Three by Three Tableau Tarot Spread

Three by Three Tableau Tarot Spread

The 3x3 tableau spread in Marseille Tarot is a visually structured and intuitive method for reading nine cards laid out in a grid—three rows and three columns. This spread is especially popular among readers who favor the Tarot de Marseille's symbolic and non-prescriptive style, allowing for flexible interpretation based on imagery, positioning, and personal intuition.

🃏 Structure of the 3x3 Tableau Spread

[ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] 

[ 4 ] [ 5 ] [ 6 ] 

[ 7 ] [ 8 ] [ 9 ]

🔍 How to Read It

Here’s a common approach to interpreting the tableau:

🧭 Rows (Horizontal)

• Top Row (1–3): The past or underlying influences.
• Middle Row (4–6): The present situation or the heart of the matter.
• Bottom Row (7–9): The future or potential outcomes.

🧱 Columns (Vertical)

• Left Column (1, 4, 7): Internal factors, personal mindset, or emotional state.
• Middle Column (2, 5, 8): The core issue, central theme, or spiritual insight.
• Right Column (3, 6, 9): External influences, other people, or practical matters.

🔄 Diagonals

• Diagonal (1, 5, 9): A narrative arc or spiritual journey.
• Diagonal (3, 5, 7): Hidden dynamics or subconscious patterns.

🧠 Interpretation Tips

• Focus on visual connections between cards—gestures, gazes, and symbols.
• The central card (5) often acts as the anchor or key to the reading.
• Marseille Tarot encourages open reading, meaning you rely less on memorized meanings and more on intuitive storytelling.

If you’re curious to see this method in action, there’s a helpful YouTube walkthrough of the 3x3 tableau spread using the Claude Burdel 1751 deck.

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The 3x3 tableau spread in Marseille Tarot can be interpreted in several alternative ways depending on the reader’s style, intention, and the question at hand. While the standard approach involves reading rows, columns, and diagonals, here are some alternative layers of meaning that can enrich your reading:

🌟 Alternative Interpretive Frameworks

1. Psychological Layers

• Top Row (1–3): Conscious thoughts, aspirations, or mental focus.
• Middle Row (4–6): Emotional state, interpersonal dynamics, or current challenges.
• Bottom Row (7–9): Subconscious influences, ancestral patterns, or karmic baggage.

This approach is great for introspective or therapeutic readings.

2. Elemental or Energetic Reading

Assign elemental qualities (Fire, Water, Air, Earth) to rows or columns:

• Fire (Top): Passion, drive, creativity.
• Water (Middle): Emotions, intuition, relationships.
• Earth (Bottom): Stability, material concerns, health.

This method works well when exploring energy balance or spiritual alignment.

3. Narrative Flow

Instead of fixed positions, read the cards like a story:

• Left to Right: A linear progression or unfolding journey.
• Spiral Pattern: Starting from the center (card 5) and spiraling outward to explore layers of influence.

This is especially useful for open-ended questions or when seeking a holistic overview.

4. Corner Cards as Anchors

Cards 1, 3, 7, and 9 can be read as:

• The “frame” of the situation—setting boundaries or defining the context.
• Four directions or elements—North, South, East, West; or Fire, Water, Air, Earth.

This adds a spatial or elemental dimension to the spread.

5. Central Card as the Soul of the Reading

Card 5 is often treated as the core theme or significator. You can build the entire interpretation around this card, treating others as modifiers or clarifiers.

Would you like to explore one of these methods with a sample reading or dive deeper into a specific style? I can help you craft a spread or interpret a set of cards using any of these frameworks.

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There’s even more depth to explore with the 3x3 tableau spread in Marseille Tarot. Here are a few additional insights and advanced techniques that seasoned readers often incorporate:

🌀 Dynamic Reading Techniques

1. Mirroring & Symmetry

• Look for mirrored cards across the vertical or horizontal axis (e.g., cards 1 & 3, 4 & 6).
• These can reveal duality, conflict, or balance between opposing forces.

