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Creative Mind, by Ernest Shurtleff Holmes [1923], at sacred-texts.com
"IN the beginning, God!" Clear and expressive are these words. In the beginning, God only. No manifest universe! No system of planets! Nothing of form or life, of brute or man! God was the Spirit of All that was to be, but He had not yet moved upon the waters. Then this All-Being moved, or began to create. Where did Spirit move, upon what did It move to create; where did It get a pattern; what means or power did It employ; through what agencies did It work? In short, what is the world, ourselves included, made out of, and how did we and all else come into being? These questions correctly answered would solve the problem of being and set men free. Let us consider.
The Spirit was all; there was nothing else but Itself. All-Inclusive, Everywhere, Infinite. This All-Spirit could not have had the impulse to move unless It were self-conscious, therefore the Spirit is the Power that knows Itself; It is accordingly All-Knowing as well as All-Present. Being one, undivided, whatever It knows, It knows all over instantly. We find then that the Spirit operates through self knowing. It moves, and that inner movement must be one of Infinite Power, moving upon Itself--since It is all--and with a definite purpose. The Spirit, then, moves
upon Itself, and makes out of Itself all that is made. In other words, what we see comes from what we do not see, through some inner intelligence at work, which knows there is no power but Itself. "The things that are seen are not made of the things that do appear." The only possible operation of intelligence is thought, or "The Word." So all things were made by the Word, and "Without the Word was not anything made that hath been made." How simple the process of creation when we understand it. The Spirit speaks--and since there is nothing but the Spirit and it is All-Power, it has only to speak and it is done; "The Word was with God and the Word was God."
From the Word, then, comes forth all that appears. Each life, human or divine, each manifestation is a different kind of word coming into expression. The great fact to dwell upon is that Spirit needs nothing to help It; It is self-conscious and has all power and all ability to do whatever It wishes to accomplish. It operates simply by speaking.
It is hard to get a clear concept of this great Ceaseless Cause, this something from which all things come; at times we get into a maze of confusion when we attempt to realize what the Spirit means. It is then that we should think of It as the great reason behind everything. Being all-knowledge It must know Itself, and must know everything It creates; so It knows us and It knows everyone. Since It is All-Presence we can contact anywhere and will never have to go to some particular spot to find It. As It is All-Knowing and operates through the power of the Word, It know everything we think. Just how It creates we cannot know and need not attempt to understand, for whatever this process of creation is, we find it is always an inner
thought process. We should keep this in mind--the Spirit makes all things out of Itself. Everything comes into being without effort, and when we exert ourselves we are not in accord with the Creative Spirit in the way in which It works. The impulse of the Spirit to move must be caused by a desire to express what It feels Itself to be--Beauty, Form, Color, Life, Love and Power. All things else we find in the manifest universe are attributes of the Spirit, and are caused to spring into being through the Word, because the Spirit wants to enjoy Itself.
We find, then, that the Word, which is the inner activity of thought, comes first in the creative series, and all else comes from the effect of the Word operating upon a universal substance. If the Word precedes all else, then the Word is what we are looking for, and when we get it we shall have what the world has sought from time immemorial. We must, if we wish to prove the power of the Spirit in our lives, look not to outside things or effects, but to the Word alone. The human eye sees and the human hand touches only that which is an effect. Unseen law controls everything; but this Law also is an effect; Law did not make itself; the Law is not intelligence or causation. Before there can be a Law there must be something that acts, and the Law is the way it acts; it is intelligence. "In the beginning was the Word." This Word or the activity of the Spirit, is the cause of the law, and the law in its place is the cause of the thing, and the thing is always an effect; that is, it did not make itself; it is a result. The Word always comes first in the creative series; "The Word was with God and the Word was God" and the Word still is God.
When we realize that man is like God (and he could not be otherwise, being made out of God), we will realize that his word also has power. If there is but One Mind then it follows that our word, our thought is the activity of that One Mind in our consciousness; the power that holds the planets in their place is the same power that flows through man. We must place the Word where it belongs, whether it is the word of God in the Universe or the word of man in the individual; it is always first, before all else, in the beginning. The real sequence is this: Cause, Spirit, Intelligence, God; the Word, the activity of Intelligence; the effect, or the visible thing, whether it is a planet or a peanut. All are made out of the same thing.
What we need to do is to learn how to use the word so that all will come to see that they are creative centers within themselves.
KNOWING that Mind is, we have a principle that is absolute; it is exact; it is going to correspond to our thinking about it. The first great necessity is to believe this; without belief we can do nothing. This is the reason Jesus said "It is done unto you even as you have believed." Always it is done unto people as they believe, and there is Something that does it which never fails.
We must believe that our word is formed upon and around by this creative Mind; for instance, we wish to create activity in our business; we believe that our word is law about that thing, and there is something that takes our thought and executes it for us. If we have accepted
the fact that all is mind and that the thought is the thing, we shall see at once that our word is the power behind the thing, and that it depends upon the word or thought that we are sending out. (See Creative Mind and Success by the author.)
