August 26 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

MEDITATIONS for Self-Help

By Ernest Holmes

Law

I meditate upon the Law of God.

It is a Perfect Law and is now working for me and in and through me.

"The Law of the Lord is perfect."

I speak into that Law and it is done unto me."

Thy Law is in my heart.

August 21 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

OTHER TEACHINGS from the NEW TESTAMENT
By Ernest Holmes

Bless and Curse Not (Romans 12:14)

""Bless and curse not."  Here is the whole law and prophets.   We are to overcome evil with good.  Evil lasts but for a day, while goodness shines to eternity and loving kindsness is the very nature of Deity.  As the darkness has no power over light, so evil is overcome with good.

"Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord."  This is a statement of the law of cause and effect.  God does not avenge, but the law of cause and effect exacts the uttermost farthing.  We need not worry how things are coming out; the law takes care of everything and returns to each exactly what is his due.

The Great Awakening (Romans 13:11)

"Now it is high time to awake out of sleep."  The belief in a life apart from Good is a dream from which we must awake, if we are to taste the waters of Reality, which flow from the Source of Life.

As one awakes from a nightmare, so the mentality awakes from the dream of living death to a realization of eternal life.  We cast off the works of darkenss when we realize that evil is not an entity but a fraud.  The armor of light is the Truth, the very knowing of which makes free.

This awakening is a process of evolution, a little here and a little there, until the whole eye is opened and we see that life is neither separate from God nor different from Good.  Life is God, and Good is the only power there is, or can be.

To awaken oneself is to be healed, made prosperous, happy and satisfied; to be made every whit whole, to be complete as we were intended to be.  God is a God of the living and not of the dead.  He sees and knows only perfection and completion; happiness and satisfaction.  When we shall think of ourselves as God knows us, then complete salvation will come to us."

August 19 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

FROM the TEACHING of JESUS
Ernest Holmes

The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth (Matt. 5:5)

""The meek shall inherit the earth."  This is a teaching of non-resistance.  War lords and plunderers of human possessions have come and gone.  Kingdoms have risen only to crumble in dust and become numbered with past events.  Passion and lust for power have strewn the earth with destruction.  It would seem as though the meek had lost out in the titanic struggle for temporal supremacy.

In the midst of this drama of human existence, Jesus declared that the meek shall inherit the earth.  Let us inquire if his teaching is a true one.  Do we teach our children to follow the steps of a Caesar and a Napoleon? Or do we tell them the story of Jesus or Buddha?  The cross is mightier than the crown and we teach our children that LOVE MASTERS EVERYTHING!  The meek shall inherit the earth.  To whom have our artists turned for inspiration and that quickening power which enables them to depict the idea?  Not to the war lords, nor even the captains of industry, but to the meek.

What characteristics are set before us as being worthy?  Have not faith and belief in the divine Goodness been the theme of our greatest singers?  Who could write a beautiful story about hell?  But heaven and love have inspired thousands to the uplifting of humanity.  Jesus was right when he said that the meek shall inherit the earth.  They have done so and will continue to do so!

They That Hunger Shall Be Fed (Matt. 5:6)

They who hunger and thirst after righteousness shall be filled.  Is there anyone who does not have a soul hunger?  Does not the spirit of man thirst after knowledge and understanding, yearn for Truth and Reality, as blind men yearn for light?  And his hunger can only be satisfied with spiritual food, as manna from heaven.

Let us inquire into this teaching and see if it be an illusion.  Turn to the history of those who have been spiritually-minded, and the question is answered.  They have not received a stone when they asked for bread.  All who have been hungry have been fed; their hunger has been blessed, in that it has led them to that only food - that heavenly manna - which has sustained, strengthened and upheld them, while the rest of the world (with thirst unsatisfied and appetite unappeased) has eagerly inquired from what store they bought their goods.  They who hunger and thirst after Reality are always fed, and directly by the hand of God Himself.

The Merciful Shall Obtain Mercy (Matt. 5:7)

"Blessed are the merciful; for they shall obtain mercy."  Again we are confronted with an apparent contradiction.  Do the merciful always obtain mercy?  From casual observation, it would seem otherwise.  But are not many of our observations based on a finite outlook, from a limited concept?  Can we estimate life from the range of one human experience?  If life begins with the cradle and ends with the grave, then are all of our hopes, not only forlorn, but useless.  It is only with the "eye views the world as one vast plain, one boundless reach of sky," that it sees truly.

