After entering the high watchtower of spiritual consciousness, one is enabled to view all things and all conditions as God sees them. When to the human view the occasion is most alarming, the necessity for the high watch is even greater. In fact, we may take it as our role of action and know that when sin, disease, or lack presents the most convincing appearance of its reality and power, then the call is most urgent to go up into the mountain and pray.
Ten thousand adverse arguments are put to flight by one commanding realization of Truth. It is remarkable how quickly the spiritual consciousness unmasks and dethrones that which previously has seemed a source of fear and annoyance. The unregenerated man lives in a world filled with people and things and circumstances that he has empowered to frighten and dominate him. When through Truth he is enabled to ascend to the high watch, he recognizes nothing as capable of worrying him.
The first thing that must go is the inclination to wonder how conditions, circumstances, came to be what they are and just wherein one has fallen short in one's practice and demonstration. Probably the greatest mistake made by Truth students in checking up when results have not come as expected has been their attempt to unmask error, to search deep for the psychological cause. If the student is able to exercise the high vision he does not permit himself to sink into the slough of negation and review adverse causes and effects. He is always found safely above and beyond negation, standing witness to the presence of Christ. One cannot expect relief to come when the vision is on that which one would erase. Power comes from a realm unknown to the world of limitation.
To countenance a thing is to establish its presence and power in consciousness. To behold the presence and power of God in the place of an undesirable manifestation is to annihilate belief in the existence of adverse conditions and to realize that there never was and never will be anything but omnipotent good. This is the method that Jesus used. It is the science and the philosophy whereby His followers are doing His works in His name and by His authority. When Jesus turned the searchlight of His spiritual understanding upon the shadows of ignorance, superstition, and fear, the light cleared the consciousness of the people about Him and they too were able to see themselves as He saw them—perfect and whole.
His power to see perfect people instead of men with withered arms, with fever and demons, lifted them to His consciousness, and the old beliefs were dislodged from their mind. No one could stand in the Christ-presence and retain a consciousness of personal limitations if he was willing to let go.
Limited vision sees limited things. It is this practice which causes one person to see another as subject to limitations; causes another to see some situation as warped and distorted. Persistently to exercise limited vision upon things causes that which is insignificant to appear enlarged and conspicuous. In fact, the play of limited vision upon anything will cause it to assume the most gigantic proportions in a person's world, and all his thought will be centered on and about it. This aberrant vision is peculiar to the person who exercises it. It may be proved to be such, since what is magnified and aggravating to one often attracts no attention on the part of another person. Unless the vision is broad and clear, the conception will be narrow and blurred, whether it concerns a person or an event.
By use spiritual vision becomes strengthened and clearer to the individual. The better one understands Truth the easier it is to behold men and things according to Truth. Although the visual sense is beyond mental reasoning and argument, the vision cannot be high and noble if the mind is still charged with false impressions. The undisciplined student is inclined to be passive, to let the outer be visioned to him discolored by the senses and by false education; instead of being master of his visual faculty and seeing the Truth in manifestation shorn of all man-made limitation.
After Truth has been presented clearly to us, after we know the power of seeing correctly, then the natural impulse is to watch and pray when we are tempted to lower our vision. From the lighthouse of Truth we can look out upon troubled waters and say, "Peace, be still," knowing that the waves of adversity are silenced by our spiritual authority. The Watcher over all things in the universe watches with us. Of Him it has been said: "Thou that art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and that canst not look on perverseness, wherefore lookest thou upon them that deal treacherously, and holdest thy peace?"
If the Divine Watcher beheld evil, if he saw the halt, the blind, and the dead, then man created after the image of God would be imperfect. Since He has made man perfect by His own perfect consciousness of man, that creation is perfect. It is through this holy vision that the Watcher looks with spiritual vision and maintains peace.
When man becomes a co-worker with his Father in the high watch, he too sees with the "purer eyes" back of all vision. When anyone is brought to him suffering physical or mental torment because of seeing evil and falsehood and hate, the co-worker with God has power to lift him up to Christ, the Truth of God.
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