November 19 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

THE PRACTICE of SPIRITUAL MIND HEALING

Ernest Holmes

"One should never allow himself to think of, or talk about, limitation or poverty.  Life is a mirror and will reflect back to the thinker what he thinks into it.  The more spiritual the thought, the higher its manifestation.  Spiritual thought means an absolute belief in, and reliance upon, Truth.  This is both natural and normal.

All is Love and yet all is Law.  Love is the impelling force and Law executes the will of Love.  Man
is a center of God-Consciousness in the great Whole.  He cannot deface his real being, but may hinder the Whole from coming into a complete expression through his life.  Turning to the One with a complete abandonment and in absolute trust, he will find that he is already saved, healed and prospered."

November 16 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

THE PRACTICE of SPIRITUAL MIND HEALING
Ernest Holmes

"Does it make any difference whether or not the patient is taking medicine? Not at all.  If it gives him any relief, he should have it.  We need all the relief we can get.  The patient is healed when he no longer needs medicine.  Some think they dishonor God when they take a pill.  This is superstition.  Discard these thoughts and give your entire attention to realizing perfection for your patient.

Healing is not accomplished through will power but by knowing the Truth.  This Truth is that the Spiritual Man is already Perfect, no matter what the appearance may be.  "Holding thoughts" has nothing to do with this form of treatment.  If you find when you begin to give a treatment that the process gives you a headache, know that you are doing your work on the mental plane and not through spiritual realization.  A treatment should leave the practitioner in better condition than before he gave it; otherwise, it is not a good treatment.

One might ask:  "Is all mental disease a thought held in the conscious mind of the patient?"  No, not necessarily.  It may be a subconscious thought, or it may be the result of many thoughts, which brought together produce a definite result.  Combinations of thought unite to produce definite effects.

Limitation and poverty are not things, but are the results of restricted ways of thinking.  We are surrounded by a Subjective Intelligence, which receives the impress of our thought and acts upon it.  This natural Law in the Mental World is neither good nor bad.  It can only be said of It that IT IS, and that we may consciously use It.  The Law is a law of reflection; for Life is a mirror, reflecting to us as conditions the images of our thinking.  Whatever one thinks tends to take form and become a part of his experience.  The Medium of all thought is the Universal Mind, acting as Law.  Law is always impersonal, neutral, receptive and reactive."

October 17 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

MEDITATIONS for Self-Help

By Ernest Holmes

Power to Live

I have the power to live the life of good.

My power is from On High, it cannot be taken from me;

It will not leave me desolate.

Power flows through me and is in me, and

I can now feel and sense it.

The Power to live is in me and it cannot desert me.

It is my power and is continually present.

I am the power to live.

The Circle of Love

A circle of love is drawn around me and mine, and all.

No harm can enter that Sacred Circle, for it is the Love of God.

It is a complete protection from all evil.

"I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me."

There is no evil and no harm.

I am free from all sense of fear.

Love surrounds and protects me.

September 22 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

WHAT the MYSTICS TAUGHT
Ernest Holmes

What is a Mystic? (continued)

"Man has compelled nature to do his bidding.  He has harnessed electricity, caught the wind, trapped steam, and made them do his will.  He has invented machines to do the work of thousands.  He has belted the globe with his traffic and built up a wonderful civilization; but in a few cases has he conquered his own soul.  The mystic has revealed things that do not pass as ships in the night.  He has revealed Eternal Verities and has plainly taught us that there is a Living Presence indwelling ALL.  This constitutes the greatest intellectual and spiritual heritage of the ages.  The balance of our knowledge of God must come as a direct impartation from Him.  We must learn it for ourselves.

The mystic does not read human thought, but rather he senses the atmosphere of God.  The mystics of every age have seen, sensed and taught THE SAME TRUTH!  Psychic experiences, on the other hand, bear the exact opposite testimony, as they more or less contradict each other, for each psychic sees a different kind of mental picture.  But the mystic experiences of the ages have revealed ONE AND THE SAME TRUTH!

