This Thing Called You, Chapter 5

This Thing Called You, Chapter 5

It is wonderful to know that your good is at hand. Your night wanes. Your dawn is breaking. There is a living Spirit at the center of your being. The original Author of all life is in and around you—not a God who was,  but a God who is.  This is the great secret which you share with Life. Life is wherever you are. It revolves around you even as It flows through you. Keep the doorway of your mind open. Feeling, thinking, communing with this Life, know that It fills you with light and with power. 

Learn to exchange fears, doubts and uncertainties for faith. Faith can make you whole. Faith can convert fear into certainty, poverty into riches, disease into health. Faith can lift you from a valley of despair into a mountain of hope and certainty. There is a power which flows out through your words of faith. 

There is a law of faith which has the power to bring into your life everything you need. Jesus understood this. It was through this law that he healed the sick, raised the dead, gave sight to the blind and fed the multitudes. He said that anyone who believes can do what he was doing. He said that you can do it. This power is in you. It is where you are. It is yours. But it must be used. 

You need not go through any practices to unify with this Power, for you are already one with It. You need not go in search of It because It is already where you are. Because you are always in contact with It, you can bring into your life the good you so greatly desire, for It will honor your desires. It will bring them into manifestation in your life. Say to yourself, then: I place my affairs in the hands of goodness, love and wisdom. 

The greatest adventure of your life lies in your conscious use of this power. You need not believe in any particular religious system to discover the wellspring of life. You find it at the center of your own being, in the quiet of the evening, in the stillness of the night, at the dawn of the new day, and in the midst of activity. 

Nothing can be more immediate or personal to you than this Presence which is in everything, and without which there could be neither life, thought nor action. Accept this here and now, today.

You need not mold your life after another. Trust yourself. Believe in your direct relationship with Life and you will not be disappointed. Do not wait. Today is the time to start. Right where you are is the place to begin. 

Electricity exists everywhere but its energy must be directed. So it is with this Power. If you wish It to pour out through your thought in any direction you wish, you must use it consciously. You do not pray this Power into existence. 

Your use of It is not a prayer to the Power but a recognition of It. This is not a petition but a performance. 

To realize that God is ever-present, ever available, is to know that all the wisdom, intelligence and power of the universe is right where you are. Your word is power when you know this. This is why everything in your life depends upon your belief, why it is done unto you as you believe. Change your belief and you can change your world. 

Don't let anyone tell you this isn't true. Those who have used it in the right way have proved it to be true. Those who have never tried it know nothing about it. Don't argue with them. Let them alone. 

The answers to your problems lie not in God's willingness but in your ability to believe. Certain statements repeated over and over help you to believe. Gradually these statements sink into consciousness, changing your mental reactions from negative to positive.

When you use the word "God" you mean the Power that creates everything, that gives life to everything. When you say, "All things are possible," you mean that the Power which created the planets is now operating in your affairs, in and through everything you do. Your faith in It clears your mind of fear and uncertainty and provides a channel through which the Power may work for you. There is nothing this Power cannot do for you if you learn how to use It. It is impossible for It to fail. All failure is of man. None comes from God. 

It is a known fact that thoughts, often repeated, form patterns in mind which automatically reproduce themselves. This is one of the basic principles of the new knowledge of the mind. This illustration is often used by psychologists to explain continuously repeated neurotic conditions. Why not use this creative law constructively, dislodging old thought patterns with their morbid reactions to life? These thought patterns have hypnotized humanity into the belief that fear, unhappiness, poverty and sickness must prevail. Why not disrobe this mental darkness with the glorious conception of the new light, now known to exist? 

If you would exchange joy for tears, forget the tears and turn to joy. Change your mental pictures and thus create new experiences. You must not only realize that God is right where you are, you must also know that the Law of God responds to you. 

Spirit is at the center of everything. It is the center of all personality. As a drop of water is in the ocean, so you are in an ocean of Life. This Life acts as law upon your thought. 

Perhaps this seems too good to be true. Remember, however, that the first steam-driven ship to cross the ocean carried in her cabin a book carefully explaining just why it was that a boat could not be driven by steam. A new energy is now being announced to the world—the creative power of thought which draws its energy from a universal source. 

Your consciousness, which means the sum total of your thoughts, is the medium between the invisible Cause and your personal life. Though you were in hell and you dwelt on heavenly things, you would immediately find yourself in heaven. Though you were in heaven and dwelt on evil, you would immediately find yourself in hell. Evil is the result of a wrong use of the Law of Life. Therefore, your greatest desire should be to use this Law rightly. You always use it rightly when you use it constructively. You use it constructively when there is nothing in you that would hurt anyone. You use it constructively when you use it with love. 

It is not necessary to spend your entire time in prayer and meditation. Rather, seek to make your work a prayer, your believing an act, your living an art. It is then that the object of your faith will be made visible to you. It is then that you shall "kiss the lips of your desire." Your thought is creative, not because you will, wish, hope, pray or long for it to be so. It is creative because there is a creative law operating upon it. You did not make this law; you only use it.

It is important that you maintain a strict censorship over your thinking. Just as you watch your garden that foreign seeds shall not fall into it, producing a growth of undesirable plants, so you must refuse entrance to any thoughts you do not wish to see manifested in your life. 

Guard well this garden of your mind. It is God's garden of your soul. It is your Garden of Eden wherein may grow your fondest desires and hopes, blossoming into fulfillment. Or, if you permit, the weeds of destruction, fear and doubt, will choke out the beauty of hope until despair alone remains. 

Watch carefully, then, this garden of your soul. Plant there only seeds of happiness, of joy, of peace and of good will. 

It may be necessary to cultivate your garden, to uproot the weeds and straighten out the rows, planting new seeds—new ideas, broader visions and deeper realizations of life. New aspirations must be bedded here, fertilized with the fervor of hope, the conviction of faith, the beauty of wholeness and the quietness of peace. Watch your garden carefully, guard it patiently, waiting for a new harvest—for you shall reap what you have sown. 

Plant love in your garden. Kindness and sympathy flow from the heart of love, and human goodness follows divine realization at every turn in life's road. 

Kindness and understanding are divine flames lighted from the altar of love, upon which burns the Light Eternal. 

Go often, into your garden. Sitting under the Tree of Life in cool, quiet communion, you will find fresh inspiration. God Himself will go forth anew into creation through you. 

The Power of the Spirit, which is ever with you, is sufficient to meet your every need. If you need healing, this Power can heal you. If you need happiness, the Spirit can provide it. If you need supply, the God who is ever with you can give it. No matter what situation you may be in, it can be changed. The winds of God never cease to blow. Set the sails of your hope that these winds may fill them. Learn to drink freely from the fountain of Life. 

It may seem strange that the law which now holds you in bondage can as easily give you freedom. But this is the truth. There cannot be two final powers in the universe. If there were, one would destroy the other. There is only One Power—use It! 

In such degree as your thought has a preponderance of successful feeling, your living will become successful. The Law of Life can work for you only as it works through your thought patterns. Since it is possible to control your thoughts, it is possible to control your destiny.

This Thing called You, Chapter 5,

Ernest Holmes