Maximize Your Potential Through The Power Of Your Subconscious Mind To Overcome Fear and Worry
Chapter 7 – Why Did This Happen To Me?
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When life does not go as planned, when misfortune strikes, when one is unhappy with the cards one is dealt, we often hear the plaint, “Why did this happen to me?” There is no easy answer to this universal question.
To accept the trials and tribulations all humankind faces it is necessary to think God's thoughts, to think in a new way, to think of eternal verities, to think of eternal principles of life in the same manner that mathematicians would think from the principle of mathematics, navigators would think from the principle of navigation, chemists would think from the principle of chemistry, electricians would think from the principle of electricity. They know it moves from a higher to a lower potential. They learn the laws of conductivity and insulation. They wires you house.
Likewise, your mind is a principle. Therefore, you think from the God center within. You think on whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are honest and of good report; think on these things. You are thinking only when you are thinking from the standpoint of the God center within. There is a principle of harmony, not of discord; there is a principle of beauty, not ugliness; there is a principle of joy, none of sadness; there is a principle of love, not of hate; there is a principle of wholeness, perfection; there is no principle of sickness. If there were no one in the entire world could ever be healed.
Realize, therefore, that when your thoughts are completely free from fear and worry. You are thinking from the standpoint of the Divine center within you; and God speaks, thinks and acts through you. Therefore, you speak in words of wisdom, truth and beauty; words of harmony, health and peace. So, you think, therefore, from the God center within.
So many people do not think. Millions do not think; they think they think. Because true thinking (we are talking about constructive thinking) is completely free from fear. All fear is based upon externals are causative. Externals are an effect, not a cause. Therefore, you must remember that if we do not think for ourselves, someone else will do our thinking for us. If you do not choose your own mood, who's going to choose it for you? Newspapers? headlines? the mass mind? We are all subjective. We're all in the mass mind. We're all in telepathic communication with each other. The people in this world are all extensions of ourselves.
Therefore, if you do not think constructively, harmoniously and peacefully, the world mind, or the mass mind, or the race mind will do your thinking for you. And that mass mind believes in tragedy, misfortune, sickness, disease, accidents; and they indulge in hate, murder, and all sorts of things. Is that the kind of a mind you want thinking through you and in you?
That's what happens to you if you don't do your own thinking,. Then these negative vibrations, or thoughts of the mass mind, move in upon you, reach a point of saturation, precipitate as accident, misfortune, sickness, disease. We have explosions in mines today; we have airplane crashes and tragedies occurring daily. It isn’t that people are evil or they are bad because their submarine goes down in the ocean, or because there is a flood in some city, or because children are hurt in accidents; and explosions take place in various factories, and things of that nature. Many people lose their lives.
So, we say it's necessary to keep prayed up. You keep prayed up when you fill your mind, for example, of the truths of God, which crowd out of your mind everything unlike God. “Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old; but this one thing I do. Forgetting the things that are behind, reaching forth unto those things that are before. I press toward the mark for the prize”.
And the Bible says: “Whatsoever a man soweth, so shall he reap.” This means that if we plant thoughts of peace, harmony, health, beauty, prosperity, we shall reap accordingly, and that if we sow thoughts of sickness, lack, strife, and contention, we shall reap these things. We must remember that our subconscious mind is like the soil. It will grow whatever type of seed we plant in the garden of our mind. We sow thoughts,
Biblically speaking, when we believe them wholeheartedly. For whatever your conscious mind really believes, your subconscious will bring to pass, whether true or false.
Unless you do your own thinking you'll be controlled by the mass mind and the mass mind believes in misfortune, sickness, calamities, and tragedies of all kinds. Therefore, you must do your own thinking.
True thinking is completely free from fear, worry, and anxiety; because you are thinking from the God center within. When your thoughts are God's thoughts, God's power is with your thoughts of good. Therefore, you don't say to another: What boiling thoughts were you thinking? Maybe they didn't have any boiling thoughts at all. Maybe they didn't do any praying of their own. And they said: I'll take what comes. Therefore, the world mind believes in sickness and disease of all kinds. And, if you do not cleanse your own mind, the world mind will not cleanse it for you.