2. Corner Cards as the “Frame”

• Cards 1, 3, 7, and 9 form the outer structure of the reading.
• They can represent the environment, boundaries, or external pressures.
• Some readers interpret them as the four elements or four directions, adding a mystical layer.

3. Card Interactions

• Pay attention to gestures, gazes, and movement in the illustrations.
• For example, if a figure in card 4 is looking toward card 5, it may suggest a desire or influence directed at the central issue.

🧙‍♀️ Philosophical or Esoteric Layers

1. Alchemical or Hermetic Symbolism

• Some readers overlay alchemical stages (nigredo, albedo, citrinitas, rubedo) onto the tableau to explore spiritual transformation.
• The spread becomes a map of inner evolution, especially when using only Major Arcana.

2. Numerological Resonance

• Consider the numerical value of each card and how they relate.
• For example, a spread with multiple 7s might suggest spiritual testing or introspection.

🎥 Helpful Resources

If you want to see these ideas in action, check out:

• Mastering the Tarot Tableau – Revisiting Predictive Accuracy by Toni Savory
• Reading Tarot de Marseille in a 3x3 tableau using the Claude Burdel 1751 deck

Dynamic Hexagram Tarot Spread

Dynamic Hexagram Tarot Spread

The Dynamic Hexagram Tarot Spread is a six-card layout designed to facilitate an open and actively dynamic interaction between the cards, drawing inspiration from the 'dynamic' aspect of the I-Ching's hexagrams, though it is not directly related to the I-Ching's method of 'moving' lines. 

The cards are laid out in a line from left to right, and the reading proceeds as follows: the first card represents the underlying impulse present in the situation, which may also indicate the true subject of the reading. Cards 2 and 3 serve as clarification cards for the first card, while cards 2, 3, and 4 together describe the current situation (ABC). 

The situation is seen as constantly transforming, and cards 3, 4, and 5 show this new state (DEF), illustrating the transformation from ABC to DEF. The sixth card, the closing card, indicates how the future will pull the situation forward, with cards 4 and 5 acting as clarification cards for this final card. 

This spread allows for multiple interpretations, including viewing the sequence as an opening, a convergence of past and future impulses, the transformation of the situation, and the interplay of forces from the opening and closing cards. The spread is intended to be flexible and influenced by the specific cards drawn, rather than adhering to strict positional meanings.

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The Dynamic Hexagram Tarot Spread is a six-card layout inspired by the structure and interpretive style of the I Ching hexagram, but adapted for tarot. It emphasizes transformation and fluidity in the reading, making it ideal for exploring situations in flux or with multiple layers of meaning.

🧿 Structure of the Spread

The cards are laid out in a straight line from left to right:

1 2 3 4 5 6

Each position has a specific role:

• Card 1 – Opening Card: Represents the underlying impulse or theme of the situation. It may reveal what the reading is truly about, especially if the question is vague or the reading veers off the expected path.
• Cards 2 & 3 – Clarifiers: These help illuminate the meaning of Card 1 and begin to describe the current state.
• Cards 2, 3, 4 – ABC Sequence: This trio forms a mini-reading that shows the situation as it currently manifests—emotionally, materially, psychologically, etc.
• Cards 3, 4, 5 – DEF Sequence: This trio represents the transformation or evolution of the situation. It shows how things are shifting or developing.
• Card 6 – Closing Card: Indicates the direction the situation is heading or how the future is influencing the present. Cards 4 and 5 can also clarify this outcome.

🔄 Dynamic Interpretation

The spread is “dynamic” because it encourages reading the cards in overlapping sequences (ABC and DEF), rather than in isolation. This mirrors the I Ching’s concept of changing lines and evolving trigrams, though it doesn’t use literal lines or traditional hexagram structures.

🌀 Why Use It?

