t fight the condition or try to improve it. Let the mind be blank if need be, and wait until the spirit “announces its presence”: a glow or warmth, a deep breath, an inner assurance that God is on the field, or a smile. Then let it go, repeating as needed.
- In creative work. Treat the task as a blank canvas: “Father, you paint the picture,” and let the ideas come.
- Live by “I” and “My.” Take in phrases such as “I will never leave you,” “My presence will go before you,” and “My peace,” so that the personal sense of “I,” with its fears and worries, begins to fade and you become a beholder of God at work.
- Forgive yourself. See past mistakes as the effects of ignorance, not a lasting evil.
Based solely on the video’s English captions (auto-generated). Quotes are taken word for word from the transcript with small punctuation and spelling clean-ups. Timestamps are approximate. The recording ends partway through the class.