What happens to a home when you go away for three or four months? Rats, mice and pestiferous insects come in. The paint falls off the walls, and everything goes wrong in the house because there is no habitation, no living there. You have to shampoo your mind like you shampoo your body or cleanse your body. You have to shampoo it regularly, clearly and distinctly. So, whatever we really believe with our conscious mind, our subconscious brings to pass.
A chaplain in a hospital in Massachusetts told me that a common experience she had were patients who lamented “Why did this happen to me? What did I do to deserve this? Why is God angry with me? Why is God punishing me?" I go to church regularly, I am a charitable person, I am kindhearted. I must have done something wrong that I don’t know about. That’s why I am so ill.
The law of life is the law of belief. What do you believe? To believe is to accept something as true, to live in the state of being it, to be alive to something. We should believe in the goodness of God. We should live in the joyous expectancy of the best. We should believe in the guidance of God, the harmony of God, the healing power of God to make us whole, pure, relaxed and perfect.
The chaplain reported that in many cases, she prayed with patients and helped them change their beliefs “I helped them realize that the body was spiritual; that when they changed their minds, they changed their bodies. They began to cease giving power to the sickness in their thoughts. She taught them to pray as follows:
"The Infinite Healing Presence is flowing through me as harmony, health, peace, wholeness and perfection. God's healing love indwells every cell of my being. I am made whole, pure, relaxed and perfect."
She taught them to repeat this prayer frequently, knowing what they were doing and why they were doing it. Thus the conscious mind was writing these truths down in their subconscious. Whatever you impress or inscribe in your subconscious will come to pass as form, function, experience, and events. As a result of this many patients made miraculous recoveries,
The law of life is the law of belief. If you fear sickness, you attract it. So, the law of the Lord is perfect. You can't think one thing and produce another. The law of life is the law of belief. Trouble of any kind is nature's alarm system that we are thinking wrongly in that direction. Nothing but a change of thought can set us free.
There is a law of cause and effect operating at all times. Nothing happens to man without his mental consent and participation. You do not have to think of an accident to have it befall you. Haven't you seen a man driving a car, careening in and out, drunk? You said, "There goes an accident." Why? There's a mind behind it, there's a mood, there's an emotion behind the wheel; there’s always a mind behind it. Is that mind disturbed? Is that mind emotionally disturbed? If you are emotionally disturbed, it affects your vision. You don't see so well.
OSHA, the U.S. federal government agency responsible for occupational safety investigates the causes of industrial injuries. They are particularly concerned about companies where frequent injuries occur. In addition to their engineering staff, which examines the facilities for physical defects that may cause the accidents, safety experts with training in psychology interview the workers – not just the injured persons—but all workers in the plant. They often learn that accidents are caused when employees are emotionally upset. In companies where workers have dogmatic and domineering bosses, resentment of the boss leads to negative thoughts in the worker’s mind, which results in carelessness and accidents.
Misfortune, accidents and tragedies of various kinds are signs of mental and emotional disorders that have broken out into manifestation. We must train our minds to think in a new way, to turn back to God and align our thoughts and mental imagery with the Infinite life, love, truth and beauty of God. Then we become channels for the Divine.
Still your mind several times a day and affirm slowly, quietly and lovingly:
"God flows through me as harmony, health, peace, joy, wholeness and perfection. God walks and talks in me. God's spell is always around me. Wherever I go God's wisdom governs me in all my ways. Divine right action prevails. All my ways are ways of pleasantness and all my paths are peace. God's love surrounds me, enfolds me and enwraps me. God walks and talks in me. I'm surrounded by the sacred circle of God's eternal love, and the whole armor of God surrounds me."
As you dwell on these eternal verities you will establish patterns of Divine order in your subconscious mind, and whatever you impress in the subconscious mind is expressed on the screen of space. Therefore, you will find yourself watched over at all times by an Overshadowing Presence--your Heavenly Father--Who responds to you when you call upon Him. The Bible says: “Call upon me, I will answer you; I'll be with you in trouble. I'll set you on high because you hath known my name.”
