July 22 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

THE LAW of ATTRACTION
By Ernest Holmes

No Failures

"If one appears to have failed, he should realize that there are no failures in the Universe.  He should completely erase the idea of failure by stating that there are no failures.  If one believes that he failed last year, he will be likely to fail again this year, unless the false thought is erased.  Break down everything except the recognition of the One Perfect Power, which is not contingent upon any place, person, condition, time of year, or anything but Itself.  A demonstration is made when it comes straight through from the Truth.  The one who wishes to make a demonstration must clear up his own subjective atmosphere, the reason being that he may be objectively making statements which his subjective thought may be denying.  In this way, we often neutralize our word as fast as it is spoken.

When Jesus said:  "Resist not," He meant that non-recognition of evil is the only way to avoid it.  This is true according to the law of cause and effect, for what we persist in recognizing we persist in holding in place.  That which we refuse to recognize, we neutralize, and it is no longer there so far as we are concerned.

So we erase any idea of failure.  Now here is where it looks as if one were not telling the truth to himself, but he is declaring the truth about the Spirit that indwells him.  THIS SPIRIT NEVER FAILS.  Affirm this until it is a very part of your being:  "This word blots out from the book of my remembrance any sense of lack, limitation, want, or fear of failure.  There is no failure, no person to fail.  Failure is neither person, place nor thing.  It is a false thought and has no truth in it.  It is a belief in lack and there is no lack.  It is a belief in a limitation which does not exist.

Your word, which is one with the Infinite Life, has been spoken in calm trust.  It will be taken up at once and it will be oeprated on.  Perfect is the pattern and perfect will be the result.  Your word is now establishing it forever.  See this, feel it, know it.  You are now encompassed by perfect life, by infinite activity, by all power, by all guidance.  The Power of the Spirit is supplying you with all good, It is filling you with life and love.

Thought is very subtle and sometimes when you are making such an affirmation, arguments will rise against it.  Stop at once and meet those arguments.  Refuse to accept them.  We speak into our words the intellingence which we are, and backed by that greater Intelligence of the Universal Mind, our word becomes a law unto the thing for which it is spoken.  There goes forth from this word the Power of the Infinite.

Suppose one were treating his business and something within him should say:  "There are too many people in this business," he should handle the thought of competition at once.  Declare:  "There is no competition and no monopoly in my experience."

Treatment is a thing of itself; it is an entity of Infinite Intelligence, Life and Action, and nothing can hinder its operation but unbelief or a lack of adequate mental equivalents.  "They could not enter in because of unbelief," and because they "limited the Holy One of Israel."

Never depend upon people or say that things must come from this or that source.  It makes no difference where things come from.  SAY THAT THEY ARE, and let them come from where they may, and then if something occurs which points to a place for them to come from, it is correct to say:  "If this is the place, then there is nothing which can hinder."

Nothing moves but Mind.  God makes things through the direct act of becoming the things which He creates.  This is what we do, for our thought becomes the thing thought of.  The thought and the thing are one in reality.  WHAT A MAN HAS AND WHAT HE IS, IS THE RESULT OF THE SUBJECTIVE STATE OF HIS THOUGHT.  Keep on subjectifying thought until the balance of consciousness is on the affirmative side, and nothing can hinder it from demonstrating.  This is the inevitable for this is the way the Law operates.  A good meditation for Opportuniity is the following:

"My opportunities are unlimited.  There is a Divine Urge to express.  It permeates me and fills all space and all people.  All of my affairs are in Its hands.  To It are clearly visible the best ways, methods and means for my greater expression.  I leave my affairs in the hands of this principle, and I co-operate with It.

"Today the possibilities of my experience are unlimited.  The Spirit flows through me, inspiring me and sustaining that inspiration.  I have ability and talent and I am busy using them.  This talent is divinely sustained and marketed under a Universal plan of right action.

"Life lies open to me - rich, full, abudnant.  My thought, which is my key to life, opens all doors for me.  I am one with Infinity, Divinity.  I realize this unity.  I proceed on my way as one who knows that God goes with him into an eternal day of infinite privilege.  I have only to open the portals of my soul and accept that which is ready to express through me.  Today I fling these portals wide; today I am the instrument through which life flows.""

July 16 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

THE LAW OF ATTRACTION

By Ernest Holmes

Attracting Friends

"In turning to the Law, realize that it is a Law of Reflection.  “Life is the mirror of king and slave.”  Emerson said:  “If you want a friend, be a friend.”  As the idea of friendship dawns upon the consicousness, the law of attraction produces friends, for one is the picture and the other is the thing.  This is the great teaching of involution and evolution, the thought involved and the result evolved.  One is the treatment and the other is the demonstration.  When we are dealing with Causation, we are dealing with that which has involved within Itself all effect, as it unfolds.  We may leave it to the Law to compel right action.  With this in mind let us go on to treatment.