A psychic sees largely through his own, or another's subjective mentality.  Consequently, his impressions are more or less colored by the vibration of his own or another's thought.  He is subject to hallucinations and false impressions of every description.  That is why, generally speaking, no two psychics see the same thing.  Mystics have all sensed one identical Reality, and their testimony is in no way confusing, because the Spirit within them has borne witness to the same Truth.

The mystics have been perfectly normal people.  They did not think of themselves as mystics, that was their language.  It was natural to them - perfectly normal.  They have been people like Jacob Boehme, a cobbler, pegging away at his shoes, who, looking up, saw in the geranium plant the reflection of the Cosmos - the very soul of God; like Jesus looking into the heart of nature; like Moses reading God's Law from a burning bush."

July 21 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

THE LAW of ATTRACTION
By Ernest Holmes

Attracting Success (continued)

"We live in Mind an It can return to us only what we think into It.  No matter what we do, Law will always obtain.  If we are thinking of ourselves as poor and needy, then Mind has no choice but to return what we have thought into It.  "It is done unto you as you believe."  Thoughts of failure, limitation or poverty are negative and must be counted out of our lives for all time.  God has given us a Power and we must use It.  We can do more toward saving the world by proving this law than all that charity has ever given to it.

Remember God is the silent Power behind all things, always ready to pour into our experience that which we need.  We must have a receptive and positive faith in the evidence of things not seen with the physical eye but which are eternal in the heavens.  All is Mind, and we must provide a receptive avenue for It, as It passes out through us into the outer expression of our affairs.   If we allow the world's opinion to control our thinking, then that will be our demonstration!  If, on the other hand, we rise superior to the world, we shall create a new pattern.

It is quite necessary, then, that the successful business man should keep his mind on thoughts of happiness, which produce cheerfulness instead of depression.  He should radiate joy and should be filled with faith, hope and expectancy.  These cheerful, hopeful attitudes of mind are indispensable to the one who really wants to do things in life.  Declare your freedom.  Know that no matter what others may say, think or do, you are a success now, and nothing can hinder you from accomplishing your good.  All the power of the universe is with you.  Feel it, know it, and then act as though it were true.

Begin to blot out, one by one, all false beliefs - all ideas that man is limited, poor or miserable.  Refuse to think of failure or to doubt your own power.  See only what you wish to experience and look at nothing else.  We are relieved of all thought of clinging to anybody or anything.  Cannot the Great Principle of Life create for us all that we need?  The Universe is inexhaustible; It is limitless, it knows no bounds and has no confines.  We are not depending on a reed shaken by the wind, but on the Principle of Life Itself, for all that we have or ever shall need.  It is not some power, or a great power, it is ALL POWER.  All we have to do is to believe, never wavering, no matter what happens.  As we do this, we shall find that things are steadily coming our way and that they are coming without that awful effort which destroys the peace of mind of the majority of the race.  We know that there can be no failure in God's Mind, and this Mind is the Power on which we are depending."

July 14 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

THE LAW OF ATTRACTION
By Ernest Holmes

Thought Atmosphere

"Spiritual mind healing is a result of the constructive use of a mental law, which the world is gradually beginning to understand.  Since we are thinking beings and cannot stop thinking, and since Creative Mind receives our thought and cannot stop creating, It must always be creating something for us.  What It will make depends wholly upon what we are thinking, and what we shall attract will depend upon that on which our thoughts dwell.

Thought can attract to us that which we first mentally embody, that  which has become a part of our mental makeup, a part of our inner understanding.  Every person is surrounded by a thought atmosphere.  This mental atmosphere is the direct result of his conscious and unconscious thought, which, in its turn,becomes the direct reason for, and cause of, that which comes into his life.  Thorough this power we are either attracting or repelling.  Like attracts like and it is also true that we may become attracted to something which is greater than our previous experience, by first embodying the atmosphere of our desire.

Taking as the starting point the idea that the essence of man's life is God, it follows that he uses the same creative process.  Everything originates in the One, comes form the same Source and returns again to It.  As God's thought makes worlds, and peoples them with living things, so our thought makes our world and peoples it with our experiences.  By the activity of our thought, things come into our life and we are limited only because we have not known the Truth.  We have thought that outside things controlled us, when all the time we have had that within which could have changed everything and given us freedom from bondage.

