The Answer to Everything

by Walter Starcke

When I agree to speak at a retreat or convention they inevitably ask me what the title of my talk will be. Because I want the message to draw forth from the consciousness of those present at the time I don’t know what title to suggest. If I decide in advance what I am going to say it would be a mental decision, and as I want what I say to come from Spirit, I usually give some ambiguous title so that I can say anything I want when the time comes. However, recently when a month ahead of time I was asked what my title would be at a conference I was to speak at, in frustration I heard myself say that it would be THE ANSWER TO EVERYTHING.
Since offering that title I now know that it came from divine guidance, because that title caused me to realize that my whole life’s search has brought me to a single answer for the root cause of all my past dilemmas and one that is also the basis of all the world’s problems as well.
After sixty years of trying to put the puzzle together, I had not fully realized the importance of this tiny last piece because it is so obvious. If you want to hide something, put it right out in front of everyone’s eyes and they will miss it by looking in the far reaches of their minds for something complicated. We have missed the key that turns the lock and opens the door to physical, mental, and spiritual freedom because of its sheer simplicity. Obviously, we haven’t read the small print in Jesus’ teaching or realized its importance, because that answer is clearly stated there.
The answer to everything lies in the order we choose for our priorities. Every problem takes place because we have confused our priorities - and the solution to every problem lies in our ability to reverse our priority when results are unsatisfactory. Jesus gave us the priority. He said, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God,” which in modern language is to say, “Seek ye first the subjective nature, cause, and solution.” He also repeated that commission by saying, “The first and great commandment is to love God (subjective consciousness), and the second is to love our neighbor as our selves” (objective appearances).
That priority is all important because, as our quantum physicists tell us and as Mary Baker Eddy announced a hundred years ago, the subjective creates, qualifies, and quantifies the objective. The invisibles such as love, forgiveness, compassion, consideration, and caring are subjective. Recognizable appearances are objective. We avoid problems if we first seek the subjective nature of what we wish to achieve before we even start trying to objectify it. In reverse, we can solve our already created problems by taking the time to discern the subjective nature of what has taken place and then letting that awareness tell us how to reverse past confusion so that we can create the future as we would like it to be. The answer to every problem lies in first becoming aware of the subjective reality, symbolized by appearances, and then modeling or objectifying our actions in a way that reflects our subjective vision.
Look at any problem you (and I) may have and you will see that the material appearances and your subjective intent have not matched. When your subjective attitude or Spirit is negative or lacking in conviction, the objective results will reflect your confusion. When you are clear about the cooperative, loving, spiritual, or positive way you intend to go about achieving your ends, the ends will be as you have desired. When the end is more important than how you go about getting it, you will have reversed Jesus’ priority and the results will most likely not be to your liking.
Unfortunately, most people and most governments look at the result before cause and work backwards from it. When governments seek to end terrorism by doing what the terrorists do, they fail. If they believe that dropping bombs (objects) will produce harmonious (subjective) results, they have the cart before the horse. If, on the other hand, they had started with subjective intent, such as the spirit inherent in feeding the poor, educating the young, and healing the sick, they would have erased the cause of terrorism, because they would have eliminated what makes people terrorists to begin with, and there wouldn’t be any terrorists.
At the individual level of our day-to-day lives that same principle exists. If we seek first the loving thing to do and listen with that intent, the objective way to achieve it will become obvious. Any problem we have, perhaps innocently, comes about because somehow we let results become more important than cause. As we used to hear, we run afoul when we let the ends become more important than the means.
The reason we have unwittingly reversed our priorities stems from a confusion over what is spiritual and what is not. We have thought that because they were not the same, the spiritual and the material are antagonistic toward each other. Instead of finding out how they complement and reflect each other, we have tried to make them be the same. We have confused sameness with virtue. Life is multi-dimensional, and failure is experienced when we attempt to see one dimension in terms of another or make one more important than the other.
When Paul said that “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolish unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned,” he voiced a half-truth and didn’t add the other half to make it a whole one. Because he didn’t add its complement, his statement implies a judgment of the natural man and therefore of nature itself.}
To make his statement a whole truth, Paul should have added, “By the same token, the spiritual man knoweth not about the things of the world of effect and neither can he because they are materially discerned.” The spiritual universe is one dimension and the material is another. Actually, they are different perspectives of one reality just as the wave and the particle are both different and the same.
If Paul had said that we cannot know the visible in terms of the invisible or the invisible in terms of the visible it might have been easier to understand and experience, then we wouldn’t have tortured ourselves with the impossible task of trying to make them appear the same.
Joel Goldsmith’s first words in The Infinite Way reconcile the two halves, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… And the Word was made flesh… but it still is the Word. By being made flesh it does not change its nature, character, or substance. Cause becomes visible as effect.” They are two different dimensions of one reality.
Half-truths were taught in much of the Orient as well as in the Occident. Because they did not know how to reconcile the invisible with the visible, they claimed that the world of Maya - this world - is illusion. In attempting to eliminate the illusion rather than understanding its true nature, they have rejected humanity and all that goes with it as though it would cease to exist when one is enlightened. In the East they honored the spiritual and tried to dismiss the material. In the West we reversed the process by honoring the material and trying to make it spiritual. Neither accepted the fact that the spiritual and the material were different dimensions of the One, and that the answer to our dilemmas lies in priority, not difference.
To put it another way, we in the West tend to look at everything objectively, and mistakenly try to make appearances conform to some kind of self-created spiritual standard. Instead of understanding that the spiritual and the material are two different dimensions, we believe we can force appearances to be something they can’t be. That theological confusion results in our lying to ourselves. We say we believe that God is omnipresent (everywhere) and omnipotent (the only power) but not “as” or “where” some appearances are concerned. As a result, guilt triumphs over rationality.
We can’t think two things at once, so we are either looking at what is taking place subjectively in terms of its psychological or spiritual meaning or we are looking at things objectively in terms of their material appearance. Absolutely every thought we think falls into one or the other of those two categories. We either contemplate impersonal subjective idea, such as love and beauty, or we look at appearances objectively in terms of the people we love or hate, or of objects that are beautiful or grotesque. Fully conscious people, however, have the ability to hold one approach in suspension while they think of the other, and then add the two together in the right priority, thus creating a full understanding. But when we try to transpose one on to the other we end up in confusion and failure.
Both the subjective and the objective approaches are equally valuable, and we can arrive at the truth by starting with the subjective and discerning what its objective result will be, or by starting with the objective and discovering its subjective cause.

