14/115 SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS By FRANK H. SPRAGUE

We invite impressions by rendering ourselves receptive to them. We may attune our thought to respond to the vibrations of low, coarse, material influences, or to those that are high, fine, spiritual. If to the former, a world of materiality, selfishness, sensuality, brutality, suffering and disease will dominate us and stand out as the one evident reality.

But all material conditions are of comparatively short duration. The coarser vibrations that give rise to clashing discords and jarring dissensions are soon spent and neutralized; while the finer, spiritual ones continue unaffected by material change and decay. “He that soweth unto his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth unto the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.”

When we become conscious of love, it begins to come into evidence in our outer world. But when we harbor feelings of antagonism, we create for ourselves a world of chaos. “Love overcometh all things.”

But what do we mean by Realization? We mean projecting outward, bringing into manifestation, expressing, acting out, in short, living. The impulse of expression originates in the very nature of Being. The internal forever seeks externalization. It must go outward in activity, manifestation, realization. The abstract must become concrete, the ideal real.

Every seed seeks to realize its ideal by expanding into a plant or tree of its own species or conception of life. Each order of mineral is impelled to realize its ideal by developing its own peculiar crystalline forms. Man must realize his ideal by going out in love and unselfish action.

This common impulse of expression underlies the entire cosmos. The eternal process of creation, as manifested in evolution, is a ceaseless realizing of ideals; it is the essential Self seeking amid relative conditions to realize the Absolute.

Everyone recognizes the possibility of realizing ideals, in some measure, on the lower planes where materialism and selfishness prevail; but many are quick to deny the feasibility of realizing spiritual ideals. They say: Oh yes. Idealism is a beautiful dream, but of what use is it?

It cannot be brought down into practical life. That very suggestion shows a misapprehension of the nature and source of the world of expression. No one who is inwardly conscious of the existence of an Absolute Power will question either the possibility or the practicability of realizing the highest ideal. The thorough-going idealist is the most eminently practical type of man, for he is conscious not alone of the existence of ideals, but also of the power that effects all realization.