Everyone automatically attracts to himself just what he is, and we may set it down that wherever we are, however intolerable the situation may be, we are just where we belong.  There is no power in the universe but ourselves that can free us.  Someone may help us on the road to realization, but substantiality and permanence can come only through the consciousness of our own life and thought.  Man must bring himself to the place in mind where there is no misfortune, no calamity, no accident, no trouble, no confusion; where there is nothing but plenty, peace, power Life and Truth.  He should definitely, daily (using his own name) declare the Truth about himself, realizing that he is reflecting his statements into Consciousness and that they will be operated upon by It.

This is called, in mysticism, High Invocation; invoking the Divine Mind, implanting within It, seeds of thought relative to oneself.  And this is why some of the teachers of olden times used to instruct their pupils to cross their hands over their chests and say:  "Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful me!" definitely teaching them that as they mentally held themselves, so they would be held.  "Act as though I am and I will be."

One of the ancient sayings is that "To the man who can perfectly practice inaction, all things are possible."  This sounds like a contradiction until one penetrates its inner meaning, for it is only when one completely practices inaction that he arrives at the point of the true actor, for he then realizes that the act and the actor are one and the same; that cause and effect are the same; which is simply a different way of saying:  "Know the truth and the truth shall make you free."  To reduce the whole thing to its simplest form, whatever one reflects into Mind tends to take form."

May 12 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

Only Our Own Concepts Limit Us ~ Ernest Holmes

“Realizing that conscious thought operates through a Power which is Infinite, we see there can be no limit to the power to heal, other than the limit of our ability to conceive that Power as healing.  We are limited, not by Principle, but by our own inability to see perfection.  Our thought can bring out a condition as perfect as we can conceive.  Therefore, the man whose thought is the most God-like – that is, the truest, the highest, the most noble, the most complete, the most peaceful – will be the best healer.  His thought reflects a greater perfection.  That is why we cannot divorce true mental healing from true spiritual work.  When thought reaches a higher degree of perfection, as the race consciousness unfolds and evolves, it will bring out a still greater development of life than we know now.”

May 6 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

PHYSICAL PERFECTION (Continued) ~ Ernest Holmes

"We realize that mental healing must also be spiritual healing, for the two cannot be divorced. We know that a belief in duality - a belief in the power of Good and the power of evil - has helped to destroy man, and the understanding of Unity alone will heal him.  We seek to realize this Unity with God in all our healing work.  Every treatment must carry with it a realization of God, if it is to be a good treatment.  We are not in any way superstitious about this, but understand that it is necessary since all life is One, and God is the ONE Life in which we all live.

We realize that since our understanding is not yet complete, it is legitimate to use all methods which will help troubled humanity, but we do look forward to the day when Truth alone will answer every need!  The mental healer will do all his work in mind, and will give his whole time and attention to correct knowing, but he will leave his patient free to use any method that will benefit him.  In this way, the practitioner will get the best results, for everything is good as far as it goes, but the consciousness of Truth alone is the tool of a spiritual practitioner.

Too much cannot be said against the belief that will power is creative.  The will is directive but not creative.  Will is the conscious, directive power of the intellect and as such has a very important place in the creative order but in no case is it to be used as though it could force things to happen.  Any idea of using the will to influence people is a mistake.

If we agree that we can influence others by will power, then we are also admitting that someone else with a greater power of will can influence us.  There is no law of nature that works only one way since all natural laws are impersonal.  The temporary effects of will power continue only so long as the will forces them to.  They have no real life within themselves and must disintegrate as soon as the unnatural force is withdrawn.

Moreover this use of will power contradicts the main foundation upon which all true mental science is built, that we use a Creative Power which does not need to be urged or forced into action.  It is Its nature to act and because we are as we are, it is Its nature to act creatively upon the images of thought that we impress It with.  We do not create energy, we distribute it, and in the natural sciences we know that we can transform energy from one type to another.  So the will may decide what form the energy is to take but it cannot nor does it need to create the energy.