• Great for complex or evolving situations
• Encourages fluid interpretation rather than rigid positions
• Offers both present insight and future trajectory

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This Thing Called You, Chapter 4

This Thing Called You, Chapter 4

The universe is one vast system. All the laws of nature conspire to benefit mankind, but these same laws automatically protect the integrity of nature. It is as though nature said, "All right, little man, the game is yours. Play it as you see fit. I am going to serve you, but don't fool yourself. I am going to reflect right back to you with exactness what you really are. If you don't like what is happening, I am not going to be disturbed. You are the arbiter of your fate. You are the captain of your soul. 

"I have given you all. I have implanted freedom, individuality and self-choice within you. Finally, through experience you will learn the better and wiser way. I am love as well as law, beauty as well as reason, feeling as well as intellect. You are set on the path of self-determination. Your fantastic will, seeking good for yourself that you would not willingly give to others, may lead you up many blind alleys, you may meet with disappointment and chagrin, but I have also placed within you a compass and a chart. There is a course you may pursue which leads to happiness, to wholeness, to peace of mind and joy. 

"Someday you will follow this path, because I have placed a spirit within you which is ever seeking to guide, ever standing aside permitting you partially to obliterate that spark which is part of Myself. Through all the rounds of experience I am there. 

"Some day when you sit down by the roadside, weary with struggle, you will listen deeply and you will hear a voice saying, ‘This is the path, follow it.' Even then I shall wait, for you are you and you cannot return to your Father's house other than as a complete and perfect individualization of Myself. Always I shall be waiting. I shall not reproach you when you return. You will be welcome. The time of your return is in your own decision. It may be now or at any time in that vast forever which stretches before you." 

The freedom which the all-creative Wisdom has designed for man is marvelous beyond human perception. Life has given man an intuitive sense of things, it has permitted him to evolve through countless ages of trial and error to the day of his redemption, always knowing that this redemption is certain. But the timing, even of eternity, so far as man is concerned, rests in his present or delayed acceptance. It could be today or tomorrow. It could have been yesterday. We are living in a universal now and this now waits on our acceptance. 

Many people naturally ask, "If God is good, if God is love, if God is peace, why all this confusion?" Don't you think that even God could not have done it any other way? Can't you see that even the Divine I Will, in ordaining man's destiny, was compelled to let man work out his own future? 

The more you think about this proposition, the clearer it will become. Do you think it would have been possible for it to have been any other way? You would not wish to be an automaton any more than would wish to be a cabbage or a wave of the ocean or a knot in a tree. The greatest gift Life could have made to you is yourself. You are a spontaneous, self-choosing center in Life, in the great drama of being, the great joy of becoming, the certainty of eternal expansion. You could not ask for more and more could not have been given. 

Life will be to you what you are to It. Of necessity there is a Divine Pattern at the center of everything. This is the Christ in you waiting your recognition. Somehow, you must link your will, your thought, your intellect, your imagination and your feeling with the Divine Presence which is already there. Between this perfection and completion, which already exists, and your intellect, environment and everyday experience, there is the accumulated experience subconscious mind. 

In reality there is no such thing as your subconscious mind, for what the analyst analyzes and the psychologist psychologizes is not another mind, it is merely the accumulated thought and feeling of the ages operating through you. It is no more a mind apart or separate than the law of gravitation, which holds you to the earth, is an individual law. All laws are universal and may become individualized. The thing that stands between you and the greater good is a thing of thought and nothing else. It is not Reality that you must change, but your mental reaction to It. 

What is called the subjective state of your thought, the accumulated patterns, is automatically attracting or repelling. These patterns are automatically re-sowing their own seeds in the creative medium of mind. They will keep on doing this until you change them. They will do this without volition of your intellect. 

Your hope lies in the fact that you can change these patterns. Perhaps not in a moment or a day, or a month or a year, but you can change them. This is not a process of merely making affirmations or holding thoughts, it is a process of the gradual re-education of your whole mental reaction. It is a process of following the intuition back to the pattern, of feeling toward it, of accepting it, and of acting as though it were there. 

