Key Five, The Principle of Glory
2021 Gathering, Part Twenty-Two
JJ: Key number five is the Principle of Glory. We presented this one of the gatherings. Does anyone remember how the Principle of Glory goes.
Curtis: Yeah, I acknowledge you, and the people that send to me and the people I send to .
JJ: Right, the greatest example, of the principle of glory was from the time of Moses. Does anyone remember why Moses was prohibited from entering the promised land.
Curtis: He took credit for the miracle of striking the rock that produced the water.
JJ: Right, Moses did just about everything God wanted. God told Moses to do stuff, and he went and did it, and couple times he was reluctant. He was told to go before the pharaoh, and he tried to worm out of it. He said, Well, I’m not a very good speaker. I won’t be able to make a good case.
And God told him, “Well then, we’ll send your brother Aaron along. He can be your spokesman because he’s a pretty good speaker. So apparently Moses wasn’t really a great speaker and but that wasn’t enough to get God mad at him. He did not want to go speak to the pharaoh, but he still did it reluctantly, along with his brother Aaron, as his spokesman.
And it seemed like Moses did pretty good. He gave speeches later on that seemed to be okay. But it’s possible Moses was just kind of dragging his feet. Whatever he did, he didn’t seem to do anything that bothered God.
He even one time argued with God. God said to Moses, how angry he was with the people, you know, for building the golden calf and everything. He said he was going to destroy them and then raise up a new seed through Moses. And Moses said, “no, you’re not going to do that, God.” Moses said, “because I’m not going to cooperate. If you if you destroy everybody but me and want to raise up a new seed through me and I don’t cooperate, you’ll be a liar. And you cannot lie. Therefore, I’m not cooperating.”
And even then, even when arguing with God . . . and he actually won the argument with God. God said, “Well, I guess I can’t put myself in a position where I’m a liar. So here’s what we’ll do, Moses. I’ll let the people live. But we’re going to we’re going to punish them by making them wander through the wilderness till they all die off.
And then after they die off, we’re going to take a rising generation. And with the rising generation, then we’re going to enter the promised land. So, you know, I’m not going to kill the people off immediately the way that I was thinking but they’re going to die within a 40-year time period and be replaced.
And over the 40-year time period, they all died off except for Moses, Aaron, and Joshua. I think they were the only ones that survived the 40 years.
And then they had a fresh generation that they could implant new ideas in. So even with Moses arguing with God and disagreeing with him, and even refusing to cooperate, it didn’t seem to make God angry. But then he did a little thing that seemed like a small thing that didn’t seem like a big deal.
Matter of fact, a lot of scholars wonder, well, how come God prevented Moses from entering the promised land over this small infraction that he made? And some scholars figure, well, maybe, maybe it wasn’t that Moses did anything so bad, but maybe it was just the fact that God just didn’t want Moses to enter the promised Land, but wanted to start fresh with the new leader, and he translated Moses and took him to himself or something.
Some then think that maybe it was just an excuse God had. But no, it all centered around the principle of glory. They were without water, and they were all complaining to Moses that they were thirsty. So Moses takes his rod and he says, “okay, I’ll get you some water.” And so he strikes a rock and water comes forth, and then Moses goes up to visit God, and God says to him, “Moses, why did you not give me glory with the water? Why did you take the glory unto yourself when you used my power?”
Moses replied, “well I just wasn’t thinking, I guess.” God says for this . . . He says, “You need to always give glory to God for anything that comes from God. Therefore,” he says, “you will be prohibited from entering the promised land.”
Now, why did God say that? Why was the principle of glory so important that just a moment, a moment of maybe Moses not thinking and not giving glory to God so annoying to God? Maybe annoyed is the wrong word since He’s beyond annoyance, but Moses broke the principle to the degree that he could not enter the promised land.
Darren: Could it be that taking going or credit for something is just showing separateness from God and the duality instead of being one with God and saying God, “this was through you.”
Curtis: Broke the link.
JJ: Yeah, all that’s all true.
JJ: It’s also a form of dishonesty. And the thing that separates us from God more than anything else is dishonesty. And that’s the worst kind of dishonesty because it’s the dishonesty where you take glory for something else.
In fact, there’s a lot of books written around the breaking of the principle of glory. I remember I saw this movie a while back . . . I can’t remember who starred in it . . . but this guy found this manuscript written by another author, and he claimed authorship when he submitted it to his agent. He was a struggling author himself. And boy, this was really a great story. He submitted it under his own name and became world famous. Then he felt really bad about that, but he didn’t feel bad enough to tell the truth.