So plastic is mind, so receptive, that the slightest thought makes an impression upon it. People who think many kinds of thought must expect to receive a confused manifestation in their lives. If a gardener plants a thousand kinds of seeds, he will get a thousand kinds of plants; it is the same in mind.
SINCE this is true, everything depends upon our mental concepts. "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he''; the Bible reiterates this statement telling us many times of the creative power of thought; Jesus taught nothing else; He said "the words which I speak unto you, they are Spirit and they are life."
The Centurion coming to Jesus recognized the power of the word spoken by the latter. He said, "I also am one in authority"; but his authority was on the physical plane, and he saw that Jesus had authority on a Spiritual plane, for he said, "Speak the word only."
The Bible also tells us that the word is not afar off but in our own mouth. It is neither here nor there; it is within every living soul. We must take the responsibility for our own lives. All must awake to the facts that they have absolute control over their lives, and that nothing can happen by chance. Then they will have a broader concept
of God, a greater tolerance for their neighbor, and a greater realization of their own divine nature. What a relief from strenuous labor; no more struggle or strife. "Be still and know that I am God, and beside me there is none other." The Spirit being all there is, we cannot conceive of anything that can hinder its working. When the Spirit has spoken, the Word becomes Law, for before the Law is the Word; It precedes all else. First is Absolute Intelligence, All-Power, All-Presence, All-Causation; then the movement upon itself through the power of the Word; then the Word becoming Law; the Law producing the thing and holding it in place.
So long as the Word exists the thing will exist, for since the Word is All-Power there is nothing beside It. "I Am that I Am, and beside me there is none other." This "I Am" is Spirit, God, All. There is no physical explanation for anything in the universe; all causation is Spirit and all effect spiritual. We are not living in a physical world but in a spiritual world peopled with spiritual ideas. We are now living in Spirit.
God, or Spirit, governs the universe through great mental laws that work out the divine will and purpose, always operating from Intelligence. This Intelligence is so vast, and the power so great that our human minds cannot even grasp it; all that we can hope to do is to learn something of the way in which it works, and by harmonizing ourselves with it, to so align ourselves with Spirit that our lives may be controlled by the great harmony that obtains in all the higher laws of nature, but has been very imperfectly manifested in man. This brings us to the second point of consideration.
WE find in the physical universe that automatic laws govern everything; for instance, the tree cannot say "I will not," because of the law that holds it in place; it grows without any volition of its own. So it is with all nature; but when we come to man we find a different manifestation of the Spirit, a being who can say "I choose." In all creation, man alone is an individual; man alone is free; and yet man alone wants, is sick, suffers, and is unhappy. "Man marks the earth with ruin"; why? because he has not found his true nature. The very thing that should free him, and eventually will do so, now limits him. God could not make an individual without making him able to think, and he cannot think without bringing upon himself the results of his thought, good or bad. This does not mean using two powers, but using the One from two standpoints. Nothing in itself is either good or bad; all things exist in mind as a potentiality; mind is eternally acting upon thought, continually producing its own images from mind, and casting them out into manifestation. Man must be the outcome- of the desire of the Spirit to make something which expresses the same life that It feels. Man is made to be a companion of the Infinite; but to arrive at this exalted plane of being, he must have his freedom, and be let alone to discover his own nature; to return love to his Creator only when he chooses to do so. At the doorway, then, of man's mind this wonderful God has to wait. "Behold, I stand at the door and knock"; the opening must be on the part of the individual.
Man lives in a mind that presses in upon him from all sides with infinite possibilities, with infinite creative power. The divine urge of infinite love crowds itself upon him, and awaits his recognition. Being the image of this Power, his thought also must be the Word or cause it the life. At the center of his being is all the power that he will need on the path of his unfoldment; all the mind that man has is as much of this Infinite Mind as he allows to flow through him. We have often thought of God as far off, and of man as a being separate from the All Good; now we are coming to see that God and man are one, and that that One is simply awaiting man's recognition, that he may spring into being and become to man all that he could wish or want. "As the father has inherent life in himself, so hath he given to the Son to have life within himself." It could not be otherwise; we are all in Mind and Mind is always creating for us as we think; and as we are thinking creatures, always thinking, our happiness depends upon our thought. Let us consider the law of our life.
SPIRIT creates through law. The law is always mind in action. Mind cannot act unless intelligence sets it in motion. In the great universal mind man is a center of intelligence, and every time he 'thinks he sets mind into action. 'What is the activity of this mind in relation to man's thought? It has to be one of mental correspondence; that is, mind has to reflect whatever thought it casts into it. Wonderful as Universal Mind is, it has no choice but to create whatever thought is given it; if it could contradict
that thought, it would not be a unit, since this would be recognizing something outside itself. This is a point in Truth which should not be overlooked. The ONE MIND knows only its own ability to make whatever is given It; It sees no other power and never analyzes or dissects; It simply KNOWS, and the reason why people do not understand this is that they have not realized what mind is. The ordinary individual thinks of mind only from the limitation of his own environment. The concept he has of mind is the concept of his own thinking, which is very limited.
