This Thing Called You, Chapter 11

This Thing Called You, Chapter 11

You use the same power to drive your automobile forward, or, in reverse, to move it backward. The energy is not good when it moves you forward nor evil when it moves you backward. You must eliminate the idea of good and evil as entities opposing each other and realize that there is but one Life Principle. There is but one electric energy wherever it may be used, but one creative Spirit wherever It is perceived, but one spiritual Power wherever It is understood.

Like the ethers of space, the creative Principle of Life is ever present. Being everywhere present, It must be present in you. Hence, It must be available at the center of your being.

That which defeats you when you use It in a limited way, gives you victory when you change your attitude toward It, permitting It to flow through you in a more extensive manner. Always It responds by corresponding to your mental attitudes. 

You are never limited by the Principle of your being. Limitation is a result of a limited use of this Principle. You can come to but one conclusion: there is something which honors your belief, not in a big way in one place and in a little way in another; rather, it honors your belief as you believe it.

This Principle must be without limit. Your thought and acceptance can put brakes on it. In this way, paradoxical as it sounds, you limit the Limitless. Of course, you really do not limit It, but you do limit Its flow in your own experience.

Why is it that you do not instantly heal if the Principle with which you deal is limitless, unless it is that your use of this Principle is limited? Surely, it is within the province of the Divine easily to dissolve a cancer or a state of poverty. Surely, the miracle of faith can take place in your experience. Do you really expect the signs following your belief? You seem to when you pray, you feel you are using the right words, but are you sure that your prayers or affirmations are made with complete acceptance? It is not the form of the treatment which you give, or the prayer which you make, that gives it power. Rather, it is your faith. 

Suppose you wish to help a lonely person. Explain to him that God is present in everyone, that there is but One Person in Whom he lives, moves and has his being. Tell him that all people are in this One Person, that each is an individualized center of Spirit. He is already one with everyone else through the Spirit of all. Teach him how to see this One in all.

You can follow a very simple practice for him. This takes place in your own consciousness. Since it is difficult for him to identify himself with good, because he is immersed in a sense of isolation, spiritually you are going to take him by the hand until he learns to walk by himself.

Remember, a spiritual mind treatment is a series of statements for yourself or for someone you wish to help. You begin your treatment by realizing the Divine Presence which includes everything and everyone; by knowing that since God is over all, in all and through all, God is in this person.

He thinks he is alone in the world. You know that he is one with all people. This unity of life is forever established. There is no real isolation, no real disunion, only an apparent one. His thought of loneliness and isolation holds people away from him. Clear this thought and the One in all people rushes out, in a sense, to meet Itself. You are working with an immutable Principle and when the thought is changed, the demonstration will be made. He will find himself surrounded with friendship, love and appreciation.

That which is definite and clear in your own consciousness becomes a part of his consciousness and begins to work automatically for him. In the long run, he must learn to think for himself. You are merely helping him over a rough spot. You are doing this gladly, lovingly. He hopes that what you are thinking is true. He hopes for results. You expect them. He would like to believe. You must know. What he waits for, you accept. What he thinks may happen in the future, you know is happening right now. Your statements are always affirmations of the present, not the future.

Cultivating your own thought, living in continuous expectancy and affirmation, knowing the truth in season and out of season, you are doing your part. The Law will never fail you. Your problem is to convert your own thinking. You do this through words, audibly or inaudibly expressed; through thoughts, ideas, beliefs, prayer (which is silent communion with the Invisible), realization, meditation, whatever you choose to call the process.

Words are molds into which the creative substance of your consciousness flows. Words without meaning, while they may have some effect through constant repetition, cannot have the same effect that words with meaning have. Your words will have meaning in such degree as you actually feel that they are the activity of the Spirit within you.

Jesus told a paralyzed man to get up and walk. His words were simple enough. You, too, can say, “Arise! Take up thy bed and walk.” But what would happen if you were to say these words? Would your inner consciousness rise in complete conviction? Or would there be some reservation in your thought, some belief that perhaps the man would not actually pick up his bed and carry it home?

