THE I THAT I AM

On the spiritual Path you will be tempted, not a hundred times, but a thousand times, to believe in a selfhood apart from the I that I am; you will be tempted to believe that you are that selfhood, or that your son or your daughter is a selfhood separate and apart from God. Each time it will be an effort to remember: I is God; I is infinite being: I is infinite individuality. Then when you have achieved that realization you can rest – but only for a few minutes, until the next temptation comes along. You will not solve all your problems by an intellectual agreement that I is God, that I is infinite, and therefore, that I is infinite wealth and infinite health. Ultimately, that truth will solve all your problems, but not until it has been rooted and grounded in your individual consciousness.
As inspiration pours through, as the light comes in, we are lifted into a realm beyond this world; it is almost like living in a dream. But it is not a dream; it is living in reality. However, the difficulty is that every once in a while we come down to earth – we come down to earth, either because our own body starts to make a noise, or someone else’s body or pocketbook does. Then it is that we become responsible for the re-establishment in our own thought of our true identity.
The secret of discord and the secret of harmony lie in understanding true identity. Regardless of how many books we may write about it, or how many different ways it is presented, the secret is: I is God, and not man. I is consciousness, and not body. I is life eternal: It was never born; It will never die. This truth must be established in your consciousness. Each time error hits up against your thought, in one form or another, it must be rejected with that ultimate realization: I is God consciousness. That I is infinite, eternal, and all-inclusive; It includes within Itself every idea of rightness. But remember, It contains no thought, no feeling, no trace of anything less than ultimate perfection; and remember, also, all that God is, I am. “I and my Father are one.”
Every time a call comes – not only a call from patient to practitioner, but a call of the world, a claim of the world, a belief of the world, whether in the newspaper, on the radio, through the air, or through friends – work until the I has been consciously established as the reality of your being; and therefore, you know that nothing is true of you save that which is true of I.
See what happens then in the handling of problems. Problems disappear, since I can have no problems. My consciousness, which is God consciousness, can have no problems, and this truth eliminates from belief everything unlike itself. This means that there is work for us to do, as well as moments of sitting on a cloud. We really have work to do in the training of our consciousness. And that entails something else.
All of us, as humans beings, have traits of character built up by our environment, education, and experience, which do not fit in with the I that I am; therefore, it becomes necessary to take ourselves in hand and learn to govern and control ourselves so that we bring all things into alignment with the I that I am. If by nature we are fearful and doubtful, if by nature we are envious or jealous, we should not try humanly to make ourselves over; we are not going to be psychologists and say, “I have this evil trait and I must replace it with this good trait.” I do not mean that. But I mean that in the constant realization of the I that I am we recognize what seem to be our human weaknesses and we permit those traits to disappear and fade out of the picture.
We do not substitute a good human quality for a bad one; but in the realization of the I that I am, we learn to let the erroneous human traits drop away. Do not make an effort to get rid of them; but let your effort be to live in the I that I am. That will take care of everything.

Joel Goldsmith

The Master Speaks, Ch 5