Christian metaphysical teacher and founder of the Unity movement Charles Fillmore approached the Bible as a spiritual story about our evolution from personal or finite being to divine or infinite being. Each character in the Bible represents an aspect of our own evolving being. Accordingly, Fillmore studied and meditated to understand the significance of Jesus' twelve disciples. He concluded that each of Jesus' disciples embodied a characteristic—a principle, a power—that well served Jesus' mission. True to his approach was Fillmore's interpretation of Jesus Christ as our spiritual nature, aka Divine Identity or infinite being; therefore each of the disciples represents one of our spiritual abilities that we call into service of our mission to be the light of the world.
Some of the disciples are easily linked with corresponding powers. For example, Simon Peter is widely associated with faith, as is John with love. Read for yourself Fillmore's groundbreaking book The Twelve Powers, first published by Unity as The Twelve Powers of Man in 1930, to learn more about Fillmore's association of each disciple with a particular spiritual ability.
My approach in the following chapters is not to repeat or report on the classic Unity teachings about the Twelve Powers, for I cannot improve upon them. Instead, my desire is to profile each power, describe some of its aspects, illustrate ways it can be expressed, and suggest practices to develop it as a useful spiritual power in daily living. Each power, or spiritual ability, is significant by itself, but, as is true for personality profiles such as the classic Myers-Briggs assessment, one attribute by itself does not define us. In fact, all our spiritual abilities are shades of the One Mind, and all of our spiritual abilities share these characteristics.
The source of all power is GOD. GOD is not a personality that gives us power but is the actual power itself. For example, GOD is not a personality that gives us love. GOD is love! GOD is the principle. One with GOD, we are the principle also, but with our capacity to act in the world we are expressers of the principle. Therefore, we can say about love: GOD is love. I love, loving.
God does not love anybody or anything. God is the love in everybody and everything. God is love; man becomes loving by permitting that which God is to find expression in word and act (Charles Fillmore, Jesus Christ Heals, 27).
Likewise, GOD is faith, understanding, will, imagination, zeal, power, wisdom, strength, order, release, and life. GOD is faith. I AM faith, being faithful. And so on.
All of our spiritual powers or abilities are inherent. Arising from the Source, we come fully loaded with every ability. Our abilities are native to us, not acquired, never subject to depletion, always existent.
Our spiritual abilities are invisible, vibratory, nonphysical energies that can be stimulated and sensed. Our physical body resonates with these energies. Similar to the chakras, seven energy centers recognized in Eastern medicine and spirituality, the twelve spiritual abilities I will describe can be stimulated by concentrating attention on their vibratory representations within our physical body. To locate each power's center, refer to the diagram on page 36 and to the meditations corresponding with each power.
Although our spiritual abilities are natural to us, they exist in potential until they are recognized, activated, and developed. From childhood forward, we have developed these abilities in their physical expressions. We have learned, for example, how to express wisdom as sound judgment when making decisions and how to express harmonizing love in our relationships.
Every one of our spiritual abilities has deeper and broader means of expression that, when developed under the direction of our Infinite Self or Divine Identity, produce potent effects in our lives, in our communities, and in the world. The Infinite Self, or the Christ—says Fillmore—must take the lead, rather than the personal self, often named the ego self. The personal self has only a short range of vision serving itself, whereas the Infinite Self is oneness knowing only oneness; therefore its action is for universal good.
The expression of each of our spiritual abilities is based upon the intelligence behind it. By itself, each ability is neutral; it can be called into service for help or for harm, to bless or to curse. Love, for example, can be expressed as obsession when I perceive myself to be an only-human blinded by passion, believing that a person—precisely this person—must be the antidote to my loneliness. In the same condition, loneliness, I can express the harmonizing power of love within myself to neutralize loneliness and display the love I AM by kind self-thought and acts of loving service that connect me with others.