We are surrounded by an All Seeing, All Knowing Mind, which is One and runs through all. The belief in the dual mind has destroyed practically all philosophies and religions of the ages, and will continue to do so until the world comes to see that there is but One. Whatever name is given it there is but One. It is this One that creates for us, whatever we believe. Our thought operative through this One produces all our affairs. We are all centers in this Mind, centers of creative thought activity. There is nothing which appears in the manifest Universe other than an objectified thought, whether it be a bump on your head, a growth on your foot or a planet. It could not be there were it not made out of Mind, for mind is all there is to make anything out of. Whatever is made is made out of it. Nothing exists or can exist without a source from which it springs.
We are not dealing with a negative as well as a positive Power--not two powers but one; a power that sees neither good nor evil, as we see it. It knows only that it is all, and since it is all, it creates whatever is given it. From our
limited standpoint we often think of good, and evil; not realizing that, as yet, we do not know the one from the other. What we call good to-day, we may call evil to-morrow, and what we think to be evil to-day, we may to-morrow proclaim as the greatest good we have known. Not so with the great Universal Power of Mind; It sees only Itself, and Its infinite ability to create.
To the thinking person this will mean much; he will see that he is no longer living in a limited universe, a world of powers, but that he is immersed in an Infinite Creative Medium which, because of Its Nature, has to create for him whatever he believes. Jesus understood this, and in a few simple words, laid down the law of life: "It is done unto all people as they believe." This is a great thing to keep in mind. It is done unto us; we do not have to do it, for it is done unto us of a power that knows itself to be all there is. Could we even believe that some material mountain would be moved, the power is there to do it. Without this belief there is no real impulse for the Creative Mind, and we do not get an affirmative answer. We must realize more clearly that this Great Power has to operate through us.
CREATIVE MIND cannot force itself upon us because we have the power of self-choice. It recognizes us when we recognize it. When we think that we are limited or have not been heard, it must take that thought and bring it into manifestation for us.
When we look about us and see nature so beautiful,
lavish and so limitless, when we realize that something, some power, is behind all, and sees to it that plenty obtains everywhere, so that in all things manifest there is more than could be used; and when on the other hand we see man so limited, sick, sad and needy, we are disposed to ask this question: "Is God good after all? Does He really care for the people of His creation? Why am I sick? Why am I poor?" Little do we realize that the answer is in our own mouths, in the creative power of our own thought. The average person when told the Truth will still seek some other way.
God has already done for us--in a mechanical way--all that He can do; and having been given the ability, we will have to do for ourselves the rest. Yet the Great Power is always near, ready at any time to help, but we must use it according to its own nature in harmony with its laws. Man should learn that he himself is the center of this Divine activity. Realizing this, he must seek more and more to utilize his own Divine nature, and by so doing he will come more fully under the protection of the great laws that govern all life, manifest and unmanifest. Whatever man is, he must find that because he is made out of God, he must be of the same nature. This Infinite One cannot know anything outside of itself; anything that would be a contradiction of its Divine nature; man's ignorance of his real nature binds him with his own freedom, until he comes to see things as they really are, and not as they appear to be.
In the Infinity of mind, which is the principle of all metaphysics and of all life, there is nothing but mind, and that which mind does. That is all there is in the Universe.
[paragraph continues] That is all there ever was or ever will be. This mind is acted upon by our thought, and so our thought becomes the law of our lives. It is just as much a law in our individual lives as God's thought is in the larger life of the Universe.
For the sake of clearness, think of yourself as in this Mind, think of yourself as a center in it. That is your principle. You think, and Mind produces the thing. One of the big points to remember is that we do not have to create; all that we have to do is to think. Mind, the only Mind that there is, creates.
Few people seem to understand the nature of the law and so think that they have got to do something, even if it is only holding a thought; thinking or knowing is what does the thing. It will make it much easier for us when we realize that we do not have to make anything, just to know; that there is something back of the knowing which does the work for us.
That person gets the best results who realizes that he can use this divine principle; he who can get the clearest concept of his idea, and who can rely on mind to do for him, keeping everything out of his thought that would contradict the supremacy of Spirit or Mind.
By simply holding a thought we could not make anything but by knowing in mind what cannot we do?
NEVER get away from the fact that you are surrounded by such a power; it is the principle of demonstration. It knows every thought. As we send forth our thought into it, it does unto us. The person who is ignorant of this law must by that ignorance be bound by his thought, by his human beliefs. One who understands will begin to break these ties that bind him; one by one he will destroy every negative thought until at last he is able to think what he wants to think; and so he frees himself by the use of the same power that at one time bound him. We must destroy all thought that we would not see manifest and hold to that which we would see, until we receive the affirmative answer.