The whole thing is so simple that at first it seems impossible that it could be that way, yet it is. As you watch your mental actions and reactions, particularly those that are rooted in feeling, as you observe your expectations, you will feel impulses rising from within—habits of belief, patterns of thought—too many of which are negative. 

As you carefully weigh and measure the operation of this unconscious expectancy as it comes to the surface, you can detect what has to be changed. If you can accept that these impulsions are thought patterns that have been laid down there by yourself or the sum total of human belief, you will realize that they can be changed by bringing in exactly opposite thought patterns. This will not be a question of struggling with the old patterns so much as it will be one of gradually straining them out. 

You will notice, if you follow a few simple rules and methods carefully, that when thoughts of confusion persist in coming to the surface, statements of peace will neutralize them. When thoughts of fear assail, statements of faith will counteract their action. When thoughts of unhappiness well up from within, thoughts of happiness and joy will transmute them through the alchemy of Spirit. 

First of all, you must arrive at peace of mind. It is only on the basis of peace that you can persist with absolute certainty. Peace alone gives poise. There is an intuition within you which already knows that you are one with good, that your destiny is certain, and you must listen to this intuition for it is the voice of God in you. 

Quite naturally, many ask, "Is there a secret way? Is there an occult way? Is there some great thing that only a few people know, the great and wise ones, that I must learn? Must I fast, concentrate and pray without ceasing? Must I beseech or implore? Must I work out all the mistakes I have ever made to become redeemed? Must I renounce everything to find peace? How am I going to be made whole?" 

Unfortunately, many persons labor under the mistaken idea that there are deep secrets, that there are subtle and unknown pathways which a few people know about, great truths which only a few have realized, and so the search goes on through the pathway of mystery. Many persons sincerely believe that every mistake they have made will be held against them for an indefinite period. Many others believe that God is trying them, and far too many believe in the necessity of devious pathways, strange and weird rites, adherence to certain forms and rituals. 

You are to take a more direct and simple path from your intellect to your true self. Not withholding from any other his way (which no doubt is good for him), you are to become a simple and direct soul. The answer is not in any book but in yourself. 

The time of redemption is not something stretching out incarnations or through equally endless endless purgatories. Jesus, the wise, proclaimed that your kingdom is at hand, that the eleventh hour is not too late, that the time of your redemption is that split second when the sum total of your thinking includes that which belongs to the kingdom of good. 

When the first house was lighted with electricity the darkness did not groan and say, "How long have I been dark. How ignorant have been those who have permitted this darkness. What grievous mistakes they have made." The darkness said nothing when the light spoke; and the light shown in that darkness and the darkness was not. There were no devious paths other than the discovery of the light. There was no judgment of darkness against the light. There was no action of darkness upon the light. The light merely exclaimed, "Behold, I come!" and the darkness disappeared. 

The eternal Giver is equally the eternal Forgiver and love forever counterbalances hate. Joy will always put sadness to flight and good will overcome evil Peace will neutralize confusion, and hope will banish doubt. Could anything be simpler? Do not delay your good by thinking that you have so much evil to overcome. 

The thing that distinguishes the teaching of Jesus in such a glorious manner from that of all his predecessors and most of his followers is this simple fact, this great thought: "Behold, the kingdom of God is at hand." 

Jesus did not say to the thief upon the cross: Miserable sinner that you are, you must suffer through endless ages of retribution. This glorified soul, who sang a great psalm of life, merely said: You are sleeping to the past and waking to the future—"To day shalt thou be with me in paradise." He did not say to the laborer who came in at the eleventh hour: You are a miserable and unproductive man; how can you expect to enter the vineyard at so late an hour? He said: Behold, the fields are ripe unto harvest—thrust in your sickle. The vineyard yields fruit—pluck the grapes. The wine of life waits, the chalice of love overflows—drink. Jesus did not say to the penitent: Your sins are unredeemed. He said, you are forgiven. How dimly have we understood such glorious truth! 

