Note to chapters and groups. This blog post will be posted to the public on July 4, 2025 at 7:00 AM CT.

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Power of Understanding

Discovering the Twelve Powers

We are halfway through 2025! As we acknowledge this midway point, it’s a perfect time to revisit the core teachings of the Twelve Powers. This metaphysical framework was developed by Charles and Myrtle Fillmore, cofounder of the Unity movement. The Fillmores identified twelve universal spiritual abilities, “powers,” that each person can tap into to embody their true nature, or what the Fillmores referred to as the Christ nature.

You can think of the Twelve Powers as attributes of your higher self, channels for expressing the Christ in you. When these powers are in alignment with your true nature, they can be used to uplift your life and bring healing to your community and the world. The heart of this teaching comes from Paul’s statement, “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27).

The Twelve Powers, according to Unity, are:

1. Faith

2. Strength

3. Judgment (Wisdom/Discernment)

4. Love

5. Power

6. Imagination

7. Understanding

8. Will

9. Order

10. Zeal

11. Elimination (Renunciation/Letting Go)

12. Life

Each of these spiritual powers is like a faculty of your higher self. At the center of them all is the Christ within, your authentic, divine nature. Charles Fillmore used stories and figures from Christian scriptures as archetypes for each power, inviting us to see them as living capacities in our own consciousness.

Understanding: More Than Just Knowing

This month, we’re exploring the power of Understanding, something that I have often referred to as the “power of integration.” Understanding happens when we take in life’s lessons and actively use them to honor our authentic self.

Understanding goes beyond the acquisition of knowledge. Our power of understanding is our ability to integrate knowledge into our experience in a meaningful way. It is our ability to know something so deeply that knowledge becomes second nature. When we have understanding it means that knowledge becomes imprinted within our consciousness and the knowledge expands our capacity to intuitively engage with circumstances.

Fillmore himself references Albert Einstein in The Twelve Powers of Man:

“Every man knows that in his work he does best and accomplishes most when he has attained a proficiency that enables him to work intuitively. That is, there are things which we come to know so well that we do not know how we know them. So it seems to me in matters of principle. Perhaps we live best and do things best when we are not too conscious of how and why we do them.”

True understanding is about moving from conscious competence to unconscious competence, where spiritual principles are so deeply integrated they guide our lives effortlessly.

Learning, Growth, and the Christ at the Center

Growth is a core part of our spiritual development. In Unity, the Christ within is seen as the higher consciousness at the center of each power. This awareness helps us see where we need more learning or healing. It’s also where the other powers, such as Wisdom (Judgment/Discernment) and Will, come into play to guide us.

You’ll find that life often teaches us the same lesson until we integrate it fully. We can choose to learn with intention, or we might keep bumping into our own limitations. Being open, teachable, and willing to learn helps us evolve gracefully.

But let’s be gentle: experiencing challenges or “negative” events isn’t a sign that we’ve done something wrong. Both our inner and outer worlds are complex. We are co-creating our experience—with God, with others, and with life itself. New Thought often says, “the mind creates our experience,” but as Gabor Maté insightfully writes in The Myth of Normal, “Before the mind creates the world, the world creates the mind.” Both are true, and the dance between them is where our growth happens.

Understanding and the Brain: Metaphysical & Biological Insights

In Unity’s framework, the faculty of Understanding is symbolized by the color gold and its “power center” is located at the front of the brain, the prefrontal cortex. The “front office” of the brain. Metaphysically, gold represents illumination and spiritual insight. The prefrontal cortex governs executive functions like planning, decision-making, focus, and flexible thinking. When we integrate new lessons, this part of our brain is lit up, mirroring the metaphysical work of understanding.

It appears that modern science is catching up to what mystics had intuited: the prefrontal cortex, the “executive center” of the brain, is where integration and higher-order understanding happen. This part of our biology is responsible for planning, focus, adaptability, and impulse control. When we’re learning and integrating new experiences, this region lights up, supporting our journey from knowledge to wisdom.

Just as the brain weaves together diverse threads of experience, this power of understanding helps us synthesize the many dimensions of our lives into a coherent, inspired whole.

Disciples, Archetypes, and Embodied Wisdom

Fillmore associated each spiritual power with a disciple and the power of understanding is linked with Thomas, the disciple who needed to see to believe. Jesus met Thomas’s skepticism with compassion, providing evidence and inviting him into a deeper awareness. The resurrection is not just a singular event for Jesus; Fillmore taught that the potential for spiritual rebirth exists for all who open to Truth. Jesus’s mastery over the body is seen as an allegory for the consciousness available to each of us when we fully embody spiritual understanding.

Beyond the twelve male disciples, Fillmore and a later metaphysician, Rev. Dr. Leddy Hammock, looked at a wider cast of archetypes. While Fillmore focused almost exclusively on the twelve disciples as allegorical architypes for these powers, in his Chapter on Understanding in “The Twelve Powers of Man,” Fillmore identified allegorical biblical archetypes that represent the spectrum of gender diversity.

Additional Archetypes of Understanding

There are countless stories and archetypes that illustrate the journey of understanding, but Fillmore specifically identifies Daniel and Lydia in his work about these twelve human powers. Thomas could be understood as the masculine embodiment of this power, actively seeking greater awareness, we also see understanding expressed in seeking and being open hearted in the other two stories.

• The Seeker: Like Daniel in the Hebrew scriptures, who prayed for understanding and remained open to higher wisdom, we too can cultivate deeper understanding through humility, curiosity, and receptivity. Daniel’s story reminds us that spiritual insight comes from the earnest desire to know and a willingness to align with something greater than ourselves. (We’ve used Daniel to represent the spectrum of gender that exists within the biblical narrative when we were discussing the power of imagination.)
• The Open-Hearted: Lydia from the early Christian tradition represents a feminine attribute of understanding. Fillmore indicates that her heart was opened to new wisdom and she gained understanding through receptivity. This shows that spiritual understanding is not only about active pursuit or even seeking. Allowing ourselves to be receptive with an open heart also expands our understanding of life. True understanding is an inner revelation, an awakening that transforms us from within.

Integration, Intuition, and Inspiration

When we activate the power of understanding, we shift from consuming information to integrating it, and then to living inspired lives. There’s no division between “spiritual” understanding and everyday skills. Whether you’re learning to meditate or to merge onto the highway without causing a pile-up, it’s all spiritual when approached with presence.

Fillmore warns against lazy thinking: “Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking… content with living vicariously instead of living his own life.” The goal is to integrate learning so it inspires you to live fully, from the inside out.

The power of understanding is both a practice and a realization. It’s not just about knowing facts or collecting wisdom, but about integrating truth into our being so that it flows into all we do. In Unity’s teachings, understanding opens us to Christ-consciousness, a way of being that is whole, intuitive, and deeply connected to divine wisdom.
May we each find the courage to move from information to integration, from habit to wholeness, and from knowing to living as the Christ within.

About Folx with Faith

Folx with Faith is a spiritual community rooted in love, inclusion, and authenticity. We create safe and affirming spaces for LGBTQIA+ individuals and allies to explore spiritual wholeness through discussion, music, workshops, and shared practice.

Whether you’re deconstructing, reconstructing, or rediscovering your faith, we are here to support you on your journey.

How You Can Support Our Mission?

You can help us fulfill our mission by donating to Folx with Faith or starting a local group. It is our mission to create safe spaces to explore and experience spiritual wholeness. Folx with Faith supports the queer community, fostering a celebration of our authentic beings and empowering us to make a difference in the world. If you would like to contribute to this mission or would like to start a local chapter, please let us know. You can contact us or use the links below.

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