Order

Order is the condition of logical or comprehensible arrangement among the separate elements of a group, a condition in which freedom from disorder or disruption is maintained through respect for established authority. Order is the proper arrangement or disposition of people or things in relation to each other according to a particular sequence, pattern, or method; a state in which everything is in its correct or appropriate place; a state in which the laws and rules regulating public behavior are observed and authority is obeyed.—Webster’s American Dictionary

“The universe is an embodiment of divine order.”—Edna Lister

The principle of order is closely aligned with the principle of number. For example, we have cardinal, ordinal and nominal numbers. Cardinal numbers tell you how many; we also call them counting numbers, because they show quantity—2, 12 or 20. Ordinal numbers tell the order of things in a set—first, second, third, etc. Ordinal numbers show rank or position. Nominal numbers name or identify something—a telephone number, for example.

Order is an absolute and an abstract principle, a law of being and of doing, and a virtue related to the principles of harmony and balance. The Mind of God orders all things. Every blade of grass, every flower is part of the universal plan, and takes its place correctly in divine order. To order your thinking, start with developing and perfecting your mental faculties of logic, reason, discernment discrimination, and discretion.

Edna Lister on Order

Visualize a completed plan, knowing that it is before you as you visualize it, then reproduce it. Have a complete outline of your plan in mind. You produce visions from the spiritual realms only. The vision will take on an objective form afterward, if you keep at it long enough, and that is reproduction of the memory.

Build no negative pictures, but see yourself doing what you want to do, going where you want to go. Firmly hold just one mental image at a time. Make your mind work in an orderly fashion. Flash a perfect picture on the screen again whenever you see an image you do not want.—Edna Lister, January 16, 1933.

Your obedience, ideals, and service help to establish and maintain law and order on earth.—Edna Lister, Law and Order, March 8, 1935.

Man has not taken the orderly steps necessary to bring forth his divine nature into the perfect manifestation.—Edna Lister, The Christian Home, December 22, 1935.

Disorder and limitations dissolve and disappear by control of the fourth breath, and deep breathing.—Edna Lister, Seven Breaths in One, March 28, 1936.

The cause of all lapses in memory is failure to ponder, analyze and fit what you observe into the facts of life as you know it. You call this, "I can’t remember." You must be orderly in your thinking and study so that your increasingly photographic memory will project whatever information you need into your conscious mind at once. Disorderly thinking and memorizing is why you are unable to recall what you want when you need it.

Poor memory is due to mental, emotional and physical laziness with many excuses to account for it: "I’m too busy. I’m too tired. I have too much to do. There aren’t enough hours in the day." It takes rigorous self-discipline to overcome such self-serving excuses.—Edna Lister, A Design for Ascension, 1941.

The universe is an embodiment of order and harmony, as distinguished from chaos.—Edna Lister, A Design for Ascension, 1941.

Keep your whole mental house in order and omit nothing. The subconscious will always induct from the outer, and your job is to analyze as you go. Charge it to do so, then go about your business of being fully aware and mentally conscious. In other words, know what you are doing so that what you do receives your full attention while you are doing it.

Leave the super-conscious free to dwell and create above. Charge yourself to be alive and alert while you occasionally look up mentally to observe what is happening. Keep track of all three levels as you go. You recall from the subconscious since it retains all experiences, conditions and situations. However, keep going to your high place, your room of Light, to recharge your batteries.—Edna Lister, June 30, 1944.

Put everything in its right place. Anything out of place creates disharmony under law. Keep all your departments of life in order so that you can find things in the dark. Thus, you can create harmony anywhere.—Edna Lister, June 28, 1945.

Law is the orderly procedure of the unfolding of God’s Mind to man.—Edna Lister, December 14, 1945.

It is an order to put everything in its right place, or you create disharmony under law. Every blade of grass, every flower is part of the universal plan, and takes its place correctly in divine order.—Edna Lister, June 13, 1947.

Dishes in the sink and out of order on the shelf, everything helter-skelter — all because you do not live up in consciousness where you belong. Everything is important to teach the self to hear and see spiritually. You see spiritually as clearly as you see last night’s unwashed dishes.—Edna Lister, June 16, 1947.

To God, everything is in order, no matter whether it looks so. The Legions straighten and mend lines from the fraying of disobedience, but patches remain patches.—Edna Lister, December 6, 1947.

You face physical disorder when you entertain doubts.—Edna Lister, July 30, 1951.

You are born with threefold consciousness — subconscious, conscious and super-conscious mind. When your subconscious is out of order, it is working against you; pounce on it. Subconscious, conscious and super-conscious must agree. This is the meaning of "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them."—Matthew 18:20.—Edna Lister, January 9, 1958.

By your careless actions you state that order is unimportant. There are reasons for everything. To ignore order sets a crooked vibration.—Edna Lister, September 17, 1958.

Under soul direction, you learn to submit to an orderly process of cleansing subconscious mind. After a cycle of lifting, the self begins to rotate into Light with soul in charge and Oversoul paramount.—Edna Lister, Being Without Self, November 2, 1958.

When you learn a lesson well, making notes of the greatest lessons learned so far is wise, how they have affected you personally, your family life, and relationship to God. To state in writing the good coming from each episode will clarify thinking, precisely order emotions, and organize what you know to use in what you will do. Taking time to organize your mind, heart, soul and body will pay you great dividends.—Edna Lister, March 26, 1959.

Each of the Seven Degrees of initiation is a challenge to come higher, to grow, to expand and give order to one’s life.—Edna Lister, Jesus’ Seven Last Words, June 7, 1959.

To discipline a wayward imagination, turn it upward as vision, and hold it to orderly alertness.—Edna Lister, August 27, 1959.

If you like order in your life, you obey the law of attention to details in your home, clothing and office, but may not force this on others.—Edna Lister, The 33 Degrees of Soul Conquering, October 27, 1959.

God as principle can think and plan as wisdom, but must order and control as personality.—Edna Lister, How Can I Help Myself? May 31, 1960.

The Mind of God orders all things.—Edna Lister, How Can I Help Myself? May 31, 1960.

Soul uses mind as its tool of expression. You work under three unmodified abstract laws of being — equilibrium, harmony and balance — to apply relative laws of doing. If you do not work under these three laws of being while using practical psychology, they remain unmodified into relative laws, unavailable for your use.

Equilibrium is "the state of equal balance among all parts of a complex unity." Harmony is the "combination or adaptation of parts, elements or related things, to form a consistent orderly whole, agreement, accord and congruity." Balance means "stability or steadiness due to the equilibrium prevailing among all forces of a situation, to bring or to maintain in equilibrium." High balance under the Emanations, then, is maintaining harmony and equilibrium.—Edna Lister, How Can I Help Myself? May 31, 1960.

It pays to study the virtue of order with the principles of duty, consolidation, application, reverence, transfiguration, protection, and humility.—Edna Lister, What Is Virtue? July 12, 1960.

Discernment is knowing how to do everything in order. Do the first thing first.—Edna Lister, September 14, 1961.

God works in an orderly way with no waste.—Edna Lister, February 1, 1962.

Under consolidation, a law of doing under order, you gather in all you have learned to better organize your life. You must organize what you have learned to conquer situations and limitations.—Edna Lister, Fourteen Stations of the Cross, April 17, 1962.

The soul is neither old nor young, but is timeless, spaceless, ageless, immortal. Soul operates by universal time, which is always now. In reality, only universal time exists. The linear time of years, months, days and hours keeps order in your limited conscious of the self, to regulate your relationships to others and the world. Working by the clock is good rigid discipline, but you must recognize that years do not apply to the soul.—Edna Lister, Power to Transform, December 4, 1962.

Disorder, delay and loss of time is like using a jeweler’s diamond polishing wheel on coarse steel.—Edna Lister, March 17, 1963.

You create disorder and delay when you complain that you have no space or time to create the order you need. Thus, you generate your own impotence, being unable to do what it takes to create perfect order. This is no excuse, for under law you must always keep order.—Edna Lister, March 24, 1963.

Rebellion and repudiation are under the surface when your thinking is disorderly.—Edna Lister, March 25, 1963.

A law of details: You get caught out in big ways if you don’t always attend to all details. Straighten your closets a little at a time, and put things in order where they belong. Each day, take five minutes to straighten one area. Think about doing it every day, and do something about it daily. Keep letters together in straightened piles, and touch them to send a blessing to the writers. When you do it often, you do it well. You can complete a thousand days of burnt offerings on attention to detail alone. You can ascend in a second, stand a second, and do it. Declare, "Lord, don’t let me miss a detail today."

Those who live in disorder are nearest to the animal stage, just one step from living in a cave. All you can do with another is to pray and broadcast the law: "You are living under the law of divine order." Put the messy one on a sheet of Light, and declare that he can see the disorder he creates. Declare, "You have no excuse for throwing things down, so put them in order." Brainwash him of laziness. Keep the broadcast going. Anyone can create order if he must. If the details are not in order, you fail your initiations.—Edna Lister, April 4, 1963.

Lend yourself to complete sacrifice of self, to rigid obedience in physical, emotional and mental training by keeping things squarely in order. You should be a mathematician and follow a formula of exactness in your home, with everything in its place.—Edna Lister, The Rebirth, June 9, 1963.

To keep your affairs in order, to think of them in order, to plan to have them in order is legitimate. It is not legal to whine because it cannot or does not happen faster.—Edna Lister, March 24, 1965.

Everything is outlined in divine order and all things are arranged, ready to become apparent at the right time. The answer will not be revealed before the right time, so questioning is out of order, illegal and delaying.—Edna Lister, November 26, 1965.

Order is heaven’s first law, even in housework, but don’t be rigid about it.—Edna Lister, Do You Always Wear Your Crown? December 11, 1966.

Order appreciates sequence.—Edna Lister, How to Make a Just Appraisal, May 14, 1968.

You must back your will with causality, order, and firmness.—Edna Lister, Idealization, Visualization and Realization, May 28, 1968.

You must have order to make room for a miracle.—Edna Lister, The Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes, December 13, 1970.

The law of order is "Do first things first, and the next thing next."—Edna Lister, Undated Papers, 1924-1971.

New Testament on Order

The very hairs of your head are all numbered.—Matthew 10:30.

Old Testament on Order

The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord.—Psalm 37:23.

Order my steps in Thy Word.—Psalm 119:133

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.—Ecclesiastes 3:1-8.