Jesus had no secret teaching, no occult lore. He indulged in no weird performances. The truths he taught were few and simple. He said that the laws of life are repeated on every plane of being. He did teach the necessity, not of repressing our desires, but of constructively expressing them. The teaching of Jesus was that the universe is made up of love and law. God is love. Love is givingness; love is also for-givingness. There is a law of cause and effect which automatically compels man to reap as he sows. The day he ceases to sow error he will begin to reap truth. When he stops sowing hate he will reap love. When he stops sowing unforgivingness he will be forgiven. When he stops sowing fear, he will reap faith. 

There is no mystery here. Simple, direct statements of cause and effect—the inevitable necessity of good finally overcoming evil, the glorious concept that the Kingdom of God, in all its wonder and beauty, exists eternally, changelessly, waiting your recognition. 

Since you are primarily a spiritual and mental being you must rearrange your thoughts to meet, to agree with, to harmonize and unify with, this new concept. No one can do this for you as well as you can do it for yourself. Try to simplify the whole process, make it direct. You are starting out on a great adventure, a wonderful journey. You are guided by love, inspired by truth, and your future will be what you make it. 

This Thing called You, Chapter 4,

Ernest Holmes

This Thing Called You, Chapter 3

This Thing Called You, Chapter 3

When Jesus said, It is done unto you as you believe." he not only announced the law of faith, he explained how it works. First, he implied that there is a law which operates upon your faith. All laws are universal; hence they exist wherever you are. If there is a law of faith, it is right where you are and it will operate like any other law in nature. 

For instance, it will work like the law of gravitation, which automatically holds everything in place. But so far as you are concerned, it will hold things where you place them. You do not change the law of gravitation; you merely change your position in it. This law works automatically. As you shift objects around in the position that seems desirable to you it will hold them there. This law works for you on the scale of your own individual being. 

Suppose you want to change the position of the furniture in your room. You move the piano from one place to another. This is an act of volition on your part. Perhaps you wish to move the stove into the living room. This might seem an eccentric act but the law does not question it. It will automatically hold things where you place them, it will operate upon your decision. 

Jesus proclaimed a law of faith that acts on your belief. And now comes the more subtle and interesting part of this story which, perhaps, you have not analyzed. At the expense of repetition let us look into this a little more carefully, because it is of such importance. It is this little word as that you are to consider the meaning of. Not only is there a law which does something for you (this is easy enough to accept) but in doing so it is limited to your belief, this is the important thing to remember. 

It is only common sense to recognize that what this law does for you, it must, of necessity, do through you. The gift of Life is not complete until it is accepted. If you can believe only in a little good, then the law will be compelled to operate on that little good. Not that the law of itself knows anything about big and little any more than the law of gravitation would know that a mountain is heavier than a marble—it automatically holds everything in place. If you remove a large pile of gravel, it will hold this bulk in place. If you dip up but a few thimblefuls it will hold this smaller amount in place with equal impartiality. 

Now, shift this whole proposition over into the mental plane, realizing that the mental reproduces the physical, but at a higher level. The law is always a mirror reflecting your mental attitudes. Therefore, if you say, "I can have a little good," it will produce this small amount of good for you, but if you say, "All the good there is mine," with equal certainty it will produce a larger good. If you believe that wherever you go you will meet with love and friendship, with appreciation and gratitude, then this will become the law of your life. 

The late Dr. Carrel said that faith operates on its plane as physical laws operate on their plane, reproducing the same action at a higher level. He was careful to explain that the laws of faith do not destroy physical laws. One law of God could not destroy another. Spiritual laws reproduce physical laws at a higher level. The higher law automatically controls the lower. This is equal to saying that the laws of mind can be made to control the physical body and the physical environment when they are rightly used, not through denying body or environment, but by including them in a larger system. 

