This Thing Called You, Chapter 3
When Jesus said, It is done unto you as you believe." he not only announced the law of faith, he explained how it works. First, he implied that there is a law which operates upon your faith. All laws are universal; hence they exist wherever you are. If there is a law of faith, it is right where you are and it will operate like any other law in nature.
For instance, it will work like the law of gravitation, which automatically holds everything in place. But so far as you are concerned, it will hold things where you place them. You do not change the law of gravitation; you merely change your position in it. This law works automatically. As you shift objects around in the position that seems desirable to you it will hold them there. This law works for you on the scale of your own individual being.
Suppose you want to change the position of the furniture in your room. You move the piano from one place to another. This is an act of volition on your part. Perhaps you wish to move the stove into the living room. This might seem an eccentric act but the law does not question it. It will automatically hold things where you place them, it will operate upon your decision.
Jesus proclaimed a law of faith that acts on your belief. And now comes the more subtle and interesting part of this story which, perhaps, you have not analyzed. At the expense of repetition let us look into this a little more carefully, because it is of such importance. It is this little word as that you are to consider the meaning of. Not only is there a law which does something for you (this is easy enough to accept) but in doing so it is limited to your belief, this is the important thing to remember.
It is only common sense to recognize that what this law does for you, it must, of necessity, do through you. The gift of Life is not complete until it is accepted. If you can believe only in a little good, then the law will be compelled to operate on that little good. Not that the law of itself knows anything about big and little any more than the law of gravitation would know that a mountain is heavier than a marble—it automatically holds everything in place. If you remove a large pile of gravel, it will hold this bulk in place. If you dip up but a few thimblefuls it will hold this smaller amount in place with equal impartiality.
Now, shift this whole proposition over into the mental plane, realizing that the mental reproduces the physical, but at a higher level. The law is always a mirror reflecting your mental attitudes. Therefore, if you say, "I can have a little good," it will produce this small amount of good for you, but if you say, "All the good there is mine," with equal certainty it will produce a larger good. If you believe that wherever you go you will meet with love and friendship, with appreciation and gratitude, then this will become the law of your life.
The late Dr. Carrel said that faith operates on its plane as physical laws operate on their plane, reproducing the same action at a higher level. He was careful to explain that the laws of faith do not destroy physical laws. One law of God could not destroy another. Spiritual laws reproduce physical laws at a higher level. The higher law automatically controls the lower. This is equal to saying that the laws of mind can be made to control the physical body and the physical environment when they are rightly used, not through denying body or environment, but by including them in a larger system.
This is what faith does. You should think of the law of faith just as naturally as you would any other law in nature. Jesus did not imply that faith would obliterate other laws, nor did he mean that faith in that which is not true could create truth out of error. He meant that faith in right must always reverse that which is wrong. So far no one has disproved this theory. All who have acted upon it have received a definite result. Faith is a great adventure, a stimulating pursuit, a worthwhile attempt to utilize the higher laws of your being for definite purposes.
Jesus was very explicit in his teaching of the use of faith. He said, if you ask for bread you will not receive a stone. This is equal to saying, if you plant a rose bush, it will not become a lemon tree. The law of faith operates with integrity on the definite idea thought, expectancy or acceptance implanted in it.
But the seed must be left in the creative soil of mind until it can mature. There is a time for sowing as well as a time for harvest. Plants must not be pulled up or interrupted in the process of their growth. They must be watered with hope, fertilized with expectancy and cultivated with enthusiasm, gratitude and joyous recognition.
If the law operates automatically, then you do not coerce, concentrate or compel it. You provide mental attitudes which it may operate upon. You do not hold the law in place, you hold your ideas in place. This is your individual effort. Your concentration is not on the law, because that is already here, it is right where you are, it is within you as well as around you. This concentration is not coercion but a good-natured flexibility with yourself, gradually eliminating doubt, fear and uncertainty, and replacing them with certainty, assurance, recognition and gratitude.
This process is not so much a problem of will as it is one of willingness. The only important role the will plays is in a decision to keep thought poised long enough to permit the law to operate. This is not a prayer of beseechment but a recognition or acknowledgment of right action.
Faith is the most important thing in your life. It is impossible to arrive at the grandeur of its possibility through petty thinking and small ideas. The whole mental scope must be broadened and deepened, the whole expectancy must reach out to more, the whole imagination must lend its feeling to grateful acceptance and joyous recognition.
All thoughts of suffering for righteousness' sake, all beliefs that you are being tempted or tried to see if you are worthy of the gifts of Life, are mistaken concepts of the way this law works. Life wishes to make the gift because in so doing It is flowing into Its own self-expression. You might say that gravity wishes to hold an object in place because this is its nature. As a matter of fact, it cannot help doing so. But if you place the gas range in the living room and keep it lighted on a hot summer day you will be uncomfortable. If you place it too close to the draperies no doubt they will catch fire.
This does not mean that the law would have any evil intent. You could as well put the range in the rear garden. You might put an electric heater in your ice-box and the ice would melt, not because the law wishes to destroy the contents of the box, but because laws are always impersonal. Hence, Jesus told his disciples that while there is a law of belief, and of necessity they must always be using it, being individuals with free will they must expect to reap as they have sown.
You wish to reap joy, happiness, love, friendship, health, harmony and success. Could you expect to keep your mind filled with such thoughts for yourself unless it were filled with similar thoughts for others? Of course not. This would not make sense. Therefore, Jesus said to love your enemies, be kind to everyone; "give and to you shall be given." Moreover, he said that when you give, the gift will return to you multiplied. What a marvelous concept this is! It seems too good to be true. Yet plant a seed in the ground and it multiplies its own type many times.
There is a law of multiplicity in nature. You have a right to expect that what you wish for others will be returned to you through others. You have no right to expect that you can reap where you have not sown.
The marvelous teaching of Jesus is not quite so soft as it sounds. His words are statements of the great laws of cause and effect; laws that produce justice without judgment—the inevitable result of laws that work with mathematical certainty. You cannot love and hate at the same time, nor can anyone else. Therefore, this man of wisdom said that light overcomes darkness. He did not say that darkness overcomes light.
Disregarding the softness and beauty of the words of Jesus, the marvelous grandeur of them, you will always find this cold, hard fact staring you in the face— Jesus taught the operation of the law of cause and effect. He said that not one jot or tittle of it could be changed. All the poetry, wit, knowledge and art of the ages cannot alter the fact that love alone begets love, peace alone attracts peace, only that which goes forth in joy can return with gladness—give and to you shall be given, and the type multiplied, good measure, running over and pressed down.
You need not force or coerce, but you must obey the law. If you can see God in everything, then God will look back at you through everything. This is the meaning of that saying: "Act as though I am, and I will be." This is the law of give and take.
When the time comes that nothing goes forth from you other than that which you would be glad to have return, then you will have reached your heaven.
This Thing called You, Chapter 3,
Ernest Holmes
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