Now, all of us should learn how the subjective self in us works. One of the great corollaries of the great law of suggestion is this: Whatever you suggest to another, you are also suggesting to yourself. When you are giving a suggestion to another, you are giving it to yourself; because you are the only thinker in your universe. And you respond to the way you think. Whatever you are wishing for the other person, you are wishing for yourself. You are always under the law of your own thought. This is the basis of the Golden Rule, which also tells you to treat your enemies well, to pray for them that despitefully use you. In other words, never dwell on ill will for anyone or against any person on the face of the earth. You do so at your own peril, because whatever you are thinking about the other you are creating in your own mind, your body, your circumstances, your pocketbook, also. That's a simple truth.
Radiate love, peace, and goodwill to everybody. Don't judge. With what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged. Your judgment of the other is your judgment of yourself. That's the conclusion, that's your verdict in your own mind. Many people suffer from sickness, disease, accidents and misfortune because they do not think constructively. They are letting the mass mind, or the race mind, or the law of averages govern them. They're not bad people, but they refuse to think for themselves. They do not keep prayed up. They do not neutralize the mass mind.
You know very well if you read the newspapers in the morning and listen to the radio or TV at night, what do you hear about? Murder, rape, hate, jealousy, and all sorts of misfortune seem to happen to people. They tell you about all the bad things that have happened. They don't tell you about any of the good things.
Well, likewise, if you do not keep prayed up, if you do not think for yourself, the mass mind does your thinking for you. Therefore, you must ask yourself: “Am I thinking constructively, harmoniously, peacefully?” Of course, you answer that question yourself. You are what you think all day long. For as we think in out heart (subconscious mind), so we are, so do we become, and so do we express. That's the whole law. Whatever you sow in your mind, so shall you reap.
All of us are in the mass mind, the race mind, the great psychic sea. The mass mind believes in sickness, accidents, death, misfortune, and tragedies of all kinds. If we do not do our own thinking, the mass mind, the race mind, will do our thinking for us. Gradually the thoughts of the mass mind impinging on our consciousness may reach a point of saturation and precipitate as accident, sudden illness, calamity, heart attack, so-called tragedies that happen in the air, the sea. The majority of people do not think; they think they think.
You are thinking when you differentiate between that which is false and that which is real. To think is to choose. How many people are thinking? You have the capacity to say yes and no. Let your conversation be yea, yea and no, no. You say yes to the Truth of Being and you reject everything unlike God or the Truth.
If the mental instrument could not choose, you would not be an individual. You have the ability to accept and reject; you can think on whatsoever things are true, lovely, noble and Godlike all day long. There is nothing in the entire world to stop you from thinking constructively, harmoniously and peacefully. You are thinking when you know that there is an Infinite Intelligence which responds to your thoughts and that no matter what the problem is, as you think about a Divine solution and the happy ending, you will find the subjective wisdom within you responding to you and revealing to you the perfect plan and show you the way to go. Everywhere you move today, suggestions of people in your office, in your home, radio, television and all that, or the neighbors, their thoughts and their moods are playing upon the subtle receptivity of your mind. Whether you know it or not, these impressions are going down into your mind and muddling it, and befouling it.
If a building were left unattended for any length of time, you know what would happen to it. Likewise, every morning and every night, sit down, read your Psalms. The 91st Psalm, the 27th, 23rd, 46th, and the 1st Psalm are particularly helpful. These are marvelous truths. Psalms are songs of God. You are here to cleanse your mind, to govern it, to watch over it, just the same as you cleanse your body. You give a piece of soap to a person who is dirty, and that person takes a bath. That's a suggestion of cleanliness to him or her.
Well, cleanliness is next to Godliness. Therefore, we should give attention to things that are lovely and noble; we should give attention to eternal verities, the principles of life; we should discipline our thoughts. Inattention, negligence, apathy, listlessness pay dividends; but they are negative dividends, aren't they? You have to give attention to what is true, what is noble, and what is of God.
Over the years I have had many people with medical problems come to me for advice. Some have truly serious problems; others are trivial. In any case I strongly recommend their seeking professional medical help. I am not a doctor nor am I a “healer” in the sense that the prophet Elisha, Jesus and others have been. But often I find that the true problem is not medical, but spiritual.
