The Law and the Word by Thomas Troward online

VIII TRANSFERRING THE BURDEN

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The more we grow into a clear perception of what is really meant by "Squaring the Circle," the freer we shall find ourselves from the burden of anxiety. We shall rise to a larger generalization of the Law of Cause and Effect. We shall learn in all things to reach out to First Cause as operating through the channels of secondary causation,--"causa causas" as producing, and therefore controlling "causa causata"--and so we cease to worry about secondary causes. On the plane of the lower personality we see certain facts, and argue that they are bound to produce certain results, which would be quite true if we really saw _all_ the facts; or, again, allowing that in any particular case we actually did see all the facts as they now exist, we can either deny the operation of First Cause, or recognize its infinite capacity for creating new facts. Therefore, whatever may be the nature of our anxiety, we should endeavour to dispel it by the consideration that there may be already existing other facts we do not know of, which will produce a different result from the one we fear, and that in any case there is a power which can produce new facts in answer to our appeal to it.

But I can imagine some one saying to us, "You bumptious little midget, do you think First Cause is going to trouble Itself about you and your petty concerns? Do you not know that First Cause works by universal Law, and makes no exceptions?" Well, I would not have written this book if I did not suppose that First Cause works by universal Law, and it is just because It does so that I believe It _will_ work for me and my concerns. The Law makes no exceptions, but it can be specialized through the power of the Word. Then our sceptic says, "What, do you think _your_ word can do that?" To which I reply, "It is not my word because I am not using it in my lower personality, as John Smith or Mary Jones, but in that higher personality which recognizes only one all-embracing Personality and itself as included in that."

Which comes first, the Law or the Word?

The distribution of the solar systems in space, the localization of the Spirit in specific areas of cosmic activity, proclaims the starting of all manifestation through the "Word." Then the operation of Law follows with mathematical precision, just as when we write 2 × 2 we cannot avoid getting 4 as the result--only there is no reason why we should not write 2 × 3 and so get 6 instead of 4. Let it be borne in mind that the Law flows from the Word, and not _vice versa_, and you have got the clue to the enigma of Life.

How far we shall be able to make practical use of this clue depends, of course, on our acceptance of its principle.

The Directing Power of the Word is _inherent_ in the Word, and we cannot alter it. _It is the Law_ OF _the Law_, and so, like any other law, it cannot be broken, but its action can be inverted. We cannot deprive the Word of its efficacy, but our denial of it as the Word of Expansion is equivalent to an affirmation of it as the Word of Contraction, and so the Law acts towards us as a Limitation. But the fault is not in the Law, but in the way we use the Word. Now if the reader grasps this, he will see that the less we trouble ourselves about what appear to us to be the visible and calculable causes of things, the freer we must become from the burden of anxiety; and as we advance step by step to a clearer recognition of the true order of Cause and Effect, so all intermediate causes will fade from our view. Only the two extremes of the sequence of Cause and Effect will remain in sight. First Cause, moving as the Word, starting a sequence, and the desired result terminating it, as the Word taking Form in Fact. The intermediate links in the chain will be there, but they will be seen as effects, not causes. The wider the generalization we thus make, the less we shall need to trouble about particulars, knowing that they will form themselves by the natural action of the Law; and the widest generalization is therefore, to state not what we want to _have_, but what we want to _be_. The only reason we ever want to _have_ anything, is because we think it will help us to be something--something more than we are now; so that the "having" is only a link in the chain of secondary causes, and may therefore be left out of consideration, for it will come of itself through the natural workings of the Law, set in operation by the Word as First Cause. This principle is set forth in the statement of the Divine Name given to Moses (Ex. iii, 13-14). The Name is simply "I AM"--it is Being, not having--the having follows as a natural consequence of the Being; and if it be true that we are made in the likeness and image of God, that is to say on the same Principle, then what is the Law of the Divine nature must be the Law of ours also--and as we awake to this we become "partakers of the Divine Nature" (2 Pet. i, 4).

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