The perspective of reality is lost when we view life from the range of a short experience.  Jesus saw beyond the veil and estimated life from the great perspective - the long run of the adventure of the soul.  He knew that the law of cause and effect takes care of all, and that the "Mills of God" will grind the chaff of unreality from the wheat of the Spirit. What matter if these mills do not do all of their grinding while we are clothed in flesh! Did not Jesus know another life which to him was as real as this one?  Can we expect, in this world, to receive full compensation for all our work?  Of course not.  We are building on an eternal foundation, one that time cannot alter nor experience destroy.

A true estimate of real values cannot be built on the shifting sands of time alone.  In the long run, the merciful will obtain mercy!  In the long run, we shall reap as we have sown!"

August 7 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

OTHER TEACHINGS from the NEW TESTAMENT
By Ernest Holmes

The Law of Correspondents (Romans 1:20)

"This teaching incorporates the great law of correspondents.  The spiritual world contains an image of the physical; the physical is a counter part of the spiritual.  A true estimate of the outward symbol points to the spiritual reality behind it.

We understand the unseen by correctly viewing the seen.  The outward effect must partake of its inward nature.  The physical universe is the result of an inner Intelligence, working through Law.  Behind form is idea.  The Formless creates form, through the creative power of Its own Mind and Spirit.

Behind every effect there is a cause, and if this cause is a spiritual idea - which it must be - then it follows that should the spiritual idea be discerned, the physical effect would be like it.  The entire possibility of demonstrating the Law of Good depends upon this proposition.  The idea is father to the fact.  Ideas are real, having the power within themselves to be made manifest.

The whole teaching of the Bible is to the effect that God is Universal Spirit, and Universal Creation.  He creates by the power of His Word.  This Word is the law of His Being.  Man reproduces the Divine Nature on the scale of the individual.  He also uses creative power which works through the law of his word.  From this he cannot escape, he need only to use this power constructively and all will be well.  If he uses the creative power of his thought destructively, then it will destroy.

In the Science of Mind, we learn that persistent, constructive thought is the greatest power known and the most effective.  If the visible effect in our lives is not what it should be, if we are unhappy, sick and poverty stricken, we know the remedy.  The Truth is always the remedy, and the Truth is that the law of liberty is the only real law.  When we reverse the process of thought, the effect will be reversed."

July 30 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

GENERAL SUMMARY

By Ernest Holmes

“We attract to ourselves the objective form of our subjective embodiments.  Law knows how to make things out of ideas.  We do not consciously know how It does this; nor do we know how corned beef and cabbage are turned into flesh and bone, but they are and we have been so accustomed to the thought that they are, that we have implicit faith that they will continue to be.  Should we doubt this phenomenon we should be thought [strange].  When we believe in the Law of Mind in the same way we shall be surprised at the results we receive.

Thoughts of lack, poverty and limitation contain within themselves the conditions necessary to produce lack, poverty and limitation.  Remember that we are not dealing with two powers, but with one, ever presenting Itself in varying guises.  “To the pure thou wilt show thyself pure; to the froward thou wilt show thyself froward.”  It will become to us what we are to It.  The Law knows us only as we first know ourselves.  We make up Its mind because Its mind is subjective.  The Spirit controls the Law.  This is the great mystery, the limitless wonder of the universe – that, which out of nothing, can make something.  But Its nothing is really the Substance of every something.

Because all people have believed in lack a law of human thought has been made which binds the race.  Limitation is the result of an ignorant use of the Law.  Every advance in any science proves this to be true.  The real Law is one of freedom.  By that freedom we bind ourselves until we learn how to change the thought and by so doing to change the limitation into freedom.  The two are merely a different use of the One Law.

Limitation is a condensation of the idea of want.  Mind accepts this idea as though it were true and then makes it true in our experience.  It is not always easy to see this nor is it easy to rise above it, but it can be done and we should begin at once to control our thought patterns in such a way that they will produce plenty instead of lack.

The Law of Mind is not selective.  That is, It is receptive without caring what It receives.  It is creative without caring what It creates.  It knows how to do without consciously knowing that It is doing or what It is doing.  It seems strange that the first thing to realize is that there could be such a Law in the universe.  But on second thought we find that all natural laws are of a like character, no natural law is ever selective of itself.  This is why we must realize that the Spirit Itself is more than any or all laws as we understand them.  Conscious mind controls the Law of Mind.  The Law of Mind is sensitive but not conscious from the standpoint of having any selective quality.  Selectivity is the office of the conscious mind while creativeness is the office of the Inner Mind.

Thoughts of lack manifest as limitation.  Thoughts of abundance manifest as success and happiness.  Failure and success are but two ends of one stick.  All conditions and every circumstance is of the nature of effects and can in no way limit Mind unless we take them as a fresh starting point for a creative pattern.  The thought that any given condition is a thing of itself tends to make it appear to be a thing of itself.  Reverse the thought and the condition tends to become reversed.