One of the strangest cases brought to my attention was that of a woman, who had suffered a series of illnesses over a period of time. She told me "God has it in for me; I'm a sinner. This is why I'm being punished." She also told me that she went to a man who hypnotized her, read her past. He attributed her illnesses to a life she had previously lived in which she had been an evil person who had harmed many people. As she had not been punished in that life, she was now suffering for the sins she had committed then.
Of course, that was nonsense. It only made things worse.
I explained to her an age-old truth: There is but One power, called God, the Living Spirit Almighty. Not two, or three, or a thousand. It is the Creative Intelligence in all of us that created us. This power becomes to us what we believe it to be. To the forward, I am forward; to the pure, I am pure. If you think and believe there is a God of love, then the God of love will respond to you and become a loving being to you.
If you think that God is punishing you, that you must suffer, according to your thought and belief it is done unto you. But in reality you are punishing yourself. . As the Bible says “It is done unto him as he believes. For as a man thinketh in his heart or subconscious mind, so is he, so does he become, so does he express.”
This woman was seeking justification and alibis for her suffering. She was looking outside herself instead of realizing the source of her illness was always in her deeper mind; because nothing happens to the body except there is a pattern in the subconscious mind.
I asked her to look inside herself and determine if there was something in her past about which she felt a deep sense of guilt. She confessed that she had a love affair with a married man a few years ago and that she felt guilty and should be punished. With guilt comes fear and apprehension. And with fear comes punishment. She felt that she should be punished, and she was punishing herself. Guilt is the curse of curses. It's one of the most destructive of all emotions. And, being a destructive, negative emotion, it cannot have a constructive outlet. These emotions get snarled up in the subconscious mind and come forth as illness and disease. This unresolved remorse was the psychic wound behind her illnesses. I helped her realize that God was not punishing her, but she was punishing herself by her own thoughts. My explanation was the cure: She forgave herself, and she sat down for twenty minutes several times a day and said:
"God's healing love saturates my soul, and I forgive myself for harboring these negative, destructive thoughts."
Her illnesses abated and she was soon back to a full, healthy, productive life..
There is no worse suffering than a guilty conscience, and, certainly, none more destructive. This woman had been punishing herself for several years by her destructive thinking. When she ceased to condemn herself and began to claim that the Infinite healing presence was saturating her whole being, that God dwells in every cell of her body, her illnesses disappeared.
When you stand praying, forgive. Forgive yourself first. You can't give what you don't have. As she decided to forgive herself, God's healing love healed her.
In ancient times, they attributed thoughts and feelings to the heart. Today we know it is your subconscious mind. Whatever idea is emotionalized and felt as true comes to pass once it reaches the subconscious mind. Your subconscious assumptions, beliefs, convictions dictate and control all your conscious actions. Your subconscious beliefs impel, propel and compel. Whatever you sow, you reap. Your thoughts and feelings create your destiny.
You are what you think all day long. If you fail to think constructively, wisely, and judiciously, then someone else, or the mass mind will do your thinking for you and perhaps make a complete mess of your life. If you believe that God is Infinite goodness, boundless love, absolute harmony, boundless wisdom, the God Presence will respond accordingly to you by the law of reciprocal relationship; and you will find yourself blessed in countless ways. The forces of life depend on how you use them. Atomic energy is not evil; it is good or bad, depending on the way you use it. You can use atomic energy in medicine; you can drive a ship across the ocean with it. You can use electricity to kill another or to vacuum the floor. You can use water to quench a child's thirst or drown it. You can use nitric acid to paint a beautiful Madonna on the windowpane, or you can blind a person with it. The wind which blows the ship on the rocks can also carry it so safety.
The uses to which all things or objects in the world are put are determined by the thoughts and motivations of humankind. Good and evil are in our minds. Good and evil are the movements of my own, mind relative to the One Being, Forever Whole, Pure, and Immaculate in Itself. It is the human mind that determines the use of the forces and objects in the world.
