August 31 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

GENERAL SUMMARY
Ernest Holmes

"We should contact a larger field of faith.  This is done by understanding that God is the giver and the sustainer of human life and expression.  God is all there is.  He is Substance and Supply.  We must learn to accept this.  If it is God's pleasure to give us the Kingdom then it should be our privilege to accept the gift.

The Spirit has not withheld good from us, but ignorance of the true law of supply has caused us to have fear.  "They could not enter in because of their unbelief and because they limited the Holy One of Israel."  We should endeavor to stop limiting God.  All things are given unto us but we shall have to do the taking.  God gives in the abstract, we receive in the concrete.  The gift of Heaven is forever made.  The receiving of this gift is an eternal process of forever expanding the finite.

Since we cannot contract the Absolute we shall have to expand the relative.  The Infinite will not be, or become, less than Itself.  We are of Its nature.  We did not make our own being.  All we can do is to accept that the being which we are is some part of the Divine.  To know this is to overcome fear.  Whether this fear is of lack, pain, sickness or death, it is always a belief that there is something other than Life or that Life withholds pleasure, peace, success and Heaven from us.

Love alone can overcome fear because love surrenders itself to the object of its adoration.  The soul must make a complete surrender of itself to the Spirit.  That is, the Law must come under subjection to the Spirit.  The will of the Spirit is peace, clear thinking and happiness, It could have no other will.

Should we learn to contemplate those things which are desirable and to forget the rest, we would soon overcome fear through faith.  Both are mental.  Let us learn to reverse the thoughts of fear and transmute them into faith.

Since Spirit is present in Its entirety at all times and in all places it follows, that all of Spirit is wherever we center our attention.  And since Spirit is both receptivity and creative responsiveness it follows that wherever we center our attention its image must concentrate substance into the form of such attention.  This is fundamental to our concept of mental and spiritual treatment.  For it is not by external power nor through objective might that our work is to be done, but through the Spirit and the Law.  The Spirit guides and the Law executes.  That which we can take is given us.

Pure Spirit exists at the center of all form.  Of Itself, It is formless but It is ever giving birth to form.  The forms come and go but It goes on forever.  We are some part of It.  If pure Spirit is at the center of everything and is always responding to our thought there is no limit to Its manifestation for us except the limitations that we set.

If it is difficult to see this, realize that our subjective self is the immediate connection between the Absolute and the relative.  It is our share of the Law and immediately connects us with the Creativeness of the Whole.  The Absolute is in relationship to Itself alone.  It is not circumscribed by any form but remains independent of all forms.  It can as easily create a new form for us as to perpetuate an old one.

Mind is the realm of causes.  Conditions are in the realm of effects.  Effects flow from causes and not from themselves.  Thought is the instrument of Mind.  New thoughts create new conditions.  We must learn to think in the Absolute.  This means to think independently of any given or experienced effect.  "Judge not according to appearances."  This thought strikes away the shackles of bondage and finds a new cause at work.

Just as we can conceive of some definite idea, then go on to the conception of another, so we can treat for as many conditions as we can clearly conceive.

We cannot account for the seen without having faith in the unseen.  All advance in science or any other branch of learning must follow this rule if it is to accomplish anything.  To believe in Life is to believe in the invisible.  As science postulates some etheric movement at the center of all objective form, so we start with the premise that this initial movement starts as Pure Intelligence, independent of any form but ready to take form.  All form is temporary even though it lasts for countless millions of years.  That is, any given form comes and goes in a process of time for any given time is temporary.

We have arrived at the conclusion that Spirit or the Mind of God is all Causation.   Then Spirit or Mind is also all effect.  Cause and effect are but two ends of one Unity.  The physical end is visible, the spiritual invisible, but may be inwardly perceived and outwardly experienced.

Spirit, then, is all there is at this very hour and all creation is spiritual.  The Universe is a Spiritual System impregnated with Divine Ideas and peopled with Spiritual Forms.  The ideas of God are perfect laws on their way to producing complete and perfect effects.  The Universe is alive, conscious, awake and aware.  It is love and life.  It is law and order.  It is a Cosmos."

June 9 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

How Habits Are Acquired and Treated ~ Ernest Holmes

"What is a habit?  A habit is desire objectified - "the continuous character of one's thoughts and feelings" - desire for something that will give satisfaction.  At the root of all habit is one basic thing:  the desire to express life.  There is an urge to express in all people, and this urge, operating through the channels of Creative Mind, looses energy into action, and compels the individual to do something.  Back of all this desire is the impulse of Spirit to express.  In man, this impulse must express at the level of his consciousness.

"For each, for the joy of working and each in his separate star,

Shall paint the thing as he sees It, for the God of things as they are."

Some express themselves constructively and some destructively.  Suppose a man who has the liquor habit comes to you to be healed.  You would not treat that habit.  You would not pray for the man to be healed.  You would know that you are dealing with a man who has the desire to express life and who, for the moment, thinks he must express it in terms of intoxication.  He once thought this expressed reality to him.  He now knows that it does not, but he cannot with mere will-power stop it, for the habit appears to have taken complete possession of him.  (We might well remember always that unless we control thought, it will control us.)

In giving treatment, first recognize who and what this man is, saying something like this:  "This man is the full and complete expression of Truth, and as such he is free from any sense of limitation.  He is not bound by any sense of inferiority, which he needs to cover up, for he is a unique individuality, expressing all the attributes of God.  He is free from any delusion or fear of delusion.  He knows that the Spirit of Truth within him is complete and always satisfied.  He has no longing outside of the longing to express his own divinity, and he has the assurance that he shall be able to gratify this: 'Blessed are they who do hunger and thirst after righteousness (right living) for they shall be filled.'  This thing which calls itself the liquor habit has no power over him and cannot operate through him.  By the power of this word which I am now speaking, this habit is completely destroyed and forever obliterated."  Then mentally see him free and harmoniously expressing life and happiness."

May 26 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

Treating Children ~ Ernest Holmes

"In the case of an infant - who is subjective to the conscious thought of the people around it - it may be necessary to teach the parents how to think about the child, else one might heal the infant and have the parents' thought make it sick again.  Explain to them the result of entertaining fears for the health of their children.  Remember that the thought of the parents influences the child.

We will suppose the mother is constantly saying:  "The poor thing; the poor, little sick thing."  From the human standpoint, this is natural, but it does not help the child, no matter how loving the thought may be.  This is called unconscious, or innocent, malpractice.  It is malpractice because it is the wrong use of thought; innocent because it is not intended to harm; unconscious because the mother does not know the result of such mental action.  In such a case, it is the business of the practitioner to realize that there is no mental influence operating through the child except a belief in perfection.

At first, children are happy, free, spontaneous.  That is why we like them, they live instinctively.  As they grow older and their emotions become more complex, and they hear people talk about death, trouble, divorce, love and marriage and everything else, good, bad and indifferent, they begin to react to these emotions subjectively.  Everything that opposes harmony and spontaneous unity, will prove disastrous to the child's health, sooner or later.  After a certain age, children have to be re-educated, just as do adults, that their subjective mind may not reproduce false impressions."