And then he eventually met the author at the end . . . I can’t remember how it ended, but they kind of reconciled with each other.
But then there are other similar stories where the original author wanted revenge, which is usually the case.
But yeah, there’s nothing worse than a person putting a lot of effort into his own creation and then having someone else claim credit for it. And this does often happen.
Curtis: You know, we wrote those twelve principles and then that guy took them and put them in his book, Magnus Carter, or whatever it was.
JJ: Yeah, as well as my parable on the three blind men . . . we we’ve had that happen before.
People tend to take glory unto themselves. This is what the ego does. The ego takes glory to itself. It always seeks its own glory instead of someone else’s. But what is interesting about the principle of glory is that you cannot glorify yourself, and even Jesus realized this. He would always give the glory to God.
And He said, “Of myself, I can do nothing.” Boy, that’s a quite a statement to make, especially for somebody like Jesus, who seemed to have all power on heaven and earth, so to speak. “Of myself, I can do nothing.” You know, I’ve tried to say that to myself sometimes, and it’s a hard thing to say. Think of that.
How about you, Phil? Can you say that to yourself? “Of myself, I can do nothing.” It feels weird to say that doesn’t it?
Phillip: It does.
JJ: Yeah. Because you like to think, “Hey, I’ve got lots of power and I got authority. I can do this, and I can do that. But to say “of myself, I can do nothing” is the ultimate humility.
But Jesus said that several times. “Of myself, I can do nothing.” With God, you can do everything. And that’s why he had so much power, is he saw him as merely an agent and somebody that God was working through rather than someone special. He didn’t see himself as being special. “Of myself, I can do nothing.
That is a powerful statement, and I’ve been playing around with that lately, and to be honest, it’s very hard to honestly say it to yourself. I don’t like feeling that I am nothing, you know, and none of us do. All of us have powerful egos, and the ego wants as much recognition as it can get. We have what is called the lower mind and the higher mind.
The lower mind is the mind of the ego. And it wants as much glory and recognition and specialness as it can possibly get. The higher mind is linked to the soul and to God, and it realizes that of the ego it can do nothing. If the consciousness allows the lower mind to be in control, nothing can be accomplished that’s worth anything.
Anything that is worthwhile has to be accomplished through the higher, not the lower. Jesus gave the example of discounting the value of the lower and giving glory to the higher.
So people tend to want glory for themselves, and we tend to try to get glory for ourselves, saying, “hey, I’m really good at this.”
It reminds me that movie Good Morning, Vietnam. Robin Williams was a comic, and his nemesis also wanted to be a comic, but he wasn’t funny, and he was always criticizing Robin Williams. And then they were having an argument about humor, and the guy says to Robin Williams, “I am funny!” (laughter) You remember that?
The audience thought, boy, the guy wasn’t funny at all. He had no humorous talent at all, so declaring he was funny was the epitome of un-funniness. So I always like that example of somebody trying to glorify themself. It just did not work at all. He convinced nobody that he was funny. And humor is something that really has to be demonstrated. Nobody can say, Hey, everybody, I’m really a funny guy.
I mean, that will just not work. But if somebody else says it, for example, if I say that about Curtis, “boy, he when he’s on his game, he’s a really funny guy.” People will say, yeah, I mean, he probably is.
Michael: So Mother Theresa was once asked, what did you aspire to be? And she said, I aspire to be nothing.
JJ: Really. So she followed the example of Jesus there. Yeah, yeah. That’s a hard thing to filter through. So, you know, it’s like when you notice that every miracle that Jesus performed, he had no personal benefit from it. Then, in the wilderness, all the miracles that he was tempted to perform would give him personal benefit. And he resisted each one of them. And that was his temptation; personal benefit over the glory of God.
“If, thou art the Son of God, change these stones into bread; because you haven’t eaten for 40 days, Jesus, you must be hungry.” Okay. If he would’ve changed the stones into bread, even though he was fasting for 40 days, according to the scriptures, he would have changed them for his own benefit. If he would have jumped from that tower to prove he was the Son of God, to prove that the angels would protect him, to prove that he was a messiah, that would have been for his personal benefit.
Curtis: That was glamour.
JJ: If he would have taken the kingdoms of the world, to rule, according to his desire that would have been to fulfill his personal desire. What he resisted in the Temptations was he resisted to use this spiritual power for his benefit. And then he goes among mankind and says, “Of myself, I can do nothing.”
We could reword that and say, “for my benefit, I will do nothing.” That is another way of wording that. That’s a lot easier to say. “Of myself, I can do nothing” is hard for the ego to say.
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