a chain of fleshly ancestors to whom you are bound by a filial love that to your present understanding is inviolable. Yet He who passed from the flesh consciousness into the Spirit looked back and said: "Call no man your father on the earth: for one is your Father, even he who is in heaven."

27. So the I AM that desires to function on the spiritual plane must drop all belief in fleshly parentage. It must count as rubbish all pride of ancestry and "blue blood." It must forever cease to talk about the social prestige of "our family"; it must not bolster up the mortal man by considering ancestral reputation to be of any weight. This form of human pride must all be denied as a dream of the night, because it is one of the strong cords that bind the I AM to the flesh.

28. Every tie of earthly relationship must be recognized as the passing condition of a brief fleshly experience. Your children are not yours as you have looked upon them. They are egos like yourself; through some similarity of desire they have been attracted to your mental stratum. They may be older than you in experience and in wisdom. Do not let your affections throw both them and you into a little vortex of family selfishness. You will love them with a love that will help to lift them into the eternal heaven when you know that they are not yours alone, but that all men and women compose one great common family with God as the Father-Mother. "For whosoever shall do the will of my Father who is in heaven, he is my brother, and sister, and mother."