The creative force is in our minds. There is no power in the manifest universe except we give power to externals. Externals are an effect; they are not a cause. The scientific thinker does not make the phenomenalistic world a cause. It's an effect. The cause is your thought and feeling.
No matter how long you might have used your mind in a negative and destructive manner, the minute you begin to use it the right way, the right results follow. Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. This one thing I do: forgetting the things that are behind and reaching forth to the things that are before, I press towards the mark for the prize.
The prize, of course, is health, happiness, peace of mind, joy, and all the good things of life. Think good, good follows; think evil, evil follows. The minute you enthrone in your mind Godlike ideas and eternal verities, they generate their own fragrance. Then your heart becomes a chalice for God's love. And the brain and the heart unite in accord and concord based on eternal verities. Then all your ways will be pleasantness and all your paths will be paths of peace.
Nothing happens by chance. Everything is pushed from behind. It's a universe of law and order; therefore, everything happens according to the law of cause and effect. There is a cause behind everything. We do not see the causes operating in a given instance; so, we attribute it to "chance," "coincident," or "accident," or things of that nature.
Charles R. was afraid that he was losing his vision. He went to an ophthalmologist, and learned that he did not have cataracts or glaucoma or any of the usual symptoms leading to blindness. Further tests found no medical evidence of incipient blindness, yet in fact his vision was slowly, but surely dimming. The medical profession today understands that psychic factors play a definite role in all disease. Disease is the lack of peace, lack of equilibrium, lack of serenity. It's impossible to have a healthy mind and a sick body. A healthy mind is a healthy body. Nothing happens in the body except the equivalent is in the mind. There is no doubt that visual problems can be brought on by workings of the mind. Emotional reactions can cause the involuntary muscles to twist the eyeball out of shape. Treating the mental and emotional factors of the individual rather than just concentrating on the eyes may reveal the basic emotional factor, the reason why the subconscious mind is selecting an ailment that tends to shut out everything except the immediate surroundings.
In my conversations with Charles he constantly complained about his mother-in-law who was living in his home. He vehemently stated; “I can’t stand the sight of that woman.” He was full of suppressed rage. His emotional system, which could not stand the strain any longer, selected the eyes as a scapegoat. The explanation was the cure in this case. He was surprised to learn that negative emotions, if persisted in, snarl up in the subconscious mind; and, being negative, must have a negative outlet.
The commands to his subconscious mind were negative: "I hate the sight of her." "I don't want to see her any more." I explained to him: Your subconscious mind takes you literally. His statements were accepted by his subconscious mind; and the subconscious looked upon that as a request and proceeded to bring on loss of vision.
He and his wife agreed that it would be best if his mother-in-law lived elsewhere. They arranged for her to move to a senior citizen facility not too far away,
However, moving her to another residence alone would not solve the problem entirely. Charles had to erase his hatred of his mother-in-law from his mind. At my suggestion he prayed for her by releasing her to God and wishing for her all the blessings of heaven. He did it in a very simple way. He said:
"I surrender my mother-in-law (mentioning her name) to God completely. I radiate love, peace and goodwill to her. I wish for her all the blessings of heaven. I mean this. I'm sincere. I decree it. It shall all come to pass, and the light of God shall shine upon her ways."
As he continued to do that, I explained to him that he would know when he had completely accepted her, because he could meet her in his mind and there would be no sting there. He would no longer sizzle. His vision began to improve almost immediately, and soon his eyesight was restored to normal. The ophthalmologist looked at his eyes and said: "You solved your problem"; and he had solved his problem. He could meet her in his mind and there was no sting there. He no longer sizzled.
In the beginning of this chapter, we brought out that you should concentrate your thoughts on whatsoever things are true, lovely, noble, and Godlike. Think on these things, because you are what you think all day long. And our life is what our thoughts have made it. You don't want the irrational mass mind thinking in you, do you? No, you don't. If you do not think for yourself, you must ask yourself who is manipulating your mind now. Ask yourself: Do I own my own mind? Do I come to my own decisions? Am I thinking clearly, according to Godlike patterns?
