Jesus did not return to his disciples as they expected, because there was no Universal Law for such return. Just so with Health, Wealth, Love, Joy and Happiness. They can never come into expression for us so long as there is not established within us the Law of Natural Relationships.
We are learning at last that "Since the fathers fell asleep all things continue as they were from the creation," and it takes more than a fond imagination to pass our life from the law of inharmony, desire and pain, into the higher one of peace, power and happiness.
The moment a life desires anything it instantly becomes related with that thing, but it does not become a possession until all the conditions are fulfilled. Some minds think so lightly of everything that nothing ever becomes steadfast and certain. They drift aimlessly between loss and gain, health and disease, crying out, "Where are the promises," never realizing that promises are only fulfilled when the whole selfhood becomes grappled to the rock of understanding.
Human life is only a growing time, and each life will remain just where it is and express the laws of its level of consciousness until it develops out from them into others.
Sickness, poverty, wretchedness, disappointed hopes are common in the journey of Life; despairing human lives are common too, and lives full of rebellion can be found on every hand, but all these are the products of thoughts that produced them and show just where the consciousness has lingered.
Freedom from all these negative human experiences comes as the reward of inner growth; it can only come through unfoldment and transmutation into higher understanding. Human pain and loss, despair and disease, and the heart-breaks of life, are all the fruits of the Tree of Life whose root is Truth.
When sickness, sorrow and unhappiness have taken the place of health and joy in our life, we have no one to blame but ourselves; we can know that through a long line of perverted thinking, both inherited and acquired, we have become related with the laws in consciousness, and these laws are thoughts of self, hate, jealousy, strife, condemnation, resistance, etc. We have thought it unconsciously in the past, but until we stop and get up new thought relationships, these old things must go on. When we know the higher truth of New Thought Relationship, and the power of constructive thinking, we can begin then and there to change things and we instantly can clean out all the distorted thought energy, and pass the simple act of thinking into a creative form, quitting forever our response to the negative things around us.
We see the truth of "Whatsoever a man soweth, that also shall he reap," and we see, too, that this harvest field where we reap is the human life, and the seeds are thoughts, and we then and there fill our field of consciousness with thought-seeds of Health, Strength, Peace, Love, Joy and all the ten thousand beautiful constructive things, and we soon are living in a perfected thought world, surrounded by the dream pictures of our soul consciousness. We become like mystical seers, we can prophesy then about everything in our life without fear of contradiction, for knowing the Law that on the path "Like produces Like," and knowing the thought-seeds we sow, we can be certain of the future harvest.
Under the Law Eternal we cease to consider ourselves related to anything that we do not want. These things we do not want have ceased to exist for us, in the moment we have forgotten them in consciousness. We must refuse even to connect with them in memory. Sometimes this is a hard lesson: The Law of Memory is a peculiar force, it is the expression of fixed thinking--that which we cannot forget has made deep inroads into consciousness. Memory often keeps us related in strange ways, and hinders our unfoldment. Memory is the connecting link between the yesterday and today; it makes the past always the present and it remains the master of many lives and pours what it will into the field of consciousness until it is conquered.
We cannot go on to peace, power and divine unfoldment while we are wrapped around with olden memories, olden idols, fears and bondage.