Relationship

Relationship is the state of being related by kindred, affinity or other alliance. A relation is the logical or natural association between two or more things; relevance of one to another; connection.—The Oxford English Dictionary

Relationship is most readily understood by considering from earth to the Source: First, man’s relationship to himself. The second relationship is man to man and understanding of other people. The third is most important: man’s relationship to God and God’s to man. Relationship is the keynote of the seventh lesser trinity of Via Christa Degrees, which includes Facts, Legend and Vision.

Edna Lister on Relationship

When one becomes a master of life, he no longer places family relationships at the center of his life. He does not, however, neglect those relationships.—Edna Lister, Beatitudes, January 29, 1933.

Orderly thinking involves seeking to find the relationship of all life through coordination of the will, common sense, good judgement, reason, imagination, and desires.—Edna Lister, Disciplining the Mind, October 28, 1934.

Law attempts to define the relation of elements to each other, their behavior in relation to each other. Law is not relationship; law governs relationship.—Edna Lister, Freedom, October 31, 1934.

"As a man thinks in his heart, so is he."—Proverbs 23:7 is given as a law, but is only a statement of present facts, a revelation of what you now are. It is the point where you become conscious of your fundamental relationship to the Source.—Edna Lister, Freedom, October 31, 1934.

Philosophy deals with relationships, for instance what God is and who man is, and our relationship to the divine, and to our fellow man.—Edna Lister, What Philosophy Deals With, September 3, 1935.

All knowledge consists in grasping the relationship of things and generalizing from them, from outer to inner by rationalizing. Knowledge is concerned with the general relationships of things, rather than with things themselves. The whole tendency of scientific thought is away from the unit to the universal. It may seem to deal with phenomena, but deals really with noumena, the thing-in-itself. The two are practically inseparable. By studying noumena through phenomena, we can know the relations and attributes of reality.—Edna Lister, Philosophy, September 16, 1935.

Relationship means what one thing or person has to do with another; the way in which one stands or is related to another, the kind of connection or correspondence or contrast of feeling that prevails between persons or things.—Edna Lister, Philosophy, September 23, 1935.

Causality is the principle of relationship between cause and effect, which establishes the permanence of Being. Eliminate identity, quality and permanence from thought and you have nothing left. Causality includes free will as self-determination, or the soul cause. As a free agent, you may start anything.—Edna Lister, Philosophy, January 27, 1936.

Always be constantly conscious of the fullness of your relationship to God.—Edna Lister, November 6, 1938.

We work under five phases of truth: Psychology, metaphysics, science, philosophy and mysticism. These five categories contain all phases of the relationship between man and God.—Edna Lister, Five Categories of Expression, Creative Principles, March 16, 1942.

Be long-sighted in relationships with others. The selfish one thinks of his relationship to God and man. When you think of others, then you think of doing for others; therefore, long-sightedness is doing to help others.—Edna Lister, January 8, 1948.

When you align your relationship with God, you can better align your relationships with others. No one is perfectly happy unless he has some conscious relationship with God as principle or personality.—Edna Lister, From Light to Form as a Creator: Seven Breaths, August 2, 1949.

The Sermon on the Mount covers every angle of human relationships.—Edna Lister, The First Days, June 17, 1951.

When you straighten out your relationship to God, principle, Mind, Power, and Substance, miracle after miracle comes.—Edna Lister, How to Relate Mind and Power, June 22, 1952.

Self-love only thinks of self and its relationships.—Edna Lister, The Living Chalice, December 7, 1952.

When you consider only God in your relationship with the situation or person, then you can handle any situation without using force.—Edna Lister, June 15, 1953.

The Ten Commandments are thirty steps of the Via Christa. At the physical level they refer to obeying the letter of the law, and cover your relationship with the world. The emotional-mental level deals with your relationships with yourself and others. The spiritual level relates to your relationship with heaven as a place and state of consciousness, and God as personality and principle. This is the total of your work, yet you cannot comprehend it unless you live on the spiritual level.—Edna Lister, Now Is the High Time, December 6, 1953.

Religion is the belief binding the spiritual nature to supernatural Being, involving a feeling of both "dependence upon" and "responsibility to." Religion is the scientific study of the principles and laws governing our relationship to God, the whole, and to man as the many parts.—Edna Lister, Religious Slavery or Freedom? November 27, 1955.

When you judge by your relationship to other people, not God, you grow selfish. You must learn to agree with God and adjust to people, to oil your squeaky relationships.—Edna Lister, Religious Slavery or Freedom? November 27, 1955.

You must put all you comprehend of God into action as understanding for your fellow man, or your relationship to life will be confused.—Edna Lister, Rose-Colored Glasses, April 22, 1956.

All your difficulties in life are traceable to your relationship with God and man through personality.—Edna Lister, Five Categories of Expression, November 19, 1957.

Contrition is deep grief which deals with reconciliation of your relationship to God and to others. It’s a long step before you can say, "I AM reconciled," and mean it. You learn law, make friends, submit to the disagreeable unavoidable facts and actions of others. In the "I’ll try" stage, you don’t like it, but submit. This is the first surrender of self to be possessed by the Power of God.—Edna Lister, Immortality Now, March 30, 1958.

All relationships come under the Degree of Priest.—Edna Lister, All Substance Is Universal, May 12, 1959.