Here is a fine point in using the Power within you. You must develop a spiritual awareness which is transcendent, which knows that it is as easy for the Truth to say, “Get up and walk,” as it is for a tired man to say, “Lie down and rest.”

This calls for faith and understanding—a complete conviction that God is right where you are, that Life is speaking through you, and that the Law of Life is obeying your will. Words without this awareness have no power. Spiritual awareness is the healing agency loosed through your word. While it is true that thoughts are things, they are things in your experience only in such degree as your inward consciousness pours the fire of conviction into the form of your intellectual affirmation.

The authority for your words is in your works. The only authority you have for your belief is the authority of what that belief accomplishes. Jesus would have left no lasting mark on history if he had not proved what he believed. When he said, “Peace,” there was peace. When he said to the wind and the wave, “Be still!” the wind and the wave were stilled. When he told the paralyzed man to get up and walk, the man got up and walked.

Naturally, you may exclaim, “Well, I am not Jesus!” Fortunately, you are not. You are yourself. This is the most wonderful thing about you. You are someone in your own right. You have access to the same Power he used. The God who is ever with you is the same Spirit with Whom he communed. There are not two spirits or two powers, there are not two divine presences or two universal laws of mind. There are not two laws of gravitation or two principles of mathematics. Nothing has happened to Reality since Jesus walked the shores of Galilee and ministered to the multitudes who so eagerly followed him. The Kingdom of Heaven which Jesus was always talking about is also your kingdom. The Spirit which was within him is in everyone, equally available, giving of Itself alike to every age.

It is neither the Power, the Presence, nor the Law that you lack, if you do lack anything. It is a consciousness, an inner spiritual awareness. This consciousness is a thing of thought and conviction. It is a thing of faith and understanding. No one can give this to you but yourself, and if you have it no one can take it away from you.

Analyze what must have happened in the consciousness of Jesus when he healed the man blind from birth. The people around him said that either this man must have sinned in some previous incarnation or he must be suffering from the sins of his forefathers. So they asked Jesus if this man did sin, or his forefathers, that he was born blind. Jesus was confronted with this proposition: if reincarnation were true, this man was suffering from past mistakes; if the Mosaic law were true, the sins of his parents were visited on him.

You can imagine how the mind of Jesus must have worked. He knew that the Truth could set this man free. He knew that God already was incarnated in him and did not need to reincarnate. He knew that the Spirit of this man had never been born and could never die. Jesus wiped out the belief in all previous sins or mistakes through his awareness of the God Who is ever present, Whose vision never fails, and Whose all-seeing eye has never dimmed.

The anguish of condemnation, the dogma of false beliefs were entirely dissolved. He knew that this man was one with the Eternal Mind. Therefore, he knew that as this man turned from his consciousness of sin and mistake he was made free. All previous liabilities were wiped out. Every wrong act was corrected.

This same understanding is available to you. This same compassion is yours today. This same divine realization waits your recognition of its beneficent action for you. You are one with the God Who is right where you are.

When you give a spiritual mind treatment you are focusing a power and giving conscious direction to something which has accumulated within you through continual recognition. The peace your intellect affirms must be backed by a consciousness generated through perhaps repeated and laborious effort. The reward is worthy of the endeavor. If at all times you are seeking inwardly to be aware of the Divine Presence, you will find it easier and easier to direct the Law of Life for definite purposes. Say:

I know there is an inner Presence in everything.

I know that this Presence responds to me.

I know that everyone is an incarnation of God, that the living Spirit breathes through all.

I recognize this Spirit and It responds to me. I realize that everything is alive, awake and aware with Spirit.

I commune with this Divine Presence.

The Spirit within me reaches out and communes with the Spirit in everything and everyone I contact.

It is the same Spirit in all, over all, and through all.

This Thing called You, Chapter 11,

Ernest Holmes