Prayer time 10 December 2025

More work on Presence - Emmet Fox essay ‘Presence’ as an affirmative prayer

We relax so we can concentrate.

We concentrate so we may meditate.

We meditate so we may realise.

We realise so we may appreciate.

Psalm 82:6 - “I have said, you are gods, and all of you are children of the Most High.”

This evening we are working with Emmet Fox’s essay titled ‘Presence’.

Found in a slim publication called The Golden Key Prayer and 22 Other Essays.

For copyright reasons, we may not reproduce the essay here.

For our blog notes, I offer a metaphysical summary of the lessons in the essay.

We begin:

“God is the only Presence and the only Power.”

Fox opens with this uncompromising spiritual axiom:

There is only One Presence. Only One Power. Only One Cause.

Everything else - fear, confusion, drama, limitation, lack - is “shadow”, not substance.

He drives home three core principles:

God is fully present, here, now

Not partially here. Not conditionally here.

Fully here. Fully active. Fully available.

The moment we turn our attention to God, we step out of the storm and into the Centre.

Also known as the moment to Golden Key as a prayer - to replace the thought with an aspect of God’s nature.

God authors only good

Fox refuses the old theology of punishment or divine testing.

God therefore does not send sickness, loss, or chaos.

We experience these things because we are mesmerized by appearances - not because God wills them.

This also is an opportunity to Golden Key our judgement on our conditions.

The Presence dissolves anything unlike itself

Turn toward God and the shadows fall away.

Again, this is Golden Key - replace the old thought and keep it changed.

Not by willpower, not by trying harder, but by recognition.

The Presence is the light.

Our job is simple - to simply remember

Return our attention.

Refuse the hypnotism of appearances. To deny.

Declare the Presence. To affirm.

Rest in it. No striving.

And as you do, things shift:

the mind clears, the body strengthens, the path opens, and the next right idea, thought, word or action reveals itself.

We hold silence together.

We realise truth together.

Giving thanks

And we conclude giving thanks for this wonderful, blessed day.

We recite the Lord’s prayer as Jesus taught us to pray.

We close quietly, and we slip away from Zoom back into the space where we are.

And so it is.

Amen. Amene. Tihei mauri ora.

Thank you for joining with others in prayer.

Prepared by Jacinda Faloon-Cavander for Unity of NZ