Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
A PRESENCE TO WATCH OVER ME One night just before I was born, my mother had a vision. She woke up to a brilliant light at the foot of her bed. It was a tall, pulsating column of white fire. "That's the Presence of God," she said to herself. It filled her with a feeling of calm and comfort. She knew that it would see her safely through the birth and watch over her child. That Presence of God, sometimes called the Higher Self, did keep watch over me, through major and minor childhood mishaps and serious adult challenges. And it has also been my unfailing source of love, guidance, inspiration and limitless spiritual energy. I never know when my Higher Self is going to step in and make a difference in my life. For example, one fine spring day when I was at Boston University, I was hurrying out the door of my dorm when I heard an inner voice say, "Put on your heavy winter coat." I knew which coat. It was thick and lined with fake alpaca fur. I thought to myself, "OK, this is the craziest thing I've ever heard of, but I'll put it on." But my Higher Self wasn't satisfied. "Put on your heavy gloves," said the voice. "This is not for real," I said to myself. "I'll put on the coat, but I am not going to put on these heavy gloves. It's just too hot!" So I put on the coat and ran down the street, nearly late for my class. I crossed a street between some cars that were stopped at a light--and bam! A bicycle came speeding alongside one of the cars and ran right into me. It knocked me to the ground and I caught myself on my unprotected hands. I landed in a jumble, with my body insulated by the coat but my hands scraped up. My Higher Self had saved me from serious injury, but it couldn't save me from my own stubbornness. The lesson I learned that day is that being in touch with my Higher Self is more valuable than anything else in my life. The idea that each of us has a personalized Presence of God with us, is not new. Throughout history people have seen the Presence of God. They describe it as light, power and glory. It is the star that the wise men saw as they searched for the child Jesus. It is the pillar of fire that guided the children of Israel through the desert and the glory of God that appeared to Moses, the prophets and the Jewish mystics. It is the Body of Truth that Buddhists call the "ultimate dimension." The Tibetan Book of the Dead tells us that this Body of Truth appears to people after death as a "vast mass of light." It is also an important part of Western spirituality. My mother had learned about it from the writings of Guy W. Ballard, whose "I AM" Discourses she kept on her nightstand. He writes of the I AM Presence as the source of all power, knowledge and love. My mother had also read the works of Helena Blavatsky, who founded the Theosophical Society in the nineteenth century. Blavatsky describes a "Spiritual-Divine Monad" as the source of life substance. Ralph Waldo Emerson writes of the "Over-Soul" as the principle that gives life to our bodies. He calls it a light that "shines through us upon things," the source of genius, virtue, love, "all wisdom and all good." When you feel at one with this Presence, you feel at one with all of life. The American mystic Howard Thurman wrote that at times he felt at one with a "presence" when he was fishing in a rowboat on the river near his home in Florida. "There were times when it seemed as if the earth and the river and the sky and I were one beat of the same pulse....There would come a moment when beyond the single pulse beat there was a sense of Presence which seemed always to speak to me....[Yet] there was no voice. There was no image. There was no vision. There was God." In the following pages, you will read about specific techniques to bring you into a state of oneness with that Presence, your I AM Presence. This is a state of knowing, of belonging, of remembering. You can use these techniques no matter what your religious background or practice. When you are in tune with the Presence, you will draw to yourself everything you need--from food and clothing to new friends and brilliant ideas. Even better, you will learn to enter that state of oneness at will and experience the joy, peace and empowerment that are your birthright as a son or daughter of God.
Elizabeth Clare Prophet