You cannot dodge or circumvent the law of mind. It is done unto you, as you believe. Years ago the English sailors blamed scurvy on the salt meat they had -- hardtack and so on. Then someone told them to eat some limes, some lemons, full of Vitamin C; and, of course, they were healed. But, you see, again, that was ignorance, carelessness, indifference, stupidity. It was a void in the mind. Because all the islands and all the countries they visited in their long voyages were full of oranges, apples, limes, lemons, and all kinds of citrus fruits. So, where was the lack? The lack was in the mind, a void in the mind, ignorance. Ignorance is no excuse for the law. It was carelessness, indifference and apathy. People are constantly attributing their ailments to the atmosphere, the weather, to malpractice, evil entities, germs, viruses and diets.
Most of us have no doubt that an invisible virus can make us ill, but we don’t always believe in the Invisible Presence and Power called God, Which created us, and created the whole world.
We pollute the air with strange notions and false doctrines. If we believe that by nearing an electric fan we can catch cold or get a stiff neck, that belief, when accepted, becomes our master and ruler and causes us to experience a cold. Millions of people sit under fans all over the world; they don't get a stiff neck, they don't get a cold. Millions of people go out in the night air. They don't get a chill or pneumonia ever. Millions of people get their feet wet. But maybe your mother said when you get your feet wet and you don't dry them and put on new socks you'll get your death of cold, or pneumonia, or something. But the water never said: "I'll give you pneumonia, a chill, a fever, or anything."
According to your belief it is done unto you. According to your faith it is done unto you. Your faith should be in the goodness of God in the land of the living, and the guidance of God, and the Healing Power of God, the abundance of God, and in the fact that an Infinite Intelligence responds to you when you call upon it.
So, the fan is harmless. It's mechanical; it's innocuous. Your faith can be used two ways. You can have faith in an invisible virus to give you the flu, or you can have faith in the invisible Spirit within you to flow through you as harmony, health, peace, guidance and right action, as a God, or Spirit, in you cannot be sick, and the Spirit in you is God. What is true of God is true of you, because the word individual means the Indivisible One. That's the Living Spirit Almighty within you. The Bible says: “I said ye are Gods, and all of you are children of the Most High.” Believe that you are a child of the Living God. You are. Believe that the Living Spirit within you is the God Presence, and that can't be sick. And because that can't be sick, that's the reality of you.
Emerson said we (humans) think our fate is alien, because the cause is hidden. But the soul (the subconscious mind) contains the event that shall befall it, for the event is only the actualization of its thoughts. What we pray to ourselves for is always granted.
The devil in the Bible means ignorance or misunderstanding. It means a false concept of God, life and the universe. The devil means ignorance or misunderstanding, misapplication of law. Actually, it means God upside down; a twisted, morbid, diabolical concept of the God of love. There's no being with hooves, horns and a tail. This comes out of our distorted, twisted imagination. Not willing to admit that the evil is within ourselves, we postulate it outside ourselves. Surely, God is omnipresent. Omnipresent means it must be present in you; otherwise, the word omnipresent has no meaning.
A man told me, for example, that he was wounded in the jungle, and he was praying that someone would come and rescue him. And he said: "There was a man who was hunting in that jungle and had a sudden feeling that he should change his course. He did so and came and administered to my wound and helped me back to a home." The man who was wounded was praying for help, and this man who was out hunting changed his course. He had an intuitive feeling, perception. It was the Infinite Intelligence guiding the hunter to become his rescuer. But it was the One Being operating in both.
It is done unto you as you believe, and a belief is a thought in the mind. No external power or evil entity is trying to lure or harm you. People are constantly attributing their ailments to the atmosphere, the weather, and some attribute their trouble to the voodoo. They say it’s black magic, or "Someone is practicing voodoo against me." No person has any power. The Power of God is in you. One with God is a majority. If God be for you, who can be against you?
Spell live backwards; you have evil. That's living life backwards. Then you have your evil. Your evil is the inversion of the Life Principle, Which is God. God moves as Unity; seeks to express Himself through you as beauty, love, joy, peace and Divine order. The will of God for you is a greater measure of life, love, truth and beauty, something transcending your fondest dreams.