Prayer

The priority of choosing subjective values followed by objective action affects prayer as well. Most people’s prayers fail. They are not successful because there is a fundamental flaw in the process. When people pray in order to achieve objective results rather than subjective values, they, too, have reversed the priority; their prayers are objective. They want some “thing” to take place. Once more they are putting the cart before the horse. If the purpose is to achieve material results the subjective nature of prayer is considered to be secondary. As the result of using prayer objectively, most people achieve exactly the opposite of what they hope will take place. By envisioning a need to change the objective material scene, they accept the unwanted condition as a reality, and instead of healing it they create a self-fulfilling prophecy that encourages its continuance. On the other hand, if in praying one’s goal is to have a subjective experience, one’s prayer will objectify itself in the form of whatever is needed. If one starts prayer by outlining a desired material result, he perpetuates the belief in lack.
For instance, if at a time of need one prays for a specific amount of money he is being objective. If, instead, one prays for the subjective experience of abundance and fulfillment, that experience will objectify as whatever is needed. Health, harmony, and loving relationships are subjective, and if our prayers are primarily to experience those qualities they will, in turn, manifest objectively as such.
The reason subjective prayer is the only prayer that works is because all else is a waste of time and a distraction. It is useless to pray for a specific form of health. You are health. It is exhaustive to pray for a specific amount of supply. You are supply. It is discouraging to pray for better relationships. You are love. In other words, the one thing to pray for is that the blinders be removed from our spiritual eyes so that we can see who we are – the presence of God.
By the same token, you can tell how people see themselves by the way they pray. If they see themselves as bodies, as objects, they pray to a God that is personal and other than themselves. If they see themselves subjectively as the I AM, as higher consciousness, they are praying aright, and actually praying to their own subjective divine consciousness. }
There, too, it is a matter of priority. On one hand, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” When he did he was seeing his subjective identity as consciousness or Spirit, the consciousness that goes before us to manifest its reflection as our lives. Because that was his top priority his message lives on today. On the other hand, when he was talking about himself objectively he said, “I of my own self can do nothing.” Because his I AM self was predominant his “nothing” self reflected his subjective perfection.
We have a choice. We can constantly set our priority, and view every situation, every need, every other person, primarily in terms of their subjective reality and consciousness, and secondarily as the objective, or we can approach life objectively while primarily looking at life at its surface value.
When we deal with others we can immediately discern what their priorities are. And when we see that another person views life primarily objectively we can understand why they make the decisions they do and why they treat others the way they do. As spirit led beings, we are never dealing with objective person, place, or situation, but rather with our own reaction to it, we can pause long enough to get our own priorities in order, and we will be amazed how our problems dissolve. The key to forgiveness lies in the ability to understand that those who judge or abuse us do so because they, out of ignorance, have at that moment reversed Jesus’ priorities and are viewing life objectively, not subjectively.