This is what faith does. You should think of the law of faith just as naturally as you would any other law in nature. Jesus did not imply that faith would obliterate other laws, nor did he mean that faith in that which is not true could create truth out of error. He meant that faith in right must always reverse that which is wrong. So far no one has disproved this theory. All who have acted upon it have received a definite result. Faith is a great adventure, a stimulating pursuit, a worthwhile attempt to utilize the higher laws of your being for definite purposes. 

Jesus was very explicit in his teaching of the use of faith. He said, if you ask for bread you will not receive a stone. This is equal to saying, if you plant a rose bush, it will not become a lemon tree. The law of faith operates with integrity on the definite idea thought, expectancy or acceptance implanted in it. 

But the seed must be left in the creative soil of mind until it can mature. There is a time for sowing as well as a time for harvest. Plants must not be pulled up or interrupted in the process of their growth. They must be watered with hope, fertilized with expectancy and cultivated with enthusiasm, gratitude and joyous recognition. 

If the law operates automatically, then you do not coerce, concentrate or compel it. You provide mental attitudes which it may operate upon. You do not hold the law in place, you hold your ideas in place. This is your individual effort. Your concentration is not on the law, because that is already here, it is right where you are, it is within you as well as around you. This concentration is not coercion but a good-natured flexibility with yourself, gradually eliminating doubt, fear and uncertainty, and replacing them with certainty, assurance, recognition and gratitude. 

This process is not so much a problem of will as it is one of willingness. The only important role the will plays is in a decision to keep thought poised long enough to permit the law to operate. This is not a prayer of beseechment but a recognition or acknowledgment of right action. 

Faith is the most important thing in your life. It is impossible to arrive at the grandeur of its possibility through petty thinking and small ideas. The whole mental scope must be broadened and deepened, the whole expectancy must reach out to more, the whole imagination must lend its feeling to grateful acceptance and joyous recognition. 

All thoughts of suffering for righteousness' sake, all beliefs that you are being tempted or tried to see if you are worthy of the gifts of Life, are mistaken concepts of the way this law works. Life wishes to make the gift because in so doing It is flowing into Its own self-expression. You might say that gravity wishes to hold an object in place because this is its nature. As a matter of fact, it cannot help doing so. But if you place the gas range in the living room and keep it lighted on a hot summer day you will be uncomfortable. If you place it too close to the draperies no doubt they will catch fire. 

This does not mean that the law would have any evil intent. You could as well put the range in the rear garden. You might put an electric heater in your ice-box and the ice would melt, not because the law wishes to destroy the contents of the box, but because laws are always impersonal. Hence, Jesus told his disciples that while there is a law of belief, and of necessity they must always be using it, being individuals with free will they must expect to reap as they have sown.

You wish to reap joy, happiness, love, friendship, health, harmony and success. Could you expect to keep your mind filled with such thoughts for yourself unless it were filled with similar thoughts for others? Of course not. This would not make sense. Therefore, Jesus said to love your enemies, be kind to everyone; "give and to you shall be given." Moreover, he said that when you give, the gift will return to you multiplied. What a marvelous concept this is! It seems too good to be true. Yet plant a seed in the ground and it multiplies its own type many times. 

There is a law of multiplicity in nature. You have a right to expect that what you wish for others will be returned to you through others. You have no right to expect that you can reap where you have not sown. 

The marvelous teaching of Jesus is not quite so soft as it sounds. His words are statements of the great laws of cause and effect; laws that produce justice without judgment—the inevitable result of laws that work with mathematical certainty. You cannot love and hate at the same time, nor can anyone else. Therefore, this man of wisdom said that light overcomes darkness. He did not say that darkness overcomes light. 

