This Thing Called You, Chapter 9

This Thing Called You, Chapter 9

If you wish to know the truth about your business or your profession, know that it is an activity of good. It is an activity of your partnership with the Infinite. The business of life is to be happy, active and whole; to express the Divine Life with joy and in fulfillment.

Lift the load of personal responsibility by transferring it to the Law of perfect action. No matter what confronts you, what obstructions appear or what undesirable situations exist in your experience, this Law can dissolve them.

This Law knows neither big nor little. It is like nature’s law of gravitation which holds a feather to the surface of the earth and also holds the mountain steadfast. It does not say, “Behold, I am strong in one place and weak in another.” It does not ask you to weigh the mountain or the feather. Throw a small pebble over a cliff and at the same time roll a giant boulder into space—each will find its way to earth. The law of gravitation works automatically on big and little.

So it is with your problems. Don’t think some of them are hard and others easy. Shift the load of those which appear weighted, as well as those which appear light, into the Law of action. Big and little are swallowed up in one comprehensive whole. Who can say that the blossoming of a rose in the desert is of less importance to the Divine Imagination than the building of an empire?

You exist that Divine feeling, fire, imagination and creativity may be expressed through you. The Spirit comes to you with a new and fresh creativity. You need not ask what others have done or how they have done it. Be yourself and express life as you find it. Never imitate. Trust the self. Find the self in God and God in the self.

Thought has a cumulative power. If you daily say to yourself that your word uproots and casts out every thought of fear or uncertainty, it will surely do so.

There is a pattern of perfection at the center of your being which has never been touched by disease or misfortune. Your intellect senses this through intuition, your imagination feels it by divine right, your inward consciousness knows it through faith. What you are trying to do is to awaken your whole being to spiritual awareness.

It is the intellect and the subconscious self which need renewing. The Spirit neither sleeps nor slumbers. The Spirit is God. Any maladjustments in your life will be healed when you realize this perfect center within yourself. The vision you must catch and hold is the consciousness of a union so complete and perfect that you find no difference between your own being and God. The two are one.

What thought has planted, thought can uproot. The conditions laid down by mental attitudes, whether or not you are conscious of them, can be changed. If you are experiencing some condition which is unhappy, you must know there is nothing in you that attracts this condition, nothing in you that holds it in place, nothing in you that believes it must be this way. Turn your mind entirely from the condition and think in an exactly opposite manner.

In actual practice, you reverse the old thought patterns by definitely knowing that they can no longer operate through you. This is more than a theory. Thoughts of peace will reverse thoughts of confusion. A consciousness of faith will reverse fear. It is now known that fear and discouragement, the feeling of unworthiness and inferiority, as well as a sense of uncertainty about one’s relationship to God, probably start with an unconscious sense of rejection. Out of this comes the sense of uncertainty, fear of the future, the anxiety complex, the insecurity attitude, the feeling of not being wanted, the sense of guilt.

These thought patterns are more or less laid down in every man’s life. Your business is not to bother about where they came from but to know how to get rid of them.

The Spirit is neither sad nor depressed. If you would catch the vision of the joy which should be yours, you must dry your tears, you must lay aside your fears, you must think from the inspirational center within you which is nothing less than the Divine in you singing Its song of life.

The wick of your individual life runs deep into the oil of pure Being. There is but One Life and that Life is your life now. No matter what confusion appears at the surface of your life, there is always a place of calm at the center of your being. No matter how turbulent the waves may be on the ocean of your experience, beneath there is a changeless peace. Your being is submerged but not lost in the Infinite.

When you become confused, stop and listen to your inner calm. Turn from the confusion to that deeper something within. 

You will find that the confusion disappears. The light which the storm seemed to have extinguished again becomes steady. Peace comes from a sense of union with the whole. Confusion comes from a sense of separation. Confusion comes because you are looking only at the surface. If you put a straight stick in a pool of water and then ruffle the surface of the pool, the stick will appear bent. It is not bent, however; it is merely a disturbance at the surface of the water that causes it to appear bent. If you swim under water beneath the disturbed surface and open your eyes, you will see a straight stick. The bent stick really was an illusion.

So it is with confusion. It exists as a condition but not as a reality. The mirage is in your own consciousness. If confusion comes, take your intellect and dive deep into your pool of peace. Through an act of faith open your eyes and you will see that there is no confusion.

Rising above confusion, you affirm the Divine Presence in all Its beauty, power and peace. From this fundamental affirmation your consciousness becomes imbued with a sense of power as well as of peace. You are now in a position to turn to any specific condition of discord, and, speaking with complete authority, to know that your word will reverse it.

The spiritual genius of Jesus lay in his knowledge of spiritual laws. He dared to believe in the invisible Source of his being, and to trust It. He was not frightened by the storm, nor by the fears of others. He could say, “Peace!” to both. He was able to bring the calm of others to the surface. This is “deep calling unto deep.” It is God calling unto God. It is God answering God.

Get it firmly fixed in your consciousness that just as there are laws of physics, there are spiritual and mental laws which act in an identical manner. Have confidence in the laws of Mind and Spirit, and in your ability to use them. Think of them as naturally as you do of other laws of nature.

Your meditation consciously used for definite purposes is a spiritual mind treatment. Your spiritual realization automatically acts upon the Law of Mind which is around you and in you. You will recognize this as the secret of the prayer of faith throughout the ages. It is the secret of the effectiveness of all modern metaphysical movements, no matter what they call themselves. There is no one-and-only way to understand or use the Law of Mind.

Realize that the Divine Presence is ever with you, that there is no place where you leave off and God begins. Here, in quiet confidence and calm peace, make known your desires. They are not prayers in the sense of petition. They are, rather, what Emerson called the thoughts of “a jubilant and a beholding soul.”

When working for yourself say, “I am.” When working for someone else say, “He is,” or “She is.” When you say, “I am,” you are directing your treatment to yourself. When you say, “He is,” or “She is,” you are directing it for someone else.

Your affirmation (prayer of faith or treatment) will reach a level in your experience, or in the experience of those whom you wish to help, equal to the level of realization in your own consciousness when you make your affirmation. It is like water reaching its own level by its own weight. 

Always feel that your treatment (your statement of truth) will meet any condition instantly, while, at the same time, being willing to work patiently until the condition is met. In each separate treatment (or statement of truth) believe that the work is already accomplished. Your treatment is really complete when your entire subjective reaction complies with, responds to, or embodies, the spirit and the meaning of the words you use. Persistence, flexibility and patience are necessary for the best results.

With a good-natured flexibility with yourself, learn to rise from confusion into peace, from sadness into joy. There is no law for you but your own soul shall set it, under the one great Law of all life. Turn to the Light within. Believe in yourself. Have confidence in the high impulsions that come to you. Listen deeply to the Divine Nature which forever more imparts Itself to you. Spirit is absolute, unlimited and ever available. Spirit is right where you are. Spirit fills all space, flows through all form, creates everything, governs everything through love, controls everything through law, expresses life and beauty in everything. 

This Thing called You, Chapter 9,

Ernest Holmes