“I am renewed, restored, and reborn through the activity of  Christ in me.”–Winifred Wilkinson Hausmann, Unity Minister, Author

“When the morning dawned, the angels urged Lot, saying, ‘Arise, take your wife and your two daughters who are here, lest you be consumed in the punishment of the city.’ But he lingered; so the men seized him and his wife and his two daughters by the hand, the Lord being merciful to him, and they brought him forth and set him outside of the city. And, when they had brought them forth, they said, ‘flee for your life; do not look back, or stop anywhere in the valley; flee to the hills, lest you be consumed.’… But Lot’s wife behind him looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.” (Genesis 19:15-17, 26)

The story of Lot’s wife is an extreme example of one who has failed to develop the God-given faculty of renunciation. Because this woman simply would not let go of her old life, even under the pressing emergency of the destruction of the two cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, she suffered not only mentally but physically.  She missed her opportunity to start a new life in a new place.

Mentally, she was trying to hold on to the past with all its negation, and her whole being was preserved in limitation as a result of it. (Salt was used in Old Testament times as a preservative).  It is easy to fall into the pattern followed by Lot’s wife, but if we are going to develop our spiritual faculties, we must include renunciation or elimination along with the other powers.  Renunciation is the ability that enables us to cleanse and purify the whole being.

The faculty of Renunciation is represented by the disciple Thaddaeus; the area of the body governed by this faculty is the lowest part of the back at the base of the spinal column.  Thaddaeus carries forth the elimination of error thoughts from the mind and waste food from the body.        

Elimination is an important process in the regeneration of the physical body, as well as errors in the mind.  Some of us may remember how our mothers years ago, would give us castor oil when we showed signs of illness.  This was to get rid of body toxins that were blocking our wellness.

In Addition, back in the 1930s Charles Fillmore metaphysically created the Twelve Powers of Man wherein he associated a disciple with a ganglionic body center.  Many, many years later, around 1973, Rev. Joel Baehr, Youth Education Director, Unity Center for Effective Living, Mesa, Arizona, added a Color Key program for The Youth of Unity children (YOU).

This program was added specifically to help children learn how God works in their lives, and to associate a color each month representing one of the twelve powers. The color of the month either represents something related to the month, the season, or an event occurring during a given month. This month, November, the color represented is russet–one of the colors that we enjoy watching during the changing of the trees in the fall season. The addition of the Color Key program helps not only children but, also adults to remember the powers and how to use them in their everyday lives.

If we wish to dance happily throughout a great part of our lives, we will discover that the practice of the powers daily with meditation, denials and affirmations is life changing. Some of us are more interested in using affirmations rather than denials because we may feel that the use of affirmations is a more positive approach. 

Charles Fillmore explains that it is just as necessary to use denials to let go of thoughts, and conditions when they have served their purpose; just as it is to use affirmations to acquire new ideas, new substances and paradigms to meet daily requirements.  If we accept Fillmore’s idea, it is important that we practice the eliminative and the affirmative faculties to create a right balance between giving and receiving. . . .

Just as ingestion, digestion, and elimination are necessary in the completion of the digestive process in the body, so is this process necessary to the completion of the establishment of Divine order. Remember, the channel of elimination must be kept open if the body is to continue to receive nourishment. In a similar fashion, the channels of mind power must be kept open for the reception and digestion of greater ideas through the release of old-school, vintage, and archaic thoughts and feelings.

We must allow Renunciation / Elimination to work in conjunction with all the faculties, as we replace wrong habits of thought and feeling with the new concepts of understanding that will be the basis for spiritual growth and development.  It is a simple process. Just as we would remove weeds from our flower or vegetable gardens in order to give the desired plants room to grow, so we must remove weed-thoughts from our minds to prepare room for our fresh, budding inner spirituality.

Life that evolves from great to greater and beyond is birthed from thoughts which are in keeping with Divine concepts and feelings–such as love, peace, and joy.  However, thoughts that once served a useful purpose, and no longer do, must be eliminated to make room for the good that is on its way.

Finally, feast on these powerful scriptures from Philippians 3:13-14 which express the idea of releasing the past and re-creating new patterns for living: “This one thing I do, forgetting those things, which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”