The Sermon on the Mount_ The Key to Success in Life - Emmet Fox [42]
In the long run, no one can retain what does not belong to him by right of consciousness, nor be deprived of that which is truly his by the same supreme title.
Therefore, you will do well not to lay up to yourself treasures upon earth, but rather to lay up treasure in heaven; that is, the understanding of Spiritual Law. If you are looking to outer, passing, mutable things for either happiness or security, you are not putting God first. If you are putting God first in your life, you will not find yourself laboring under undue anxiety about anything, for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
Pursuing the same train of ideas in greater detail, Jesus goes on to say that those who are upon the new basis are to be free from all sorts of petty anxieties and worrying details which continue to afflict those who are not. Questions of diet, for instance, will settle themselves if one is thinking rightly. A follower of the new life does not need to watch every bite that he puts into his mouth, until eating becomes a burden. He eats naturally and spontaneously of the ordinary food that comes along, knowing that his habitual right thought will take care of his diet too. If he had been accustomed to eating more than was good for him, the fact that he now prays every day for wisdom and guidance in general would lead to his eating less; or, if he should not be eating enough, then scientific daily prayer would cause him to eat more until the right quantity was reached.
The same principle applies to all the details of everyday living. If you pray for yourself in the right way every day, you will find that the minor things of life will gradually fall correctly into place of their own accord without any trouble on your part. Contrast this with the usual method of trying to get everything right by separately organizing a thousand petty details, and you will appreciate how wonderfully the new spiritual basis sets you free. If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. This is the summation of all Truth. Verily, if the eye be single, the whole body of experience shall be full of light.
The eye symbolizes spiritual perception. Whatever you give your attention to, is the thing that governs your life. Attention is the key. Your free will lies in the directing of your attention. Whatever you steadfastly direct your attention to, will come into your life and dominate it. If you do not direct your attention consistently to anything in particular—and many people do not—then nothing in particular will come into your life except uncertainty and suspense; you will be like a drifting log. If you direct your attention to the outer world of manifestation, which is in its nature continually shifting and changing, you are bound to have unhappiness, poverty, and ill-health; whereas, if you direct your attention to God; if the Glory of God comes first with you, and to express His Will becomes the rule of your life, then your eye is single and your whole body, or embodiment, will be full of light.
No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.
Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?
Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?
Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?
And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:
And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass