Commentaries on the Christ and True Christianity
Man, as God imagined, is as eternal in nature as is God's thought of him so being. The life of this eternal person is the Christ, whose Living Light is to this, our immortal soul, as is blood to our physical body.
When a person has come to know a true love for the Christ, this love is more something he is held by, and not something that he holds of himself within himself. So that true love of Christ occurs only in the awakening soul who has been claimed by Christ; for it is not the soul that loves directly -- as her power is only to reflect Light; but it is Christ Himself that loves in this willing soul. And mark that this love is never a boastful love; it is a secret love, a tender love. It has no more ambition than does the sun that gently warms the soul without shouting, "I am the light by which you live, that sustains you here on earth." So if you meet those along the Way who would push or otherwise press upon you how great is their love for Christ -- and why you should feel as they do -- you may know with fair certainty the following truth: Their love is less the love of Christ, and more the love of themselves in their mistaken belief that it is they who love.
The true Christian knows that if he has Christ in his or her heart that Christ is not "his" -- but it is he who belongs to the Christ; so that there is no pride (of "ownership") in a true Christian. Such pride is a secret vanity and often becomes the seed of a spiritual sickness that gives rise to unholy prejudice.
To be in the Christ (hence to live as a true Christian, and not to be a self-deceived hypocrite) requires self-realization; for the Christ is our innermost nature and the Celestial Core of Real Life.
The only way to really be "like" Christ... * is for one to be Christed*; and our fledgling wish to be Christed is the same as the Christ Life beginning to express Its (nature of) Light through our own.
Just as any actual healing takes place factually after some injury has occurred, so is it true that one's "salvation", the true spiritual rebirth of the soul, can only come to those who become conscious of their own un-regenerated state of self. In addition and necessarily so... it is a false Christianity that offers one comfort before it urges him to confront the fact of his own unseen corrupted nature.
The true individual is not someone who is defined by the changing characteristics of each passing moment, but is he who sees these movements within himself defined by his permanent character in the Living Light, in the eternal Christ.