Do we wish to attract friends?  We must begin to image ideal relationships, be they social or otherwise, to sense and feel the presence of friends; to enjoy them in our mentalities, not as an illusion but as a reality, not as a dream but as an experience; to declare that their presence is now here.  BUT WE MUST NEVER LOOK TO SEE IF THEY ARE HERE, BECAUSE THIS WOULD IMPLY DOUBT AND WOULD NEUTRALIZE OUR WORD.  We can attract the kind of friends we wish if we specfiically designate the kind, but we must never think of certain people, or that a particular individual must be one of the friends, for this would be hypnotic.  The idea will bring the right kind of friends.

In order to have this friendship enduring, true, really worth while and a thing of beauty, we should cultivate an attitude of friendship toward everybody and everything.  The one who has learned to love all people will find plenty of people who will return that love.  This is not mere sentiments, and it is more than a religious attitude of mind.  It is a deep, scientific fact, and one to which we should pay attention.  The reason is this:  As all is Mind, and we attract to us what we first become; until we learn to love, we are not sending out love vibrations, and not until we send out those vibrations, can we receive love in return.

When we find we are without friends, the thinking to do is at once to send our thought out to the whole world; send it full of love and affection.  Know that this thought will meet the desires of some other person who is wanting the same thing, and in some way the two will be drawn together.  Think of the whole world as your friend, but you must also be the friend of the whole world.  In this way, and with this simple practice, you will draw to you so many friends that the time will be too short to enjoy them all.   Refuse to see the negative side of anyone.  Refuse to let yourself misunderstand or be misunderstood.  Know that everyone wants you to have the best.  Affirm this wherever you go, and you will find things just as you wish them to be.

One of the first things to do, is to love everybody.  If you have not done this, begin to do so at once.  There is always more good than bad in people, and seeing the good tends to bring it forth.  Love is the grandest healing and drawing power on earth.  It is the very reason for our being, and that explains why it is that people should have something or someone to love. The life that has not loved has not lived, it is still dead.  Love is the sole impulse for creation, and the man who does not have love as the greatest incentive in his life, has never developed the real creative instinct.  No one can swing out into the Universal without love, for the whole Universe is based upon it.

“To him who hath loved much, much is forgiven.”  A man may have many shortcomings, but if he loves greatly much will be forgiven him.  People are dying for real human interest, for genuine friendship, for someone to tell them they are all right.  We always welcome the man who looks at the world as his friend and loves it.  And it is a law that the man who sees what he wants to see, regardless of what appears, will someday experience in the outer what he has so faithfully seen in the within.  From selfish reasons alone, if from no loftier reason, we cannot afford to find fault, to hate, or even to hold in mind anything against any living soul!  The God of love cannot hear the prayer of the one who fails to love.  In our meditation for friendship, let us make our unity with all people, with all life:

“God in me is unified with God in all.  This One is now drawing into my life all love and fellowship.  I am one with all people, with all things, with all life.  As I listen in the silence, the voice of all humanity speaks to me and answers the love that I hold out to it.

“The great love which I now feel for the world is the Love of God, and it is felt by all and comes back to me from all.  I understand all people and this understanding is reflected back to me from all.  I give friendship and therefore I have friends.  I help, therefore, I am helped.  I uplift, therefore, I am uplifted.  I am now surrounded by all love, all friendship, all companionship, all health, all happiness, all success.  I AM ONE WITH LIFE.  I wait in the silence while the great Spirit bears this message to the whole world.””

January 27 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

How to Use It (Continued) ~ Ernest Holmes, The Science of Mind

Of all the people in the world, the ones who have come the nearest to touching the seamless garment of Truth have been the most sympathetic and the greatest lovers of the race.  Jesus said, "And I, if I be lifted up, ....(not dragged down) will draw all men unto me."  (John 12:32)

We are in the world and of it and it is good that it is so.  The world is all right when we view it correctly.  Who knows what would transpire if all men would speak the truth?  It has never yet been tried, but let not the mouth of the profane hinder those who would enter, thereby keeping them from entering.  The world has never yet followed the simple ethics of Jesus, yet it is loud in its proclamation that it is Christian.  This statement is not written in a spirit of controversy, it is one of conviction, and will make its appeal only to those who are convinced  "A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still."

Let us return to the man who really wishes to demonstrate the supremacy of spiritual thought force over apparent material resistance.  Let us put his treatment in the first person - impersonating him for the purpose of clarity.

"I am a center in the Divine Mind, a point of God-conscious life, truth and action.  My affairs are divinely guided and guarded into right action, into correct results.  Everything I do, say or think, is stimulated by the Truth.  There is power in this word that I speak, because it is of the Truth and it is the Truth.  There is perfect and continuous right action in my life and my affairs.  All belief in wrong action is dispelled and made negative.  Right action alone has power and right action is power, and Power is God...the Living Spirit Almighty.  This Spirit animates everything that I do, say or think.  Ideas come to me daily and these ideas are divine ideas.  They direct me and sustain me without effort.  I am continuously directed.  I am compelled to do the right thing at the right time, to say the right word at the right time, to follow the right course at all times.

