MENTAL EQUIVALENTS
By Ernest Holmes
What Do We Mean by Mental Equivalents?
"Prayer does something to the mind of the one praying. It does not do anything to God. The eternal Gift is always made. The Gift of God is the Nature of God, the Eternal Givingness. God cannot help making the gift, because GOD IS THE GIFT. We do not have to pray God to be God. God is God. Jesus revealed the nature of the Divine Being by his personal embodiment of the Divine Nature. He said, "As ye believe, it shall be done unto you."
The whole teaching of Jesus was based on the theory that we are surrounded by an intelligent Law, which does unto each as he believes. He implied the necessity of faith, conviction, and acceptance. That is, it must be measured out to us according to our own measuring. We must not only believe, we must know that our belief measures the extent and degree of our blessing. If our belief is limited only a little can come to us, because that is as we believe. We call this the law of mental equivalents. How much life can any man experience? As much as he can embody. There is nothing fatalistic about this. We are so constituted that we can continuously increase our embodiment. We grow in grace, as it were. We grow in power and theoretically there should be no limit to that growth. But right today we can expect to demonstrate or to have our prayers answered according to our belief and the embodiment of that belief.
Lowell said, "The gift without the giver is bare," and it is just as true that there can be no gift without a receiver. It is said, "To as many as received him, to them gave he the power." We seek to uncover the science of prayer: the essence of the Spirit embodied in it. We find that the essence of the power of prayer is faith and acceptance. In addition to the law of faith and acceptance, the law of mental equivalents must be considered. These are the two great laws with which we have to deal and we shall never get away from either. If prayer has been answered, it is not because God has been moved to answer one man and not another, but because one man more than another has moved himself into a right relationship with the Spirit or the Principle of Being - whichever one chooses to call It.
Faith, then, touches a Principle which responds, we may be certain of this. We should have more faith than we do rather than less, nor is it foolish to cultivate faith. ALL PRAYERS WILL BE ANSWERED WHEN WE PRAY ARIGHT. The first necessity is faith. Faith! But someone may exclaim, "This is what has always been taught, this is nothing new!" Correct, we have nothing new. We simply have a new approach to an old truth, a more intelligent, a more systematic way of consciously arriving at faith. This is what treatment is for."
By Ernest Holmes
What Do We Mean by Mental Equivalents?
"Prayer does something to the mind of the one praying. It does not do anything to God. The eternal Gift is always made. The Gift of God is the Nature of God, the Eternal Givingness. God cannot help making the gift, because GOD IS THE GIFT. We do not have to pray God to be God. God is God. Jesus revealed the nature of the Divine Being by his personal embodiment of the Divine Nature. He said, "As ye believe, it shall be done unto you."
The whole teaching of Jesus was based on the theory that we are surrounded by an intelligent Law, which does unto each as he believes. He implied the necessity of faith, conviction, and acceptance. That is, it must be measured out to us according to our own measuring. We must not only believe, we must know that our belief measures the extent and degree of our blessing. If our belief is limited only a little can come to us, because that is as we believe. We call this the law of mental equivalents. How much life can any man experience? As much as he can embody. There is nothing fatalistic about this. We are so constituted that we can continuously increase our embodiment. We grow in grace, as it were. We grow in power and theoretically there should be no limit to that growth. But right today we can expect to demonstrate or to have our prayers answered according to our belief and the embodiment of that belief.
Lowell said, "The gift without the giver is bare," and it is just as true that there can be no gift without a receiver. It is said, "To as many as received him, to them gave he the power." We seek to uncover the science of prayer: the essence of the Spirit embodied in it. We find that the essence of the power of prayer is faith and acceptance. In addition to the law of faith and acceptance, the law of mental equivalents must be considered. These are the two great laws with which we have to deal and we shall never get away from either. If prayer has been answered, it is not because God has been moved to answer one man and not another, but because one man more than another has moved himself into a right relationship with the Spirit or the Principle of Being - whichever one chooses to call It.
Faith, then, touches a Principle which responds, we may be certain of this. We should have more faith than we do rather than less, nor is it foolish to cultivate faith. ALL PRAYERS WILL BE ANSWERED WHEN WE PRAY ARIGHT. The first necessity is faith. Faith! But someone may exclaim, "This is what has always been taught, this is nothing new!" Correct, we have nothing new. We simply have a new approach to an old truth, a more intelligent, a more systematic way of consciously arriving at faith. This is what treatment is for."
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