The personal self is biologically oriented toward surviving. This does not make the personal self wrong or inferior. It makes the personal self limited in its scope of awareness. The personal self subscribes to worthy values such as intimacy—to love and be loved; physical, material, and financial well-being; and safety. The personal self is also capable of caring about the survival of others above or besides itself, as when a parent sacrifices his own ambitions for the sustenance of his family or joins a rescue team after a destructive hurricane.
The personal self longs to know itself as eternal and infinite. The personal self longs to pierce the border beyond which it senses its rightful domain referred to as the kingdom of the heavens or the field of oneness. The personal self longs for greatness. We look up to the inspirers in our world who shine light on our greatest capabilities. We are inspired by reminders to express love as harmonizing compassion not only to victims of crime but to the perpetrators as well, seeking to understand the suffering that prompts a person to violence. Inspirers are the prophets among us who, like Jesus and leaders in recent history—Gandhi, Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama, Mandela—teach through their example how to express our abilities most nobly and to the good of all. To pay homage to these masters, however, is hollow unless we adopt their practice of seeking to express most nobly, most spiritually, our great abilities.
Our spiritual abilities, then, need training.
When man is developing out of mere personal consciousness into spiritual consciousness, he begins to train deeper and larger powers; he sends his thought down into the inner centers of his organism, and through his word quickens them to life. Where before his powers have worked in the personal, now they begin to expand and work in the universal (Fillmore, The Twelve Powers of Man, 1).
Fillmore referred to this training as the work of regeneration, or transformation:
Spiritual transformation of our love ability, for example . . . broadens, strengthens, and deepens it. We no longer confine love to family, friends, and personal relations, but expand it to include all things (Fillmore, Christian Healing, 131).
Regeneration or transformation occurs as we seek to understand universal truth, which comes through study, prayer/meditation, and reliance upon the Infinite Self for revelation of truth.
Anita Moorjani, in her book Dying to Be Me, revealed truths she discovered through cancer and a near-death experience:
The entire universe is alive and infused with consciousness, encompassing all of life and nature. Everything belongs to an infinite Whole. I was intricately, inseparably enmeshed with all of life. We're all facets of that unity—we're all One, and each of us has an effect on the collective Whole (Moorjani, Dying to Be Me, 70).
Anita experienced a further awareness during her near-death experience: that we are not sometimes human and other times spiritual but in fact are always spiritual. Sometimes we are aware of our spiritual nature, other times not.
Consciousness is awareness. It is awareness based as much on memory and unconsciously stored impressions as it is on experience in the moment. Consciousness is a worldview formed from our inner responses to all we have heard and seen, learned and practiced, lived and dreamed.
A common expression, “We are spiritual beings having a human experience,” points to the truth of our eternal spiritual nature while explaining why we do not always recognize our true nature. In any moment, our awareness is of either our human/personal or our divine/spiritual identity, of our temporal or eternal nature, as a finite being or Infinite Self. Our awareness or consciousness is pivotal.
We can turn to the world around us or to the world within, where we access boundless power beyond the only-human capacity. We can be fed by our circumstances or by the Infinite Self. We have a choice, but when we view ourselves as only-human, it hardly seems a choice. In only-human consciousness, we do not have eyes to see the world within. This is why consciousness development is necessary: so that we know, first intellectually and then wholeheartedly, the reality of the Infinite Self. The finite or personal self, sometimes named the ego self, exists within the Infinite Self—there is no separation and no other. In times of earnest need, during peak experiences, as a fruit of sincere study, or unbidden, we may penetrate the perceived border of our personal self and glimpse the Infinite Self. How do we recognize the Infinite Self?
We recognize the Infinite Self by its effects: our inner peacefulness, joyfulness, and well-being; our broader perspective of oneness existing beyond time and space; and giving of ourselves fully into life. We cultivate healthy, satisfying, and supportive relationships. Our service to others empowers them to recognize their own spiritual capacities. We deeply feel all of our human emotions without harboring any of them. We revel in the activity of today on the road to tomorrow. We treasure people who come into our lives and we lovingly release them when they depart. Our presence blesses others.