"All suggestion of age, poverty, limitation or unhappiness is uprooted from my mind and cannot gain entrance to my thought.  I am happy, well and filled with perfect Life.  I live in the Spirit of Truth and am conscious that the Spirit of Truth lives in me.  My word is the law unto its own manifestation, and will bring to me or cause me to be brought to its fulfillment.  There is no unbelief, no doubt, no uncertainty.  I know and I know that I know.  Let every thought of doubt vanish from my mind that I may know the Truth and the Truth may make me free."

The Truth is instantaneous in its demonstration, taking only such time in Its unfoldment as is inherent in the law of a logical and sequential evolution.  In this invisible law of unfoldment, we must come to trust, and although we do not see the way, we must believe that the way IS and IS OPERATIVE.  We must trust the Invisible, for It is the sole cause of that which is visible... "...things which are seen were not made of things which do appear."   (Heb. 11:3)

Healing and demonstration take place as our minds become attuned to the truth of Being.  There is no process of healing, but there is generally a process in healing.  This process is the time and effort which we undergo in our realizations of Truth.

The one who wishes scientifically to work out his problems, must daily take the time to meditate and mentally treat the condition, no matter what the apparent contradictions may be.  He is working silently in the Law and the Law will find an outlet through his faith in It.  This Law is the Law which puts the act into all action.  It is the invisible actor, working through us to will and to do.  As a result of right treatment, the mold formed in the subjective mind by the treatment makes possible a concrete manifestation.  The treatment is an intelligent Energy in the invisible world.  It is a spiritual entity, working through the Law of Mind, and it is an actual force now consciously directed.  Therefore, it must produce specific results.

This will not seem strange to those who have given thought to the subject.  As the primordial Word of the Creator is the only thing which explains creation, so every man's word - partaking of this original nature as it does - must reproduce the creative function in his life, at the level of his consciousness of One Life back of, in, and through all.

January 23 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

Turn Entirely from the Condition ~ Ernest Holmes, The Science of Mind

""Behold thou my face forevermore." "Look unto me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth."  That is, look up and not down. The reason a man has difficulty in throwing off some weakness of character - while believing in Spirit implicitly and having faith that he is going to overcome his limitation - is because he has not induced the necessary images in mind. If he had, he would have overcome his trouble. Thinking of his weakness keeps the image of it before him.  We cannot be too insistent on this all-important point:  in treating, we must TURN ENTIRELY AWAY FROM THE CONDITION.  Disease and limitation are neither person, place, nor thing.  Turn entirely from the condition, or limited situation, to its opposite, to the realization of health, happiness and harmony.  Spiritual treatment starts with Perfect God, Perfect Man, and Perfect Being, which statement consciously removes any belief which denies such manifestation.

Look Only at What You Want

Never look at that which you do not wish to experience.  No matter what the false condition may be, it must be refuted.  The proper kind of a denial is based upon the recognition that, in reality, there is no limitation, for Mind can as easily make a planet as an acorn. The Infinite knows no difference between a million dollars and a penny.  It only knows that IT IS.

It is the consciousness back of the word that forms the word.  Consciousness means the inner embodiment of an idea through the recognition of Truth and a direct relationship to the Divine.  The greatest teacher who ever lived was the most spiritual man, for the more universal and comprehensive the thought, the more Godlike it must become.

A good treatment is always filled with the recognition of the Presence of God, or Good.  This automatically wipes out any picture of undesirable conditions, for the Spirit of God is a law of elimination and obliteration to everything unlike Itself!  Even in what we term spiritual things, we are still dealing with the law of cause and effect, for God is Law.  The more exalted, the more heavenly, the more boundless, the more Godlike or Christlike the thought it, the more power it will have.  This is why the greatest teacher became the Savior.  A spiritual genius would have to be a  Savior.

Never Limit Your View of Life

Never limit your view of life by any past experience.  The possibility of life is inherent within the capacity to imagine what life is, backed by the power to produce this imagery, or Divine Imagination.  It is not a question of failing or succeeding. It is simply a question of sticking to an idea until it becomes a tangible reality.  The illusion is in the way we look at things.  We have looked at poverty, degradation and misery until they have assumed gigantic proportions. Now we must look at harmony, happiness, plenty, prosperity, peace and right action, until they appear.

When we are making a demonstration, we pay no attention to what happens in the objective world.  We interpret causes by conditions, only as we realize that a condition must partake of the nature of its cause.  If there appears to be confusion in the condition, then there must have been confusion in the thought back of it.  We pay no attention to the right subjective recognition.  The way scientifically to work out a problem is daily in thought to conceive of it as already being an accomplished fact in experience.  We realize the desire is already embodied in the Absolute.  We are dealing with nothing less than the Absolute - with REALITY.

During the process, many things may happen that appear to be destructive.  We may pass through good fortune and bad, but if we can come to the point where we are not disturbed by "things" we can have found the secret.  If, as Jesus said, we "judge not according to appearance, but judge righteous judgment," remembering that "things which are seen are not made of things which do appear;" if, I repeat, we can judge in this manner, OUT OF ANY CHAOS WE CAN PRODUCE HARMONY."