Realize, therefore, that God is guiding you, that there is right action in your life. Read and meditate on the 91st Psalm, (see chapter 6) and realize that you dwell in the secret place of the Most High, that you abide in the shadow of the Almighty. You'll say of the Lord: He is your refuge and your fortress; my God, in Him will you trust. He covers you with His feathers; under His wings shall you rest. Just like the hen gathers the chickens together to protect them, so does that Heavenly Father in you surround you with the invisible arm of God's love, rendering you impervious to all harm. You become immunized; you become God-intoxicated, because you've received the Divine antibody.
The false idea in your mind is called the adversary, the devil, Satan, and so on. The devils that bedevil us are enmity, strife, hatred; they are devils created by ourselves. They drive some people insane. Because if you put gangsters in charge of your mind, what do you expect? If you fail to believe in the goodness of God and a God of love, the extent to which you believe this can well be your so called devil, which is the source of your pains, aches and misfortune.
God, or the Living Spirit Almighty, or the Life Principle, doesn't judge or punish; it can't. Good and evil are the movements of one’s own mind. It is very primitive thinking to believe that God is punishing us or that a devil is tempting us. Our state of consciousness is always made manifest. That's the way you think, believe, and feel whatever you give mental consent to. There is no other cause in the world. Men, women and children are constantly testifying to our state of mind, to our mental attitudes, to our convictions, to our beliefs.
We must remember that the majority of people do not discipline, control or direct their thinking and mental imagery along Godlike channels. Therefore, their failure to think constructively and harmoniously from the standpoint of the Infinite One means that they leave their minds open to the irrational mass mind, which is full of fears, hates, jealousy, and all kinds of negative happenings and destructive thinking of all kinds.
There is the story of a man who had been fired from his job by a cruel and mean boss. He made up his mind to shoot him. Every day he waited behind a shed near the factory for the boss to pass by. To avoid being caught, he planned to wait for a time when nobody else was near.
He had a rifle. On the third morning, when he was stealthily moving into the shed, he stumbled, the rifle went off, and a bullet pierced his heart. He killed himself. People call that an accident. That was no accident; He had murder in his heart; and murder is of the heart. In the Ten Commandments we are told, “Thou shall do no murder.” It doesn't say, "Thou shalt not kill." That is a commonly held belief because of an early mistranslation of the original Hebrew. When you read the original, it says: "Thou shall do no murder." Then it tells you that murder is of the heart.
When you hate, and when you resent, and you are full of hostility and resentment. Then you are murdering love, peace, harmony, discernment, kindness and everything that's good. And as you continue to hate and resent, these reach a point of saturation in your subconscious mind and are precipitated as cancer, a bullet, a fatal accident or something else. But that negative, destructive emotion must have an outlet; and sooner or later reaches a point of saturation and is precipitated on the screen of space. There are no accidents. There's a mind, a mood, a feeling behind a car, train, bicycle, and also behind the gun. A gun is harmless – it is just a piece of metal. It doesn't do any harm to anybody. It's the mind behind it. You can kill with a stone, kill with poison, with a club, a thousand and one ways. But the stone is harmless; the club is harmless. How do you use it? This man had murder in his heart for a long time, and his subconscious responded accordingly.
The Bible tells you: “No manifestation cometh unto me save I, the Father, draw it.” And the father of all is your thought and feeling. It fathers everything. The union of your conscious and subconscious mind, your thought and feeling, is the cause of your destiny. That's the cause of every single thing in your world. Whatever your conscious and subconscious minds agree on comes to pass. So, any idea emotionalized and felt as true must come to pass.
The Father is your state of consciousness, your own creative power which brings all things to pass in your world. No experience comes to you unless there is an affinity in your own mind. Two unlike things repel each other. Harmony and discord do not dwell together. Therefore, if you believe the whole armor of God surrounds you, enfolds you and enwraps you; and the harmonizing, healing power of God takes care of you, you can't be on a train that gets wrecked; you can't be on a plane that catches on fire or where someone planted a bomb. If you walk and talk with God and believe that God is guiding you, and that the law of harmony is always governing you, then you cannot be on a train that is wrecked because, as we said, discord and harmony do not dwell together.