The Law can know no conditions as such.  It knows form but not size.  Outline is real but limitation is unreal to Mind.  In the Absolute nothing depends on anything but ideas.  Ideas are form, condition, circumstance, cause and effect, and everything that happens between cause and effect.  This is what a treatment is.  It is a thing of itself if we know that it is.  It is what we know it to be.

“Fear not, little flock, it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”  Fear is the great enemy of man.  But fear is a mental attitude and as such can be converted into something else.  Fear is the reverse mental attitude to faith, and is a result of the lack of faith.  Fear brings limitation and lack in its wake and destroys the happiness and possibility of a greater degree of livingness to those who suffer from it.

Fear blocks the more complete givingness of the Spirit to Its highest form of manifestation on this planet, which is mankind.  Fear arises from that mental attitude which limits the possibility and the willingness of Spirit to give us the good we so greatly desire.  There is nothing wrong in the desire for self-expression.  God is more completely expressed through the man who lives largely than through the one who lives meagerly.

Fear is a belief in limitation, a denial that the Divine is the Center and the Source of all good.  We must do all in our power to overcome it.  “Perfect love casts out fear;” that is, confidence overcomes the depression of doubt.  Mental depression can produce physical and financial depression.  The psychology of economic cycles proves this.  In the midst of plenty humanity lives in want, because of fear.   To overcome fear is the greatest adventure of the mind of man.”

July 10 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

FROM THE TEACHING OF JESUS
By Ernest Holmes

God Can Only Give Us What We Take

"God cannot give us anything unless we are in a mental condition to receive the gift.  The Law cannot do anything for us unless it does it through us.  Belief is absolutely necessary to right demonstration.

We are on the path of experience, just waking to the real fact of our true being; as we awake, we find we are surrounded by many false conditions, but there is something within which remembers the real state.  If one will sit in quiet contemplation of good, as an inner experience, he will experience the good which he contemplates.  He can do this only as he turns from that which is evil and dwells on the good alone.  The Universe will not be divided.

The Universe Holds Nothing Against Us

The Universe holds nothing against us.  No matter how many mistakes we have made, we are still perfect beings within, and the within may become the without, if we will carefully train ourselves to listen to the inner voice of truth which speaks to us in our moments of quietness and solitude.

There is nothing in the Universe that wishes evil to anyone.  Indeed, it is only as we experience good that God is expressed through us.  The more completely we realize good, happiness and success, the more perfectly do we express God and the more of God do we become, that is, the more does God become personified through us.

As the prodigal returns to his father's house, so must we return, not with a morbid mind, but consciously and definitely, with direct intent and a complete concentration of purpose.  The journey back should be fraught with happiness and joyful expectation for we shall be met with a smile from the Universe and shall be folded in the arms of love forever.

The Eternal Completion

Substance and supply exist eternally in the Father's House; health, happiness and success are native to the Heavenly Home, and God Himself shall be our Host.  More we could not ask, more could not be given than that which has been given from the foundations of the Universe.

Discord, misery, and unhappiness are the result of a misuse of our true nature, the result of ignorance.  Ignorance of the law excuses no one from its effects; but knowledge clothes us in the seamless robe, while wisdom puts the ring of completion on our finger and understanding feeds us with the fat of the land.

No one who has tried this has failed; it would be impossible to do so.  If any have thought they have failed, let them realize that somewhere they have fallen short of the divine calling.  The Truth cannot fail, for it is God, the Absolute and Unconditioned One, who is the Truth.

Let us no longer fight the old; let us no longer remember that we were once on the outer rim; let us forget the past and live in the eternal present of God's happy smile.  Today is good; tomorrow will be even better, and that vista of tomorrows that stretches down the bright eternities of an endless future will all be good, for the nature of Reality cannot change."

May 27 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

The Power of the Word ~ Ernest Holmes

"Be specific in treating, be direct and definite in your mental work.  You are dealing with Intelligence, so deal with It intelligently.  The treatment must realize the patient as perfect, must recognize the word as power, must know that it breaks down every man-made law and casts it out, that it is the law of harmony and the recognition of the Presence of Good, that within itself it is unbounded, and equipped with the power to execute itself - and it must know that it does this.  It must know that there is nothing that can change it, that there is no belief which can hinder it; that it cannot be reversed, misplaced, mislaid, neutralized or destroyed by any opposing force; that it does the thing it is supposed to do.  And it must know that it is continuous and unremitting and will operate until it does all it is supposed to do.

Jesus said:  "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away."  And Isaiah understood something of this when he said:  "So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth; it shall not return unto me void."

