This Thing Called You, Chapter 6

This Thing Called You, Chapter 6

Spirit withholds nothing from you. To believe that God refuses the good you desire is to deny the goodness of God. It is a refusal to accept the profound conclusion of the one who said, "It is done unto you as you believe." 

Often you may find that even though start with an enthusiastic conviction, you become stranded on the rock of unbelief. Refuse to let this discourage you. The law still is that it is done unto you as you believe. No matter how subtle the thoughts of lack, fear, uncertainty or loneliness may be, they do not belong to you. Your affirmation can erase them. Become master of your thinking, hence master of your fate. 

Always do this with a sense of union with good, for you have not been left alone to fight a losing battle or contend against powers of evil. You have been left alone to discover your real nature, that as an individual you may consciously unite with the Law of Life and the Presence of Good. 

Do you remember the story Jesus told about the woman who came to a judge asking for help? At first the judge refused her request because he was comfortably settled with his family and did not wish to be disturbed. Do you remember how persistent this woman was? She refused to take no for an answer. She just kept on knocking at the door until her faith and determination were rewarded. 

This is the story of your life, and of every man's life. Just keep right on knocking at the doorway of your consciousness until every "no" becomes a "yes," every negation an affirmation, every fear a faith. You cannot fail if you remain steadfast. Finally, the fetters of bondage will drop from you. You will walk out of your self-imposed prison only to discover that the door was never really locked and the windows were not actually barred. You were bound merely by chains of unbelief. 

If you listen to peace, you will experience it. If you listen for truth, you will hear it. If you listen to power, you will receive it. If you listen to wholeness, you will discover it. 

The creative law which you use is like a mirror. The thought you hold before it is like an image. The mirror reflects the image you hold before it. Hold there, then, the image of faith and expectancy, with enthusiastic conviction and with undying trust. The only thing that can hinder you is yourself. The only thing that can help you is yourself. Because it is you who reflects the image in the mirror. 

Often good and sincere persons ask if it is right to use Divine Power for personal purposes. No one thinks it wrong to use other laws of nature for personal purposes. The laws of Mind and Spirit are natural laws. The only difference between the use of them and other natural laws is that most people have not realized that they can use spiritual law as consciously as they do other laws. 

Do not hesitate to use this law for any purpose which is constructive. It is no more selfish to use spiritual law for personal purposes than it is to plant a garden for your personal use. Moreover, there is no escaping this law, for it is as intimate as your own thought, as personal as your own being. 

The world starves in the midst of plenty, weeps in the midst of joy. Yet the Eternal Manna has never ceased to fall. The fields of God are ripe unto harvest. The garden of your mind was planted by a Wisdom superior to yours. Enter in and possess this promised land. When you accept in simple faith, you will receive. 

When you knock in childlike belief, the door will be opened. What you seek with enthusiastic acceptance, you will find. Did not the great and beautiful Jesus proclaim, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest"? Reality has not changed since Jesus walked the shores of Galilee. The Power he used is still here. 

It makes little difference what method you use, provided you have conviction. Some will tell you that you should affirm the Divine Presence, denying all else. Well and good. This method will work. Others may tell you that all you need do is to ask, believing. They are right. Each receives according to his belief. Don't be too concerned over methods. Any method that leads to conviction will produce results. 

Stop arguing. Learn to believe. Stop debating. Learn to accept. Stop looking for an authority outside your own conviction. This calls for complete confidence in the Law and an equal confidence in yourself. If you wish to be healed, you must expect to be made whole. If you wish freedom, you must no longer think bondage. Bondage and freedom are but two ways of using one law. If you spend all your time saying, "I am poor, weak, sick, miserable and unhappy," you will attract poverty, weakness, sickness and unhappiness. 

Use your intellect, imagination and feeling for the purpose of seeing and sensing freedom instead of bondage, joy instead of unhappiness, plenty instead of want, health in place of disease. The very denial of your good keeps that good from you. Reversing this process, through affirmation, will bring about the good you desire. 

Open the gates of your consciousness to the Divine Presence and you will be flooded with light. Consciously commune with the Spirit and you will receive a direct answer. This answer will always fit your individuality because you are Life individualized. 

No one can take your place. There is neither competition nor monopoly in Spirit. Coming daily to the Supreme Source of Being for inspiration and guidance, you will receive a new influx of Life, always fitted to your need. 

Communing with the Spirit you receive inspiration, you acquire confidence and faith, you rest in peace, you are poised. From this spiritual consciousness your word becomes the law unto that thing whereunto it is spoken. It is acted upon by the Law of Life. Your authority is not one of egotism or arrogance. It is the authority which comes when one's consciousness is in tune with the Infinite. 

Practice the Presence of the Spirit until your whole being is flooded with Its light. "Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there ... If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; Even there shall thy hand lead me ... If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me."

The prayer of power is an affirmation so completely believed in that there is no longer any conscious or subconscious denial of it. When your prayer or treatment arrives at a complete acceptance, it will be answered. Enter the closet of your mind, close the door, speak with complete authority. You are one with an Infinite Presence which can inspire, one with a Universal Law which can execute.

When ideas of evil, lack or fear present themselves, exercise your dominion over them. Realize that your faith is the law of elimination to evil. There is no spiritual law of discord, sickness or lack. The laws of Spirit are complete, perfect and good. From the standpoint of the Life within you, anything that denies this is false. 

You do not put power into your word, you take it out. When your word is based on Divine Love, Infinite Goodness and Eternal Peace, you may know that it is no longer the word of an isolated individual, it is the word of the Supreme Power in you—not some mighty, but Almighty.

You are, as Emerson implied, an organ through which the Spirit executes Its will and performs Its act of creation. God does not depend on you. You do depend on God. Electrical energy exists independently of the appliance through which it operates. However, the mechanical device depends upon the electrical energy. It is only as this mechanical device permits a flow of energy that it can distribute it. So it is with your mind. Divine Energy flows through your thought. 

The nature of the Mind Principle you are using is that wherever a mental image is set up in it, an objective form will be created. Learn to convert thought patterns of sickness, unhappiness, fear and doubt into patterns which conform to spiritual perfection. You cannot change a pattern of fear by maintaining an attitude of fear or by fluctuating between fear and faith. 

Make a picture of yourself as happy and successful. Refuse to entertain contrary ideas. Since you are the only one who has complete access to your thought, you can do this for yourself better than anyone else can do it for you. You cannot be responsible for the acceptance of others. Each is an individual. 

Though you poured an ocean of love over one, he must receive it. A bucket that is turned upside down, even in a cloudburst, will not be filled. Though manna fall from heaven, one remains famished unless he eat. 

It is not always easy for one to control his thoughts. It is not easy in the midst of pain to think peace, in the midst of poverty to think abundance, in the midst of unhappiness to think joy. But if you do this you will meet with success. The Law of Mind reflects your mental attitudes exactly as they are.

Even God must wait your conscious cooperation before the full light of His presence and the power of His law can be made manifest through you. Your conscious cooperation with Him starts with a realization of the Divine Presence and your union with It.

Now make known your desires and accept them as manifest facts in your life. Every organ, function, action and reaction of your physical being, circulation, assimilation and elimination, are parts of a Divine Pattern which is forever perfect within you.

When you think with complete conviction, the Law of Mind will operate on your thought exactly as you think it, for the thing, condition or person you are thinking about. The repeated experience of thousands during the last fifty years has proved this. The principle you are using has been scientifically demonstrated. It is  now merely a question of how effectively you use it. 

This Thing called You, Chapter 6,

Ernest Holmes