It would be naïve to assume that changing one’s beliefs from negative to positive could cure all illnesses and disabilities. There are, indeed, organic and physical causes for most ailments. However, there is a significant portion of health problems that are psychosomatic. It is these that thought-change can reverse. I have heard about examples of this in many countries and over many time periods and I have been instrumental in helping many people by providing them with prayers and meditations to help program their subconscious minds to bring them back to health.
Guilt, worry and fear are the psychosomatic equivalent of germs and viruses. By replacing thoughts of guilt, worry and fear with thoughts of faith, confidence and belief, healing is accelerated.
Most cases are not at all dramatic. They may take the form of insomnia, allergies, headaches, digestive disorders or depression. In other cases they may be major maladies such as tumors, paralysis, ulcers, coronary disease or psychological breakdowns.
When afflicted, we tend to blame others. It may be another person. “I’ve been cursed by an enemy,” It may be your family history. “I come from a weak genetic background.” It may be divine retribution. “I’m being punished by God.
As shown earlier in this chapter, the real cause lies within you. It is you and only you who have control of your thoughts. Others may influence you, but it is you and only you who can make the decision on what will be accepted by your conscious mind and seep down into your subconscious.
Let us cease blaming others. Let us look within for the cause of all. Believe in God, believe in the goodness of God, believe in the love of God and God's guidance; and you will find that all your ways will be those of pleasantness and all your paths will be paths of peace. Because you are belief expressed.
People ask me about children. They say children don't know how to pray; and some children are caught in a fire, drowned at sea on a ship, and things of that nature. Well, children are under the watchful eyes of their parents. And God gave love to all fathers and all mothers, the lion and the lioness, too, to all animals.
God's love dwells within the father and mother; and it is their mission to cause that child to grow in the image and the likeness of the Divine Presence of God. So, they are there to realize that the child grows up in the image and the likeness of the dominant mental and emotional climate of the home.
The child cannot yet discern and reason; therefore, the parents mold the consciousness of the child. A child is subject to the atmosphere of the home. Therefore, you realize that the child is God's child and God's love fills its soul; it's growing in wisdom, truth and beauty. So, God planted His love in fathers and mothers that they might lead their children through the darkness of the night and through the vicissitudes of life into a realization of God's Holy Presence, and to teach him of the God of Love, and that the love of God is flowing through them in transcendent loveliness, and that He careth for them. And children brought up to believe that God is love, and His love enfolds them, surrounds them and enwraps them, will grow in a magnificent way; and God will be with them all the days of their life.
In A Nutshell
When your thoughts are completely free from fear and worry, you are thinking from the standpoint of the Divine center within you; and God speaks, thinks and acts through you. Therefore, you speak in words of wisdom, truth and beauty; words of harmony, health and peace. So, you think, therefore, from the God center within.
If you do not think constructively, harmoniously and peacefully, the mass mind will do your thinking for you. And that mass mind believes in tragedy, misfortune, sickness, disease, accidents; hate, murder, and all sorts of things. If you don't do your own thinking, these negative vibrations, or thoughts of the mass mind, move in upon you, reach a point of saturation, precipitate as accident, misfortune, sickness, disease.
The law of life is the law of belief. If you fear sickness, you attract it. If you think good health, you will be healthy. So, the law of the Lord is perfect. You can't think one thing and produce another. Trouble of any kind is nature's alarm system that we are thinking wrongly in that direction. Nothing but a change of thought can set us free.
There is no worse suffering than a guilty conscience, and, certainly, none more destructive. Stop condemning yourself and begin to accept that the Infinite healing presence saturates your whole being, that God dwells in every cell of your body.
It is done unto you as you believe, and a belief is a thought in the mind. No external power or evil entity is trying to lure or harm you. No person has any power. The Power of God is in you. One with God is a majority. If God be for you, who can be against you?
Guilt, worry and fear are the psychosomatic equivalent of germs and viruses. By replacing thoughts of guilt, worry and fear with thoughts of faith, confidence and belief, healing is accelerated.
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Ernest Holmes