The Last Days of the Prodigal

“And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it… and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more” (Isaiah 2;2).
Subjectively - When we become fully conscious we will have let go of the filters, the high point of subjective divine consciousness will be at the top of our awareness, and all people will be drawn into that consciousness. When that happens we will direct the technology that we have put into war machines into making the world a paradise, and there will be no more war and no more teaching the primacy of an objective approach.
The story of the prodigal son is about learning the lesson of subjective values and of priorities.
The prodigal son is that part of us that values material things over spiritual or subjective ones. He looks at life objectively and believes that already created things can bring happiness and satisfaction. He tries everything and every indulgence, and eventually he ends up banqueting with the pigs, the swine. Pigs are gluttonous. They eat everything that is put before them and end up fat and ugly. Finally, the prodigal is broke, broken of spirit and substance. He has used up all his energy and spirit and begins to realize that the priority of putting material values first doesn’t work. Then he begins to wake up and starts his journey back to subjective values.
Even when the prodigal is a long way from fully understanding the value of the subjective approach, his creative self comes out to meet him. What’s more, his father/self kills the fatted calf, showing that material things can be enjoyed even if they are secondary, and their subjective reality appreciated.
The other son, who never went out and never indulged in physical pleasures, is jealous. He is the failure, because he isn’t conscious of subjective values. Because he doesn’t appreciate what it means to live subjectively he is inconsistent, and he judges his brother objectively. He doesn’t really know how to love.
There are two kinds of love - subjective love and objective love - and we often confuse the two. . For instance, we look at a beautiful flower and say we love it. When we do, we are most likely loving it objectively. On the other hand, subjective love is to love beauty itself. That means to look at the flower and love the beauty that is expressing itself as the flower.
To express love holistically we have to love both subjectively and objectively, not either/or. We love a thing primarily because of what it symbolizes eternally, not just because of its temporary form. If a person loves another person or thing objectively, then when that person or thing ceases to exist they have no love, but if one loves subjectively then when a loved object or person is no longer present love will appear as another.

Balance

At the third-dimensional level of personal sense there are no absolutes; so the best we can do is try to achieve a sense of balance. It is obvious to say that we must obtain balance or live a balanced life between the subjective and objective, but that is impossible to achieve without constant imbalance. A tight rope walker can’t stand balanced on a high wire without constant movement. He leans to one side, and then in order to achieve balance he has to reverse the movement and lean to the other side. In doing so, he crosses over the mid-point and is immediately out of balance once more.
As humans we deal with the objective world of personal needs. We eat, we drink, and our hearts constantly beat. To have a balanced life we also encompass subjective reality. We have to reconcile both realities or we die. To be a master we master the rhythm of the swing so that it is not too erratic. We can’t live exclusively one way or the other but we can anticipate the danger of going too far one way or the other. In doing so, we can average the balance and keep our priorities straight.
Religions talk about subjective values but followers often crucify the human and ignore the value of the individual or objective. On the other hand, those who do not value the subjective nature of all life judge solely by appearances and are out of balance.
The divine paradox is that stress is also God’s presence. It is a signal telling us to reverse our attention. Though the subjective nature of life is our Number One priority, if we try to be so spiritual that we ignore human feelings and needs, even political ones, we are out of balance. When we feel spiritually stressed it may be telling us to apply our subjective values to the objective side of life and once more average a balanced life. We cannot walk the razor’s edge, but we can average it. That is how we can be in the world but not of it.