The personal self cares about itself. It cares about winning, about saving face, about getting ahead. The Infinite Self cares about none of this. The Infinite Self pours out its powers over all, like the rain that drenches everything in its path. Love unites. Life animates. Strength holds to the truth. Power acts with authority. Release eases. Imagination conceives.
At the June 2012 Ohio State Division III girls meet, high school distance runner Meghan Vogel observed opponent Arden McMath collapse twenty meters from the finish line. Meghan could easily have run past Arden, but she stopped, helped her to her feet, carried her toward the finish line, and placed herself behind Arden so that Arden finished first.
Another day in June 2012, Delroy Simmonds was waiting for the subway, on his way to a job interview, when he watched a gust of wind toss a baby in her stroller over the edge of the platform and onto the tracks. Without thinking, Delroy jumped down to the tracks and lifted the injured baby up to her mother followed by the stroller. An approaching train honked and came to a screeching halt just seconds before he climbed to safety. Delroy missed his job interview, but another employer who learned of his heroism offered him a position.
Arden McMath and Delroy Simmonds audaciously displayed their Divine Identity at times when they could have been all about themselves. Both of them said later what everyone says when rising above the interests of the personal self: It was the only thing to do.
When others are in need, when challenged by disease, when medical bills have drained the bank account, when your lover leaves—when times are tough, there is no better time to pivot in the direction of the Infinite Self. We can stand in the midst of human circumstances undaunted by them; putting on the mantle of divinity, so to speak, as we are willing to disregard frightening or troubling appearances—illness, death, lack, loneliness. We long to rise above our circumstances, pluck the jewel out of the muck, make something better out of the bad, and transform trouble into a blessing. The drive to be greater than human thoughts, feelings, and experiences is natural to us, because we are divine.
Whenever we feel tension between where we are and where we want to be, we are on the threshold of the Infinite Self. Whenever we feel torn between extending mercy and teaching someone a lesson, whenever we feel eager for change and yet daunted by the idea of it, whenever we feel angry toward another person while sensing our part in the drama, let this tension be our signal to choose a response from the Infinite Self.
Activating our spiritual abilities is a choice. Making the choice, then, how do we get equipped for expressing these abilities in a spiritual way? We be. We get into being through practices that foster beingness, such as meditation, journal writing, yoga, prayer partnership—any practices that call us out of human doing into our natural state of being: “Be still, and know that I AM God” (Psalm 46:10).
The effort required to pivot in the direction of the Infinite Self is, paradoxically, non-effort or effortless effort—a clue to which exists within the common label for our species: human being. An only-human consciousness is focused on doing rather than being. Being is the spiritualized state of awareness in which we realize our Divine Identity. Whenever I shift attention from my personal self toward the Infinite Self that is GOD, which is the real Self, I become what GOD is. I turn within to be love, strength, wisdom, life, and all spiritual capacities.
Another practice to activate spiritual abilities is affirmation. In the words of Charles Fillmore,
We grow to be like that which we idealize. Affirming or naming a mighty spiritual principle identifies the mind with that principle; then all that the principle stands for in the realm of ideas is poured out upon the one who affirms (The Twelve Powers of Man, 38).
In the meditation sections in the following pages, you will find affirmations applicable to each of our twelve spiritual abilities. Affirmations are also addressed in How to Pray Without Talking to God, chapter 4. Here are some examples. Implant these truths in your awareness when you are most receptive, such as during prayer, after meditation, or upon awakening in the morning:
I am naturally joyous, for my true nature is divine joy.
I am naturally loving, for my true nature is divine love.
I am naturally generous, for my true nature is divine abundance.
I tell myself the great truth: I am divine.
God is love. I AM divine love, loving.
God is faith. I AM divine faith, faithful.
God is release. I AM divine release, releasing.
God is will. I AM divine will, willing.
As you read about each of the twelve spiritual abilities in the following pages, may you discover the light of these powers within you, for they are varying views of your one true Divine Identity.
Physical centers of light corresponding to the twelve powers