Disregarding the softness and beauty of the words of Jesus, the marvelous grandeur of them, you will always find this cold, hard fact staring you in the face— Jesus taught the operation of the law of cause and effect. He said that not one jot or tittle of it could be changed. All the poetry, wit, knowledge and art of the ages cannot alter the fact that love alone begets love, peace alone attracts peace, only that which goes forth in joy can return with gladness—give and to you shall be given, and the type multiplied, good measure, running over and pressed down. 

You need not force or coerce, but you must obey the law. If you can see God in everything, then God will look back at you through everything. This is the meaning of that saying: "Act as though I am, and I will be." This is the law of give and take. 

When the time comes that nothing goes forth from you other than that which you would be glad to have return, then you will have reached your heaven. 

This Thing called You, Chapter 3,

Ernest Holmes

This Thing Called You, Chapter 2

This Thing Called You, Chapter 2

Why, then, if these things are true, is the world still impoverished, mentally and physically ill and apparently unable to become unified? This is the great question—Why, and Why, and Why? Unless this question is adequately answered and its meaning increasingly applied to human conduct, there is danger that the world may destroy its vast system of misconceptions and be compelled to begin over again. 

It seems as though a persistent purpose were being carried out, that anything which does not comply with this purpose must become submerged in the backwash of evolution, that that which is more nearly right may come forward. The world has reached a dramatic climax in its history. It has unlocked so much of the physical resources of the universe that unless this enormous power is used constructively it can well destroy it. The world stands on the brink of a great abyss, a terrific regression, or, if it chooses, faces the horizon of a glorious day, a new age. 

But you may ask, "Why would an Almighty Power and a Divine Intelligence permit such possible disaster?" This is something that you and I have no control over. God, or the Creative Genius of the universe, has placed this prerogative in the mind of man through giving him volition and choice. God Himself could not will it otherwise. For, if there is to be a valid choice, it must be accompanied by the possibility of more than one thing to choose. 

This is what Moses meant when he said that the word is in your own mouth—a blessing or a curse according to the way you use it. Jesus reiterated this when he said that the Father worketh until now, but now the son works; that "whatsoever things the son seeth the Father do, that doeth the son also, that the Father may be glorified in the son." 

Now, you are this son and you wish the Father to be glorified through you. You want Life to live through you. You want joy to express itself in you. You desire peace of mind and happiness, success, health, radiant living. How could you desire these things unless they already exist as possibilities? Is there not an echo within you, as though it came from some invisible source—a deep feeling, an intuitive something? You cannot quite put it into words, yet there it is, definite as your life.

Do not be afraid of this urging. All nature obeys it blindly. The culminating and triumphant result of evolution has placed in you the possibility of accepting or rejecting. In wonder and awe before the grandeur of this possibility the mind stands still, the imagination is staggered, but that hope which springs perennial in man's consciousness, says, "Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is." 

You already are a spiritual being. When the mind understands this and embodies its essence, that which you are in the invisible will become more apparent in the visible. You have concluded that this is true. You are reinforced by the wisdom of the ages and are rapidly becoming further reinforced through scientific investigation. Let us see if we cannot discover what blocks the way. We shall not discover any block in Reality Itself, but in our attitude toward It. Now that man has reached the stage of self-choice he can temporarily, but not permanently, block the Divine intention. 

Browning said that man can desecrate but never lose the divine spark. It is always there. "I am with you always, even unto the end of the world." Let us suppose that you are spirit, soul and body, as the Bible states; that your spirit already is perfect, an individualized center in the consciousness of God. God has made you out of Himself. The only material He had was the Substance of His own being. The only mind He had to implant in you was His Mind. The only spirit He had to impart was His own Spirit. "What is man, that thou art mindful of him? or the son of man, that thou visitest him? Thou madest him a little lower than the angels; thou crownedst him with glory and honour, and didst set him over the works of thy hands." 

