Who Would Save His Life Shall Lose It ~ Ernest Holmes
(Based on Matt. 16:24-27)
"This is another of those mystical sayings of Jesus which must be carefully considered before accepting it. Does God demand that we give up everything if we are to enter the Kingdom of Heaven? Of course not! To suppose that God wills us to be limited, is to contradict the Divine Nature. God's only will is to Be, and for all to Be, for God can conceive of man only as part of Himself.
It must be, then, that what we are to lose is the sense of living apart from Life. We find ourselves in the Divine Idea, immersed in the Infinite Godhead, one with the Perfect Whole. But should we think that we, of ourselves, without this relationship rightly established, can be, or can express, then we cut the cord that binds us to the main power line and lose what little power we have.
We are powerful only as we unite with Power. We are weak when we desert this Power. Not because God is jealous, but because this is the way things work. The idea of a false renunciation - of the given up of all pleasure and benefits in this life - is not even suggested in the teachings of Jesus. Self-effacement, the neglect of the body, the belief that we must be unhappy and poor in order to serve the Truth, all these are immature ideas which deny the divine birthright of the soul, the incarnated Spirit of the Most High within us.
When we are willing to lose a personal sense of responsibility; when we let go of the thought of isolation and claim a real unity with God, then we lose the personal and find the Universal. But remember, as the greater always includes the lesser, so the Universal always includes the personal, which is a personification of Itself.
Man is to lose the small estimate of himself, the isolated person, and is to find the greater reality, the incarnated and real ego. The image of the Father cannot be defaced nor can all the wit or the sham of man really obliterate this image. The Eternal Light is God, and this Light illumines the pathway of the personal when there are no obstructions.
Who leans on the Truth, throwing all - with an undivided attention - on the scales of Reality, will find them balanced rightly, through the great law of compensation, which weighs and measures everything exactly as it is.
Fasting and Prayer ( Matt. 17:21)
We are not to suppose that the physical act of fasting, or the metaphysical act of prayer, can move the throne of grace to a kindness which is otherwise withheld. God plays no favorites and the Law of the Universe cannot reverse Its own nature. Fasting and prayer often do bring our thought closer to Reality, not because of the fasting or the prayer, but because they open up greater fields of receptivity in our minds.
If one wishes to embody an ideal and is willing to give up all else to attain it, then he is fasting and praying! He is sublimating an old idea with a new and a better one. If he is willing to abstain from the old and cling to the new, then he is giving greater reality to the new, and in this way contacting the Law from a more affirmative angle.
A steadfast determination to attain some purpose, the letting go of all that opposes it, a complete reliance upon the Law of Good, and an unqualified trust in Spirit - this is true fasting and real prayer.
The scientist, in profound thought and meditation before his problem - deserting all to solve it - is praying a true prayer to the principle of his science. The poet, waiting in the silence of his own soul for inspiration, is praying that he may invoke the spirit of poetry to his listening ear. The sculptor, chiseling at his marble, contemplating the beauty to be brought forth, prays to his god of art; and the farmer, kneeling beside his cabbage patch, trusts in the natural Law of Good to bring his seed to harvest.
We live in a fasting and praying world, but often we do not read the signs aright. We are too used to the outward sign to realize its inward significance. The world is much better than it knows or feels itself to be.
Healing the Lunatic (Matt. 17:14-19)
What majesty and might do we see in the calm words of Jesus! "Bring him hither to me." No doubt is here, no sense of approaching failure, no lack of trust in the perfect Law which governs all. "And Jesus rebuked the devil; and he departed out of him."
Surely this lesson should teach us that evil is but an obsession and - from the standpoint of eternal Reality - a complete illusion. Could we cast out evil from our thought if evil were a real entity or had actual power? The answer is self-evident, we could not. Evil flees before Reality and to the mind which knows it, evil is not."
(Based on Matt. 16:24-27)
"This is another of those mystical sayings of Jesus which must be carefully considered before accepting it. Does God demand that we give up everything if we are to enter the Kingdom of Heaven? Of course not! To suppose that God wills us to be limited, is to contradict the Divine Nature. God's only will is to Be, and for all to Be, for God can conceive of man only as part of Himself.
It must be, then, that what we are to lose is the sense of living apart from Life. We find ourselves in the Divine Idea, immersed in the Infinite Godhead, one with the Perfect Whole. But should we think that we, of ourselves, without this relationship rightly established, can be, or can express, then we cut the cord that binds us to the main power line and lose what little power we have.
We are powerful only as we unite with Power. We are weak when we desert this Power. Not because God is jealous, but because this is the way things work. The idea of a false renunciation - of the given up of all pleasure and benefits in this life - is not even suggested in the teachings of Jesus. Self-effacement, the neglect of the body, the belief that we must be unhappy and poor in order to serve the Truth, all these are immature ideas which deny the divine birthright of the soul, the incarnated Spirit of the Most High within us.
When we are willing to lose a personal sense of responsibility; when we let go of the thought of isolation and claim a real unity with God, then we lose the personal and find the Universal. But remember, as the greater always includes the lesser, so the Universal always includes the personal, which is a personification of Itself.
Man is to lose the small estimate of himself, the isolated person, and is to find the greater reality, the incarnated and real ego. The image of the Father cannot be defaced nor can all the wit or the sham of man really obliterate this image. The Eternal Light is God, and this Light illumines the pathway of the personal when there are no obstructions.
Who leans on the Truth, throwing all - with an undivided attention - on the scales of Reality, will find them balanced rightly, through the great law of compensation, which weighs and measures everything exactly as it is.
Fasting and Prayer ( Matt. 17:21)
We are not to suppose that the physical act of fasting, or the metaphysical act of prayer, can move the throne of grace to a kindness which is otherwise withheld. God plays no favorites and the Law of the Universe cannot reverse Its own nature. Fasting and prayer often do bring our thought closer to Reality, not because of the fasting or the prayer, but because they open up greater fields of receptivity in our minds.
If one wishes to embody an ideal and is willing to give up all else to attain it, then he is fasting and praying! He is sublimating an old idea with a new and a better one. If he is willing to abstain from the old and cling to the new, then he is giving greater reality to the new, and in this way contacting the Law from a more affirmative angle.
A steadfast determination to attain some purpose, the letting go of all that opposes it, a complete reliance upon the Law of Good, and an unqualified trust in Spirit - this is true fasting and real prayer.
The scientist, in profound thought and meditation before his problem - deserting all to solve it - is praying a true prayer to the principle of his science. The poet, waiting in the silence of his own soul for inspiration, is praying that he may invoke the spirit of poetry to his listening ear. The sculptor, chiseling at his marble, contemplating the beauty to be brought forth, prays to his god of art; and the farmer, kneeling beside his cabbage patch, trusts in the natural Law of Good to bring his seed to harvest.
We live in a fasting and praying world, but often we do not read the signs aright. We are too used to the outward sign to realize its inward significance. The world is much better than it knows or feels itself to be.
Healing the Lunatic (Matt. 17:14-19)
What majesty and might do we see in the calm words of Jesus! "Bring him hither to me." No doubt is here, no sense of approaching failure, no lack of trust in the perfect Law which governs all. "And Jesus rebuked the devil; and he departed out of him."
Surely this lesson should teach us that evil is but an obsession and - from the standpoint of eternal Reality - a complete illusion. Could we cast out evil from our thought if evil were a real entity or had actual power? The answer is self-evident, we could not. Evil flees before Reality and to the mind which knows it, evil is not."
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