Finally revealed...The astonishing power of gratitude
and the solution to the 5 big mistakes that
keep most people from putting it to work for them!

The amazing story of a woman who
healed a fatal illness with the power of gratitude!

In Joe Vitale's fascinating book, "The Greatest Money-Making Secret in History", one of the final stories is entitled "The Couple Who Created a Debt-Free Spiritual Empire". The couple he refers to is Charles and Myrtle Fillmore, the founders of the Unity School of Christianity and the Silent Unity Prayer Ministry, located in Lee's Summit, Missouri, just outside of Kansas City.

In Joe's book he briefly recounts the story of how the Fillmore's went from a study group in their living room to an organization that reaches millions of people with congregations world-wide. Their headquarters has a beautiful campus where people come from all over the world to study. They started from nothing and remain debt-free today, thanks to the power of giving.

If you have read the Gratitude ebook, you may have noticed quotes from Charles Fillmore. He understood completely about living in the flow of prosperity. Something you may not know is that Fillmore specifically issued his books and writings without copyright! He wanted them to reach the widest possible audience. Not many authors do that.

But Myrtle's story is the one that I want to cover here, because it really relates to being grateful in difficult circumstances. Having suffered for years and then being told you have only 6 months to live qualifies as difficult circumstances, wouldn't you say?

She was born in 1845 in Ohio, into a family with a history of sickness. She developed symptoms of tuberculosis in her 20's and was told that it ran in her family and she would probably die young. This was just after the Civil War and medical care as we know it was non-existent.

After schooling, she traveled to Texas, a drier climate, to work as a schoolteacher and there she met her husband, Charles. After many adventures in Texas and Colorado, they settled in Kansas City.

(Remember, this was the 1870's and the west was really wild then. You have to admire any woman who would travel from Ohio to Denning, TX, to Leadville, CO to Kansas City in those days. It was travel by wagon, horseback or foot. She was one tough lady!)

Her health got progressively worse and by 1885 she was given about six months to live. She began looking for new ideas. One night she and Charles went to a lecture on health, and she heard an idea that changed her life. The speaker said, "You are a child of God, and you do not inherit illness!"

Myrtle went home thinking, "What if that is true? If it is, then I have been taught and believed a lie." So she decided to change the way she treated her body. Instead of complaining how it was letting her down, she chose to express gratitude and thankfulness for every part of it.

I'll let her tell the story in her own words:

"I had made what seems to me a discovery. I was fearfully sick; I had all the ills of mind and body I could bear. Medicine and doctors ceased to give me relief, and I was in despair when I found practical Christianity. I took it up and I was healed. I did most of the healing myself because I wanted the understanding for future use. This is how I made what I call my discovery:

"I was thinking about life. Life is everywhere - in worm and in humans. 'Then why does not the life in the worm make a body like a human's?' I asked. Then I thought, 'The worm has not as much sense as a human.' Ah! Intelligence, as well as life, is needed to make a body.

"Here is the key to my discovery. Life has to be guided by intelligence in making all forms. The same law works in my own body. Life is simply a form of energy and has to be guided and directed in our body by our intelligence. How do we communicate intelligence? By thinking and talking, of course. Then it flashed upon me that I might talk to the life in every part of my body and have it do just what I wanted. I began to teach my body and got marvelous results!

"I told the life in my liver that it was not torpid or inert, but full of vigor and energy. I told the life in my stomach that it was not weak or inefficient, but energetic, strong and intelligent. I told the life in my abdomen that it was not longer infested with ignorant ideas of disease, put there by myself and by doctors, but that it was all athrill with the sweet, pure, wholesome energy of God. I told my limbs that they were active and strong. I told my eyes that they did not see of themselves but that they expressed the sight of Spirit, and that they were drawing upon an unlimited source. I told them that they were young eyes, clear, bright eyes, because the light of God shone right through them. I told my heart that the pure love of Jesus Christ flowed in and out through its beatings and that all the world felt its joyous pulsation.

"I went to all the life centers in my body and spoke words of Truth to them - words of strength and power. I asked their forgiveness for the foolish, ignorant course that I had pursued in the past, when I had condemned them and called them weak, inefficient and diseased. I did not become discouraged at their being slow to wake up, but kept right on, both silently and aloud, declaring the words of Truth until the organs responded. And neither did I neglect to tell them that they were free, unlimited Spirit. I told them that they were no longer in bondage to the carnal mind; that they were not corruptible flesh, but centers of life and energy omnipresent.

"Then I asked the Father to forgive me for taking His life into my organism and there using it so meanly. I promised Him that I would never, never again retard the free flow of that life through my mind and my body by any false word or thought; that I would always bless it and encourage it with true thoughts and words in its wise work of building up my body temple; that I would use all diligence and wisdom in telling it just what I wanted it to do.

"I also saw that I was using the life of the Father in thinking thoughts and speaking words. And I became very watchful as to what I thought and said.

"I did not let any worried or anxious thoughts into my mind, and I stopped speaking gossipy, frivolous, petulant, angry words. I would let a little prayer go up every hour that Jesus Christ would be with me and help me to think and speak only kind, loving, true words; and I am sure He is with me, because I am so peaceful and happy now.

"I want everyone to know about this beautiful, true law and to use it. It is not a new discovery, but, when you use it and get the fruits of health and harmony it will seem new to you, and you will feel that it is your own discovery."

Wow, what a story! It took her two years, but at the end of that time she was healthy again, and she lived a marvelous and productive life for another 45 years, during which she taught many others what she was learning. If you read her story carefully, you will see the gratitude principles of the friendly universe, non-resistance and forgiveness in action.

You can get several books that Myrtle wrote through the bookstore at Unity Online, or through the bookstore at your local Unity Church.