Never struggle, Mind makes things out of Itself, there is no effort made. Don't think that there is so much to be overcome. Have only a calm sense of perfect peace as you realize that God is all, and that you are using the perfect law and that nothing can hinder it from working for you. Many people are learning to do this, and no one has yet failed to demonstrate who has been steadfast, using the law in a consistent and persistent trust.
All that we have to do is to provide the right mental and spiritual attitude of mind and then believe that we already have, and the reward will be with us. We shall see it.
The time will come when we will not have to demonstrate at all because we will be always living so near to the law that it will do all for us without much conscious thought on our part.
So when you say, "I am poor, sick or weak; I am not one with the Creative Mind," you are using that creative power to keep yourself away from the Infinite; and just as soon as you declare that you are one with God, there is a rushing out to meet you, as the Father rushed out to meet the prodigal son. "The Spirit seeketh," but as long as your mind thinks in the terms of conditions you cannot overcome. The difficulty comes from our inability to see our own Divine nature, and its relation to the Universe. Until we awake to the fact that we are one in nature with God, we will not find the way of life; until we realize that our own word has the power of life we will not see the way of life; and this brings us to the consideration of the use of the Word in our lives.
"THE Word was with God and the Word was God." "The Word is nigh thee, even in thy own mouth that thou shouldst know it and do it." What does this mean? It clearly states that whatever power there is in the Word (and it says it is All Power) is also in our own mouths. There is no avoiding the fact that the Bible claims for man the same power in his own life and his own world that it claims for God. In the lives of the majority, men do not realize that the Word is in their own mouths. What Word? Little do we realize that this Word which they are so earnestly seeking is every word they hear, think or speak. Do we who are endeavoring to realize the greater truths of life always govern our words? If any word has power, it follows that all words have power. It is not in the few
moments of spiritual meditation that we demonstrate, but we bring out the possibilities of the hidden word when we are allowing our thoughts to run in any direction; not in the short time spent in silence, but in the long hours stretching themselves into days, months, and years, are we always using the word. An hour a day spent in silent meditation will not save us from the confusion of life; the fifty-one per cent. of a man's thinking is what counts. It is easy when we are alone to brave the storms of life; surrounded by our own exalted atmosphere we feel the strength of the Infinite; we rise in Spirit, we think we are experiencing the ultimate of truth, that all things are ours. These moments in a busy life are well spent, but must unavoidably be brief. But what of the rest of the day; what of the busy street, of the market place, and of all the daily contact with life? Do we then obtain? Do we keep on in the same even way? Or do we fall before the outer confusion of our surroundings? We are still creating the word and setting it afloat in the great ethers of life. Are these words creating for us? Yes!
How necessary, then, to "keep the independence of the solitude"; how seldom we do this!
"God knew I needed the word He sent--
I had lost the zest of fight;
And the right was all but beaten;
The wrong it was all but right. p. 16
"Simple the word that He sent me--
But it soothed a spirit raw
With the pain of too much striving--
’Twas 'Love fulfills the law.'"
Few people indeed in the day in which we live are well poised. Where do we find the man who can live above his surroundings, who in his own thought can dominate all conditions, and in the midst of the crowd keep his own even way, and his own counsel? When we do meet with such a person we will know him; for we shall find on his face the image of perfect peace.
We shall detect in his bearing the ease and independence that comes only to the man who has found himself and who is centered not in the outer but in the inner world.
Such a character as this has the power to attract to himself all of the best in the world; he is a center toward which all else must gravitate. The atmosphere which he creates and with which he surrounds himself is one of absolute calm and peace. The world at once sees in this man a master, and gladly sits at his feet. And yet this man who has risen above the thought of the world cares not that other people should sit at his feet. He knows that what he has done all may do, and he well knows that all the teaching in the world will not produce another such as he. He knows that it is not from the teaching but from the being that true greatness springs. So this man does not go around teaching or preaching; he simply IS.
THE man who has arrived will realize that he has done so in the midst of an outer confusion; he will be the one who has gone into the silence for strength, and has come out into the world equipped with power from on high; but that light which he has received must be kept burning.
Not alone in the silence but in the busy throng must all of us find the way of life. Our every thought creates. For the majority of us these thoughts come in every-day affairs, some of which are very trivial, but these too will be demonstrated.
We have missed the whole point, unless we have learned so to control our thought that time and place make no difference.
WE have within us a power that is greater than anything that we shall ever contact in the outer, a power that can overcome every obstacle in our life and set us safe, satisfied and at peace, healed and prosperous, in a new light, and in a new life.
Mind, all Mind is right here. It is God's Mind, God's creative Power, God's creative Life. We have as much of this Power to use in our daily life as we can believe in and embody.
