Around the Year with Emmet Fox - 9 October 2010
BULB AND FLOWER
Who has not at some point or other planted a bulb and enjoyed the pleasure of waiting for the plant to appear and develop, and ultimately produce the glorious flower itself? Notice here that you naturally plant the bulb and expect the flower -- the hyacinth or the crocus -- to follow. No sane person would dream of planting the flower and expect a bulb to come up; yet in our general life many of us do just that! We expect to begin with the flower. We think that we shall have desirable states of mind or body -- happiness, freedom, health -- if only we can change outer conditions in some way. Yet this is really trying to plant a flower, because we are trying to put effect before cause.
The law of the universe is thought first, and then expression; and never can this law be reversed.
Let all things be done decently and in order (1 Corinthians 14:40)