The Energy of Mind like other natural energies already exists.  We merely use It and it is within our province to use It in any way we may desire, we have it within our power to cause it to take varying forms for us, no particular one is permanent.  The imagination is creative, the will is directive.

Through will we decide just what we wish to have done.  We may wish to use the creative power of mind for helping someone else, for self-help, or for some other purpose.  The will holds attention to the mental viewpoint until the creative power has time to work through the law of unfoldment.  We may wish on the other hand to draw some information to ourselves; the will then holds to the idea that we are receiving the desired information.  It can become active or receptive or it may pass into a state of neutral contemplation where its purpose is merely to sense the wonders of the spiritual life.  But in no case does the will become creative.

The will is given us to protect ourselves with.  Nothing should be allowed to pass into the creative currents of our thought until the will has first admitted it.  The will must first analyze, dissect and then decide what it wishes the inner imagination to work on.  True spiritual work will strengthen the will without exhausting the mind; if our mental work tires us then we are using the will in the wrong way.  The right way would be to determine to think peace whether there appeared to be any reason to expect that peace would be forthcoming in the experience.

As we should understand the proper use of the will, so we should understand the true meaning of concentration.  So many different ideas have been promulgated that a great deal of confusion results.  To concentrate means to bring to a center, and in Mental Science it means focusing the mental attention on some definite and desired thought, image, idea or thing.  Of course we are dealing with the idea as though thoughts were things.  The spirit of the thing is in the thought.  This is its essence, law and cause."

May 3 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

MEDITATIONS for Self-Help

Ernest Holmes

O Man, Speak Forth Thy Word

O man, speak forth thy word and be not afraid.

Did you not know? have you not heard?

His Divinity is planted within thee, and thy word is one with all power.

The Spirit of the Most High is thy Spirit, and the Word of God is thy word.

Thy freedom is hid within thee, and thy inner light shall illumine thy way.

Speak man, and be free!  Announce and proclaim thy works!

Let thy word go forth with power, and thy Spirit shall conquer all.

Spirit within me, speak.

The Power of the Word

The Word is a mighty Power, and that Word is in me and through me now.

My Word is one with the All Good and cannot fail to accomplish the desired ends.

My Word goes forth with Power unto everything that I do, say or think.

The Word is my Power by day and by night.

I will speak that Word and trust in the great Law of Life to fulfill it.

I speak the word in full confidence.

The Science of Mind in a Year ~ Ernest Holmes

Thoughts Are Things ~ Ernest Holmes

"Health and sickness are largely externalizations of our dominant mental and spiritual states.  An emotional shock, or a mind filled with thoughts of fear, has been known to cause the momentary stoppage or acceleration of the heart.  Physicians now testify that, under emotional stress, particularly anger, the blood leaves a chemical deposit around the joints in the body.  Worry, fear anger, jealousy, and other emotional conditions, are mental in their nature, and as such are being recognized as the hidden cause of a large part of all the physical suffering to which the flesh is heir.  A normal healthy mind reflects itself in a healthy body, and conversely, an abnormal mental state expresses its corresponding condition in some physical condition.  Thoughts are things!

Modern psychology affirms that all the thoughts and emotions we have experienced since we came into conscious existence are still present in Mind, where ceaselessly active they manifest themselves as subjective tendencies that mold the body in health or sickness; and determine, as well, our reactions to all life and experience.

We do not maintain that this or that specific disease is always the result of thinking about such a condition; but we do assert that a prolonged discordant mental state is certain to eventuate in some form of physical ailment.  People have died of great grief; of broken hearts; of outburst of temper; of deep and continued resentment; of excessive worry, and many other mental states, in which there was no specific thought of sickness at all.  The point to remember is, that all mind activity inevitably tends to create its physical correspondent, so that an unhealthful and morbid mental state projects itself into the physical body.

Thoughts are things, they have the power to objectify themselves; thought lays hold of Causation and forms real Substance.  The word of man is the law of his life, under the One Great Law of all Life.  Thoughts of sickness can make a man sick, and thoughts of health and perfection can heal him.  Thought is the conscious activity of the one thinking, and works as he directs, through Law; and this Law may be consciously set in motion.  This Law will work for him to the fullest extent of his belief in, and understanding of, It.  A realization of the Presence of God is the most powerful healing agency known to the mind of man.