The store house of nature is filled with infinite good awaiting the touch of our awakened thought to spring forth
into manifestation in our life; but the awakening must be on our part and not on the side of life. We static! at the gateway of limitless opportunity in the eternal and change-less NOW. Now is the day in which to begin the new life that is to lift us up to the greater expression of all that is wonderful. The word that we speak is the Law of our life and nothing hinders but ourselves. We have through ignorance of our real nature misused the power of our word, and behold what it has brought upon us, "the very thing that we feared." But now it shall produce a new thing, a new heaven and a new earth.
WE find that in the Universe every separate idea has a word, a mental concept behind it, and as long as that word remains the thing is held in place in the visible world; when the concept is withdrawn the idea in the visible melts away, disappears; it ceases to vibrate to the word, which is the law behind it, for when the word is withdrawn the condensation of the ether that forms the word melts again into the formless. There was a time when the world was without form, and from the word alone all things were made that are made. When our word says that there is no longer life in our bodies, the life principle withdraws and our bodies return to the substance from which they came. Here is the great mystery of life, that we are able to use this creative word for whatever purpose we may desire, and that word becomes the Law unto the thing for which it was spoken.
And so in our lives we might say that without our word
was not anything made that was made. For we are given the power to sit in the midst of our lives and direct all their activities. There is no struggle and no strife necessary. All that we have to do is to know. We must awake and with the glorified consciousness of an emancipated soul use our God-given power.
THIS Universe is the reason, first of an Infinite Intelligence which speaks or thinks, and as this thought becomes active within itself, it creates from itself, at the power of its own word, the visible Universe. We are living in a Universal activity of mental law, we are surrounded by a Mind which receives every impression of our thought and returns to us just what we think. Every man, then, is living in a world made for him from the activity of his thought.
It is a self-evident proposition that Mind must create out of Itself; and this Self being Limitless, it follows that its creative power is without limit.
EVERYTHING that we see is the result of mind in action. We all have a body and we have what is called a physical environment; we could have neither if it were not for mind. The law implanted within us is, that we need nothing except ourselves and this All-Wise Creative Mind to make anything; and that just so far as we depend upon any condition, past, present or future, or
upon any individual, we are creating chaos, because we are dealing with conditions and not with causes. Every living soul is a law unto himself, but of this great truth few people are conscious. It seems difficult for the race, which feels itself to be so limited, to comprehend the fact that there is a power that makes things directly out of itself, by simply becoming the thing that it makes, and that it does this by self knowing. But we will not demonstrate until we see at least some of this, the greatest truth about life.
We should realize that we are dealing with the principle that is scientifically correct. It will never fail us at any time but is eternally present. We can approach the Infinite Mind with a depth of thought and understanding, knowing that it will respond, knowing that we are dealing with reality.
Jesus, who saw this very dearly, laid down the whole law of life in a few simple words: "It is done unto you as you believe." We do not have to do it, it is done unto us, it is done by a power that is all. Could we believe that a material mountain would be moved, it would be done unto us. But unless we do believe there is no impulse for the creative power and we do not receive. Life externalizes at the level of our thought.
THERE is something that casts back at us every thought that we think. "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord," is a statement of eternal truth and correspondences against which nothing can stand, and whatever
man sets in motion in mind will be returned to him, even as he has conceived within himself and brought forth into manifestation. If we wish to transcend old thoughts we must rise above them and think higher things: We are dealing with the law of cause and effect and it is absolute; it receives the slightest as well as the greatest thought and at once begins to act upon it. And sometimes even when we know this we are surprised at the rapidity with which it works. If we have been misusing this law we need not fail; all that we have to do is to turn from the old way and begin in the new. We will soon work up out of the old law into the new which is being established for us. When we desire only the good the evil slips from us and returns no more.
THE best way to arrive at the highest consciousness is to have a great faith in the willingness and the ability of Life to do all for us, by working through us. We must believe in the inherent goodness and all-powerfulness of the Spirit of Truth. And so every path leads us back to the one point and we must learn to realize the near presence, the great reality. There, through the door of our own thought, we enter into the Universal Consciousness, into a complete realization of life and truth, of love and beauty; and as we sit in the silence of our own souls and listen, it will be the greatest thing that we will ever do. In that completeness we are lost and yet we are found. This is what is meant that a man must lose his life in order to find it. We are lost to the human and found in the divine. We realize that we are One with Cause.
NEARLY all people are controlled by outer suggestions, and not by inner realizations. Ordinarily man thinks only what he sees others do, and hears others say. We must all learn so to control the inner life that outside things do not make an impression upon our mentalities. As we are thinking beings, and cannot help thinking, we cannot avoid making things happen to us, and what we need to do is so to control our thought processes that our thinking will not depart from the realization of that which is perfect.