May 11 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

We Are Allowed to Choose ~ Ernest Holmes

"Man has the ability to choose what he will do with his life, and is unified with a Law which automatically produces his choice.  While he does not have the ability to destroy the idea of himself, he does have the ability to deface it, to make it appear discordant, but he cannot destroy the Divine Image.  Man is an individual and does with himself what he wills.  The Scriptures say:  "God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions."  Individuality cannot be automatically produced; it must be spontaneous.   It would not be individuality without the ability to think as it chose.

We live in a Universe of Love as well as a Universe of Law.  One is the complement of the other - the Universe of Love pulsating with feeling, with emotion, and the Universe of Law, the Executor of all feeling and all emotion.  In this lesson on healing, then, let us remember that back of the man which we see is the Divine Image.  There is perfect Concept of Man, held in the Mind of the Universe as an already accomplished fact, but man is subject to the law of his own choice.

Man Re-enacts God

Man is conscious mind or spirit; this stands for his objective faculty.  The objective mind of man is his recognition of life in a conscious state - it is the only attribute of man that is volitional, or self-choosing.  Consequently, it is the spiritual man.  The conscious mind of man is the contemplator.

Let us bear in mind what we have already learned:  that the Universe is the result of the contemplation of the Divine Mind, or the Holy Spirit, which is God.  God creates by contemplating His own I-AM-NESS, and this contemplation, through Law, becomes the objectification of the Self-Realization of the Infinite Mind.

The Divine Nature is re-enacted in man; he is conscious mind and spirit, and, as he contemplates, he reflects his thought into the Universal Subjectivity where it is received and acted upon.

As Mind, or Soul, accepts these images of thought, It operates upon unformed substance and causes it to take definite form as body, which is unconscious form.  It becomes definite form, but the form itself is unconscious, because it is made of immaterial substance.   Body, of itself, without Mind, has neither consciousness nor volition.  Devoid of mentality, the body neither thinks, sees, hears, feels, touches nor tastes.  Take the mentality away from a body and it becomes a corpse.  Having no conscious intelligence, it at once begins to disintegrate and to resolve into the Universal Substance, or unformed matter, from which it came.

Although man is inherently a perfect idea, his individuality covers this idea with the forms of thought which he images.  Man comes into this life subjective to the race consciousness and to his own environment, he unfolds his own personality and begins to crate new subjective thought.  He thinks and observes, draws certain conclusions and deductions, and incorporates them within his mentality, until at last they also become a part of the relative cause of his objective existence.

Healing, then is accomplished by uncovering, neutralizing and erasing false images of thought, and letting the perfect idea reflect itself through subjective mind into the body.

When one realizes that everything is Mind and that nothing moves but Mind, and that the only instrument of Mind is thought (which is contemplation in some form or other) he will see that nothing can permanently heal unless it be accompanied by right thinking."

April 14 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

Vitalizing Faith ~ Ernest Holmes

"In order to have faith, we must have a conviction that all is well.  In order to keep faith, we must allow nothing to enter our thought which will weaken this conviction.  Faith is built up from belief, acceptance and trust.  Whenever anything enters our thought which destroys, in any degree, one of these attitudes, to that extent faith is weakened.

Our mind must be steady in its conviction that our life is some part of God, and that the Spirit is incarnated in us.  Affirmations and denials are for the purpose of vitalizing faith - for the purpose of converting thought to a belief in things spiritual.  The foundation for correct mental treatment is perfect God, perfect man, and perfect being.  Thought must be organized to fit this premise, and conclusions must be built on this premise.  We must keep our faith vital, if we hope to successfully treat for ourselves or others.

All sciences are built upon faith principles.  All principles are invisible, and all laws accepted on faith.  No man has seen God at any time, nor has he seen goodness, truth or beauty, but who can doubt their existence?

Not only must we have complete faith in Spirit, and Its ability to know and to do, but we must have complete confidence in our approach to It.  We must not be lukewarm in our conviction.  We must know that we know.  We are to demonstrate that spiritual thought force has power over all apparent material resistance, and this cannot be done unless we have abounding confidence in the Principle which we approach.

Pure faith is a spiritual conviction; it is the acquiescence of the mind, the embodiment of an idea, the acceptance of a concept.  If we believe that the Spirit, incarnated in us, can demonstrate, shall we be disturbed at what appears to contradict this?  We shall often need to know that the Truth which we announce is superior to the condition we are to change.  In other words, if we are speaking from the standpoint of the Spirit, then there can be no opposition to It!  It is only when we let go of all human will, and recognize the pure essence of the Spiritual Principle incarnated in us, that thought rises above a belief in duality.  We should constantly vitalize our faith by the knowledge that the Eternal is incarnated in us; that God Himself goes forth anew into creation through each one of us; and that in such degree as we speak the Truth, the Almighty has spoken!"