One with God

Until we awake to the fact that we are One in nature with God, we shall not find the way of life. Until we realize that our own word has the power of life, we will not see clearly.  The Bible points out that man has the same power, in his own life and in his own world, that it claims for God.  "The Word was with God and the Word was God," is an oft-repeated but little understood statement.  The promise to man is equally positive:  "The word is nigh thee, even in thine own mouth that thou shouldst know it and do it."  If any word has power, it follows that all words have power.  It means that every word which we hear, speak or think, has some power."

March 9 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

Inducing Thought ~ Ernest Holmes

"That which thought has done, thought can un-do.  Life-long habits of wrong thinking can be consciously and deliberately neutralized, and an entirely new order of mental and emotional reaction established in Mind.  Merely to abstain from wrong thinking is not enough; there must be active right thinking.  We must become actively constructive and happy in our thinking - not merely passively so.  New and wholesome ideas of life, vitality and hope must be accepted and incorporated into the sub-stratum of our mental life, so that a more wholesome externalization may manifest in our bodily condition and environment.

Since we must all begin right where we are, most of us will be compelled to begin our healing work with a mechanical process.  We should take the highest thought we have, and attempt to enlarge on this consciousness until it embraces a more vital concept of Reality.  Consciousness in this sense means an inner embodiment of ideas. If one wishes to demonstrate prosperity, he must first have a consciousness of prosperity; if he wishes health, he must embody the idea of health.  This is more than faith; it is the knowledge that we are dealing with Law. While a certain consciousness may be mechanically induced, of course, the more spontaneity put into the mechanical word, the more power the word must have.

Choosing Thought

We cannot live a choiceless life.  Every day, every moment, every second, there is choice.  If it were not so we would not be individuals. 

We have the right to choose what we wish to experience.  We have the right to choose the kind of companions with whom we wish to associate; to say in what city and in what type of house we would like to live. We are individuals and the only way we can be individuals is to be spontaneous.  There is no such thing as a mechanistic individuality, it must have the essential elements of spontaneity.  There is no spontaneity and no individuality without prerogative.  There can be no choice unless there is something form which to choose, otherwise the ability to choose would be merely a fantasy.  Therefore, there must be not only the possibility of choice; but the liability of experiencing that which is chosen.

We have a right to choose what we shall induce in Mind.  The way in which our thoughts are to become manifest, we cannot always see - or should we be disturbed that we do not see the way - because effect is potential in cause.  "I am Alpha and Omega," and all that comes between cause and effect.  Cause and effect are really one, and if we have given cause set in motion, the effect will have to equal the cause.  One is the inside and the other the outside of the same thing. A certain, specific, intelligent idea in Mind, will produce a certain, specific, concrete manifestation equal to itself.  There is One Infinite Principle, One Infinite Thought-Stuff, One Infinite Creative Power, but countless numbers of forms, which change as the specific idea behind them changes."

February 27 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

MEDITATION for Self-Help and Healing ~ Ernest Holmes

"In these short meditations I have tried to set forth some ideas which my experiences in mental healing have given me.  I have found that a few brief statements, mentally affirmed, followed by a silent meditation, have been the most effective in the healing work.

Most of these meditation have been written in the first person in order that those using them may be able to do so just as the are written.

It is not claimed that there is any occult power in the words, but that words similar to these are effective in inducing a greater realization of life.

First, decide which meditation you wish to use; then become quiet and composed.  Then carefully read the meditation several times, phrase by phrase, endeavoring to realize the meaning of the words and trying to enter into the atmosphere of the thought.  After having done this, meditate upon the words, following that meditation until you feel a sense of realization."

Seeing the Perfect

My eyes behold the complete and perfect in all Creation, "In all, over all and through all."

I see the perfect; there is nothing else to see, and no suggestion of otherness can enter my thought.

I know only the perfect and the complete.

I am perfect and whole, now.