Man is governed by a mind which casts back to him every thought he thinks; he cannot escape from this and need not try; it would be useless. The laws of mind are simple and easy to understand. The trouble with us has been that we have laid down great obstructions, and then have tried to overcome them. Stop trying, stop struggling, begin to be calm, to trust in the higher laws of life, even though you do not see them; they are still there.
Did you ever see the law that causes a plant to grow? Of course you did not, and yet you believe in this hidden law of growth. Why do you believe? Simply because every year, out of the seed time comes a harvest. Shall we not have as great faith in the higher laws of being? To those souls who have dared to believe has come as definite an answer as came to those who believed in receiving a harvest from the planted seed. This law is, and if we would see results we must use it; that is, we must provide the mental receptivity that will prepare us to accept the gift when the Spirit makes it. This receiving is a mental process, a process in which we lose all sense of limitation.
If you wish to demonstrate prosperity, begin to think and talk about it, and to see it everywhere. Do nothing that contradicts this thought either mentally or physically. The world is full of good; take it and forget all else. Rise above depression and be glad that you are saved from adversity; the human mind needs to be cleansed from the morbid thoughts that bind through its false beliefs.
No living soul can demonstrate two things at the same time, if one contradicts the other. There is no way except to let go of all that you do not wish to come into your experience, and, in mind, take all that you do wish.
SEE, HEAR, TALK ABOUT, AND READ ONLY WHAT YOU WISH, AND NEVER AGAIN LET A NEGATIVE THOUGHT COME INTO YOUR MIND.
God knows good only, and when we are in line with good He knows us; when we are out of harmony with good, we say, "God has forgotten us." On the one hand we have an Infinite Intelligence which has brought us up to where we are to-day; and having done all that it can for us now lets us alone to discover our own nature. On the other hand we have the Infinite Law--which is an activity of God--and we can use it for what we will, only with this provision, that, in so far as we use it for the good of all, are we protected.
The law obtains through all nature that as a man sows, so must he reap. Now the Father has brought us to where we can understand life, and we must go as we choose. If we are in harmony with the great forward movement of the Spirit, there is nothing that can hinder our advancement; if we oppose it, somewhere along our pathway it will crush us. As with individuals so with nations; in so
far as they work with a right spirit they prosper; when they begin to fail in the use of this law they begin to fall. He who understands will take the position of one who wishes to work in union with the Power of Good; and to such an one will come all the power that he can conceive of and believe in; his word becomes in expression as the very word of God, and he must realize it to be all powerful. So the one who is truly united with Good will wish to express only the truth for all; and in doing so he is working along the lines of the unfoldment of the Spirit, and though he may seem to fail, from the ordinary standpoint, yet his success is assured; for he is at one with the only ultimate power before which, in time, all else must fall.
IN practice the emancipated soul must always realize that he is in union with the Father; what the Father does, he can do in his own life; what God is, he can become. His word must be spoken with absolute authority; he must know; there should be no uncertainty. The word is the only power; everything must come from it, and nothing can stand against it; it is the great weapon which he is to use against all evil and for all good. It is his shield against all adversity and his sure defense against all seeming limitation.
The secret place of the Most High is in his own soul, where God dwells in eternal peace and infinite calm. Here he walks the waters of life undisturbed by the waves and the storm. Divine companionship is his for all eternity. Peace which transcends all human confusion comes, and
he realizes that indeed he is honored of the Father. His word is flung out and will work and none can hinder it; the sense of sureness is complete. Heaven and earth may pass away, but the word goes on and on accomplishing that thing for which it was sent; and all power is given to it on earth and in heaven. If he speaks to the sick and they receive, it will heal them. If he says the word of prosperity it will manifest, and nothing can hinder it; the world will abound with good, and his cup run over with life.
What more can we ask! What greater realization of life than to know that God is with us! From this great realization comes peace, a peace which the world little understands, and a calm which is as deep as the infinite sea of love in which he realizes himself to be immersed. Peace brings poise, and the union of these two gives birth to Power. No person can hope to arrive while he believes in two powers; only as we rise to the realization of the One in and through all can we attain. When we speak the word there must be no confusion but only that calm reliance which knows that "Beside me there is none other." Realize that Spirit is All Causation, and that all things are made out of it, by the operation of the word through it, and that you can speak the word that is one with the Spirit and there will be no more confusion. "As the Father has inherent life in himself, so has he given to the Son to have inherent life within himself." "Speak the word only and it shall be done." "The word is in your own mouth that ye should know it and do it." "Stranger on earth, thy home is heaven; Pilgrim, thou art the guest of God."
MAN is surrounded by a great universal thought power which returns to him always just as he thinks. So plastic, so receptive is this mind, that it takes the slightest impression and moulds it into conditions. There are two things in man which his thought affects, his body and his environment. At all times he is given absolute control over these two things, and from the effect of his thought upon them he cannot hope to escape.
At first, being ignorant of this fact, he binds himself by a misuse of the laws of his being; but as he begins to see that he himself is responsible for all that comes to him on the path of life, he begins to control his thought, which in its turn acts on the universal substance to create for him a new world.