Primary laws control and govern all soul unfoldment, all human relationships, behavior and expression.—Edna Lister, God as Personality and Principle, June 9, 1959.

The whole purpose of creation, of manifestation is for us to learn how to express as love in all relationships.—Edna Lister, I AM the Truth, October 11, 1959.

You must seek your relationship to the original pattern of the Via Christa and leave ignorance and selfishness behind.—Edna Lister, The 33 Degrees of Soul Conquering, October 27, 1959.

Reconciliation means to integrate, to make one, to bind as one, to find the relationship between God and man. You must reconcile your relationship to God and man to gain a common understanding.—Edna Lister, From Gethsemane to Ascension, May 15, 1960.

Every soul born to earth is given three phases of the one divine Mind for the purpose of expression, contact and relationship with the world. We know these three phases as the subconscious, the conscious, and the superconscious. This is all of the one God.—Edna Lister, What Is Healing? May 17, 1960.

Academic psychology deals with the absolute and abstract primary laws to find out man’s relationship to the Source. Practical psychology deals with the concrete and relative secondary laws governing substance to become visible and to find out about man’s relationship to man, and a perfect relationship between the parts of himself for coordination of soul and self.—Edna Lister, How Can I Help Myself? May 31, 1960.

Jesus teaches us about relationships. First is man’s relationship to himself. The second relationship is man to man and understanding other people. The third is more important, man’s relationship to God and God’s to man.—Edna Lister, Identity, Your Hope of Glory, April 29, 1962.

We have a Source, something greater than the world. Everyone must find his or her relationship with the Source, whether you call it God, the Father, Christ consciousness or Divine Mind. No stable relationship with the world or with people is possible without it. All else is confusion.—Edna Lister, Triumphant You, September 29, 1962.

You must use your great creative tools — desire, thinking and imagination — under law if God’s Mind, Substance, and Power are to use you. To use your creative tools wisely, you must balance all your relationships, and there are so many: First is your relationship with God. Second is your relationship with others, and third is your relationship with yourself. All divine revelations and illuminations deal with knowing: First the nature of God, second, the nature of humanity and third, the nature of your relationship with God and others.—Edna Lister, Healing by Principle, September 30, 1962.

When you understand your relationship to God, you understand your relationship to humanity.—Edna Lister, The Word, Your Magic Wand, April 12, 1964.

Jesus taught us to give up possession and blame in our relationships.—Edna Lister, The Sword, Your Flaming Scepter of Power, April 19, 1964.

The Beatitudes explain our relationship to the world. The Commandments explain our relationship to God.—Edna Lister, The Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes, April 21, 1964.

When you break law, you throw every phase of relationship to God and man into disharmony.—Edna Lister, The Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes, April 21, 1964.

Your relationship to things is on a level below you. Your relationship to people is on a level with you, but your relationship to God is on a level above you. Your identity is your relationship with God.—Edna Lister, Comprehension and Recompense, November 7, 1965.

All misunderstandings come from a lack of understanding degrees of relationship. Different religions, even different sects, each give a part of the whole. Everything is good after its degree and kind, but not all things occupy the same degree.—Edna Lister, Seven Great Schools of Mysticism, May 17, 1966.

You must have a vision of the relationship between soul and physical body, the invisible and visible, especially in relation to physical, emotional and mental equipment. When you become aware of the relationship between the visible and invisible, you are protected.—Edna Lister, Practical Methods for Creating Beauty, May 23, 1967.

If you magnify God, the glory will spill over into your relationships.—Edna Lister, November 19, 1967.

Jesus Christ Explains Relationship

And it was at Jerusalem the feast of the dedication, and it was winter. And Jesus walked in the temple in Solomon’s porch. Then came the Jews round about him, and said unto him, How long dost thou make us to doubt? If thou be the Christ, tell us plainly. Jesus answered them, I told you, and ye believed not: the works that I do in my Father’s name, they bear witness of me. But ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep, as I said unto you. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand. I and my Father are one.

Then the Jews took up stones again to stone him. Jesus answered them, Many good works have I shewed you from my Father; for which of those works do ye stone me? The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God. Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken; say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I AM the Son of God? If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not. But if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works: that ye may know, and believe, that the Father is in me, and I in him. Therefore they sought again to take him: but he escaped out of their hand.—John 10:22-39.

I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you. And in that day ye shall ask me nothing. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you. Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full. These things have I spoken unto you in proverbs: but the time cometh, when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but I shall shew you plainly of the Father. At that day ye shall ask in my name: and I say not unto you, that I will pray the Father for you: For the Father himself loveth you, because ye have loved me, and have believed that I came out from God. I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the Father.

His disciples said unto him, Lo, now speakest thou plainly, and speakest no proverb. Now are we sure that thou knowest all things, and needest not that any man should ask thee: by this we believe that thou camest forth from God. Jesus answered them, Do ye now believe? Behold, the hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone: and yet I AM not alone, because the Father is with me. These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.—John 16:22-33.

These words spake Jesus, and lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee: As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him. And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was. I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy word. Now they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee. For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me.

I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine. And all mine are thine, and thine are mine; and I AM glorified in them. And now I AM no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are. While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name: those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled. And now come I to thee; and these things I speak in the world, that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.

As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth. Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; that they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me. Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee: but I have known thee, and these have known that thou hast sent me. And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.—John 17.