The great soul is learning more and more to dare to fling out into mind a divine idea of himself, and to see himself perfect and whole.
If he has a divine thought he will get a divine thing, if he has a human thought he will get a human thing; he will receive whatever his innermost thought embodies. And so we find in the Bible twice repeated these words: "To the pure Thou wilt show Thyself pure and to the froward Thou wilt show Thyself froward." It is done unto all as they believe.
We often wonder why it is that we are not making better demonstrations. We look about and observe that some are getting wonderful results, they are speaking the word and people are being healed. We see others struggling along with the word, and nothing seems to happen; and when we
inquire into the reason for all this we find it to be very plain indeed. All is mind and we are mental, we are in mind and can only get from it what we first think into it. We must not only think but we must know. We have to provide within ourselves a mental and spiritual likeness for the thing desired. The reason why so few succeed, then, must be because they have not mentally really believed to the exclusion of all that would deny the thing which they believe in. And the reason why others do succeed must also be because they have absolutely believed and allowed real power to flow through and out into expression. They must have a real concept of life. Hold an object in front of a mirror and it will image in the mirror the exact size of the object. Hold a thought in mind and it will image in matter the exact likeness of the thought. Let us take this image which we hold before a mirror and change it ever so slightly and there will be a corresponding change in the reflection. It is just the same in the mental world; whatever is imaged is brought forth from mind into manifestation.
We must not deny that which we affirm. We must reason only from that cause which is spiritual and mental and weed out all thought that would deny its power in our lives. There seems to be something in the race thought that says man is poor; man is limited; that there is a lack of opportunity; that times are hard; that prices are high; that nobody wants what I have to offer. No person succeeds who speaks these ideas. When we express ourselves in this way we arc using a destructive power. All such thoughts must go, and we must all realize that we are an active center in the only power there is.
We must get the perfect vision, the perfect conception; we must enlarge our thought until it realizes all good, and then we must swing right out and use this Almighty Power for definite purposes. We should daily feel a deeper union with Life, a greater sense of that indwelling God, the God of the everywhere, within us. When we speak into this Mind we have sown the seed of thought in the Absolute and may rest in peace. We do not have to make haste, because it is done unto all as they believe. "In that day that they shall call upon me I will answer."
People will often ask, "What is the best method for demonstration?" There is but one answer to that question; the Word is the only possible method of demonstrating anything; the word really felt and embodied in our thought. Then the word becomes flesh and dwells among us and we behold and experience it. We will ask for no other way when we understand this.
The person who does not understand these laws will be likely to say that this is presumptuous; that it is even sacrilegious; but this comes only from a lack of understanding of the fact that all is governed by law, and that all law is impersonal and universal. We have just as much right to use spiritual law as to use so-called physical laws. Strictly speaking there is no such a thing as a physical law, as all things are spiritual and all law is a law of the activity of the Spirit. The greatest use of these laws will always come to that soul who is the most deeply spiritual, as such an one comes the nearest to using law as God uses it. So to the really great soul there must come a very close relationship with the Invisible God; this relationship cannot be expressed in words but only in inner feeling which transcends the
power of words to express. God must become the great reality, not simply as the principle of life, but more as the great Mind which knows, and which at all times understands and responds. To say that God does not understand our desires would be to rob the divine mind of all consciousness and place God lower in the scale of being than we ourselves are. On the other hand we must be careful not to believe that God thinks evil and understands that which is not perfect, as then we would have an imperfect being for the First Cause.
We should more and more learn to think of things in the absolute, that is, to think of things as not limited by conditions. Realize at all times that the Spirit makes things out of Itself, and needs no beginning except its own self-recognition. Then we must cognize our relation to this great power as one of absolute correspondence; what we think into it, it takes up and does for us as we think. It should not be an effort so to think; we should do so with ease, without strain. The law must return to us; we have no responsibility except to provide the proper channel. It can return only in the exact way that we think. If we think struggle is the reality, we shall gain our demonstration, but struggle will have to be the result. There is a law of reflection between Mind and the one who thinks; and it is not only what a man thinks but also how he thinks that "shall be done unto him."
If you believe absolutely that you can do a certain thing, the way will always be opened for you to do it; if also you believe that time will have to elapse, then you are making that a law, and time will have to elapse. If on the other hand you believe that mind knows just how and
never makes mistakes, but lets it be done unto you, then it will be done. Confusion brings more confusion; peace begets more peace; we cannot imagine the Great Spirit hurrying or worrying, fretting or trying to make anything happen. The only reason we worry and fret is because we have thought there was some other power which could bring confusion. Such is not the case. There is but one, and we are always using that one but using it according to our belief. This is our divine birthright, nothing hinders but ourselves. Remember that since all is mind, you cannot demonstrate beyond your ability to comprehend mentally, that is, beyond your ability to know about a certain thing. For instance, suppose you wish to heal some one who is sick; your ability to do this will depend entirely upon your ability to see perfection mentally, coupled also with the realization that your word destroys everything unlike itself. If you try to see perfection for a few minutes only, it will never heal. Your thought goes on at all times, and in the moments when you least realize it, conditions are being moulded for you. It is not enough to declare consciously for the truth. The truth must be lived or no good results will be forthcoming.
THE one who desires to heal must stop seeing, reading about, discussing, or listening to conversation about sickness. There is no other way under the sun except as we let go of that which we do not desire, and take that which we wish to have. There is too much of this deceiving ourselves into thinking that we can do two ways
at once. We may deceive ourselves and possibly other people, but the law remains the same, a law of mental correspondences, and nothing else. We cannot go beyond our ability to realize the truth; water rises only to its own level. In our patients as well as in ourselves and our environment we will reflect what we are, not at our best in the few moments of silence, but in the long run of ordinary life and thought.
To acquire the larger consciousness is no easy task. All that we have believed in which contradicts the perfect whole must be dropped from our thought, and we must come to realize that we are now living in a perfect universe, peopled with perfect spiritual beings, each of which (coupled with the Great Divinity) is complete within himself. We must see that we are one in the great one, and then we will not separate or divide, but unite and add to, until in time we will find that we are living in an entirely different world from that in which we had once thought we were living. Of course this will meet with much opposition from those unenlightened souls whom we must contact in the world. But what of that? Remember, the great man is the one who can keep in the crowd the calm, even thought, the deep, divine reliance on principle. And more, this is the only way to help or to save the world. In time all people will come to the same understanding. You are lifting up the standard of life, and those who are ready will follow. You have no responsibility to save the world except by exemplifying the truth. The world must save itself.
All are alike; there is no difference between one person and another. Come to see all as a divine idea; stop all negative thought; think only about what you want, and
never about what you do not want, as that would cause a false creation. Too much cannot be said about the fact that all are dealing with only one power, making and unmaking for man through the creative power of his own thought. If . there is something in your life that you do not want there, stop fighting it--forget it!
THERE is too much struggle coming into the metaphysical thought. Often we hear some seeker after truth say, "I have a big fight ahead." O foolish and untaught, how can you hope to enter in! The kingdom comes not from without, but from within, always. Stop all struggle and wait upon the sure principle that creates whatever it wills because there is nothing to oppose it. As long as we think that opposition exists we are blocking the way for the clearer vision. Those that take up the sword must perish by it; not because God is a jealous God, but because that is the way the law must work.
Cause and effect must obtain everywhere. Do not even fuss about your Karma; too often we hear people say, "This is my Karma." This may be true enough, but how many people know what they mean when they use the word Karma? Do you realize that your Karma is nothing but your false thinking, and that the only way to escape it is to think the truth, and that brings in the higher law? When the greater comes in the lesser leaves because there is no longer anything to give life to it. The past is gone when we learn to forgive and to forget.
This erases from mind all that is held against us, and
even our sins "Are remembered no more against us forever." Fate is in our own hands, and when we will rise to that pure atmosphere where we see things in their completeness, and know that an All-Wise Power is behind it all, we will see that the Infinite Mind could wish for us only that which expresses itself in limitless terms. The whole trouble has been that we reason as men and not as Gods. "I say ye are Gods and every one of you Sons of the Most High."
The great law of life is thinking and becoming; and when we think from the lofty heights of the Spirit we will become great, and not until then. Do not try to convince any one of the truth; that will bring confusion. Truth is, just as much as God is; and the whole world is coming gradually into the realization of it. Keep the truth within your own soul, lift your own self above the confusion of life, and then people will believe. So all our thought is to be created in the realization of the One becoming the many, without struggle, without fear; stripped of all that denies the truth.
How limited we are, how little our thought! How the human race rises in the morning, plods off to the day's work, plods home at night, sore and tired, eats and sleeps, works and dies. As has been said of man, "Man works hard to get money to buy food to get strength to work hard to get money to buy food to get strength to work hard to get money, etc." This was never intended; it is the curse imposed on the man who believed in two powers, one of good and one of evil. To us there has come a greater vision, and to those who believe and act as though it were true it is proving itself.
We must turn from all human thought and experience. We are not down trodden, depraved and miserable sinners, born in sin and conceived in iniquity and shame, some to go to heaven and some to hell and all to the eternal glory of God. This is a lie, it always was and always will be. But as long as we believe in a lie it seems to be present with us.
Man is born of the Spirit of God Almighty, is pure, holy, perfect, complete and undefiled; is at one with his eternal principle of being. Many people are finding this out and as a monument to its truth millions are daily proving it for themselves.
Somewhere down the path of human experience we will all awake to the realization that we ourselves are heaven or hell.
We live in Spirit awaiting the touch of thought that believes. All people look, a few see.