You are a living being by virtue of the fact that through some process which no man knows, needs to know, or can know, Life is incarnated in you, operating through you this moment. This is the gift of Life. This is the Son forever begotten in the bosom of the Father 

But you are an individual, like all other individuals gradually awakening to the greater possibility. If Life made you out of Itself, which It most certainly did, and if you are an individual just a little different from all other individuals who ever lived, then Life not only created you as an independent being, It also implanted a unique something within you. It will never be duplicated. The spirit that accompanies you through your life is just a little different from the spirit of any other person—not different in that it is isolated, because all are rooted in one being, but different in that it is individual. 

Suppose you were to think of it this way: there is a spirit in me and this spirit is God as His own son. Whether or not I understand it, there is a real Myself which forever exists in pure Spirit. I had nothing to do with this. I merely awoke and discovered it. I did not give it to myself, and I cannot withdraw myself from it. I can only accept it. 

Since you are an individual, you can either accept or reject your own spirit. Of course, no one can take it away from you. Somewhere along the line you will be compelled to accept it. However, you can procrastinate, you can divert, you can sidestep or delay this divine event. If you knew beyond question that this is true, your greatest search would be after your own spirit. Well, you do know this. Every desire you have for betterment in life is some echo from that deep within which forevermore proclaims, "Behold, I make all things new." 

It is because your mind has the prerogative of accepting or rejecting that the Bible states: "Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: If any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in and sup with him, and he with me." Suppose with utmost simplicity, you accept the spirit that is in you—not in the mountain, not at Jerusalem, not even in the temple, although it is there also, but in you—the spirit of yourself. Standing between this spirit, your physical body and external affairs, there is the sum total of your thinking, believing, feeling. 

Perhaps, more than anyone understands or believes, the sum total of every man's thought is a mirage of the ages. It would be well to think of it this way that you may not condemn yourself. You are like everyone else, "an infant crying in the night"—something trying to be made whole, something with a deep yearning for security, a deep and unspeakable longing for love, for protection and for peace. 

But the mind is filled with the accumulated doubts of the ages, as though a vast abyss of doubt, fear and uncertainty were standing between you and your desires. Here is where Science of Mind can aid you, where your intellect may reach through to unite with your inspiration, where the conscious use of the laws of mind may break down the barriers which hide the face of love from the fact of unloveliness.

If God created you after His own nature (and there is nothing else He could have made you out of) then the thing you are after is already here, within you. The only things that stand between you and it are the accumulated thoughts, beliefs and emotions of the ages. But there is nothing there that has not been put there either by yourself or the race. What has been put there can be removed. These unbeliefs are thought patterns laid down throughout the ages and accentuated by your own experience, by your inherited tendencies and environment. There is no use wasting time speculating as to what avenue they came through. Your job is to reject them. 

Your intellect has now accepted that you can do this. Are you not, then, like one who has started on a journey to a beautiful city which he knows exists? What if he has to climb a few mountains, make a certain number of detours and cross a desert or ford a stream. Everything that is worth attaining is worth striving toward. It is the goal you are after. You have a vision and you are going to follow it. 

You may not reach your city of good in a single day, but its image out there in your desert is not a mirage. There was never a counterfeit without a reality back of it. Fortunately, your destiny is not external. If it were you could not reach your goal. One by one, without frenzy or impatience, you are going to remove the mental blocks that stand between you and your destiny. What thought has done, thought can undo. The mental patterns laid down in your subconscious throughout the ages can be consciously removed. 

This great thing within you, which is called will or choice, can decide your destiny. It can remove every obstruction and gradually implant new patterns in your mind. 

Suppose you look at the proposition from another viewpoint. Suppose you place your physical environment, including your body and your conscious mind, at one end of a line. At the other end place your spiritual being, God and infinite possibility. At this end of the line everything is already perfect. Jesus called this the Kingdom of Heaven which ought to come on earth. It should make its advent in your experience. It wants to. "The Spirit seeketh such." 

This end of the line is the Kingdom which has been promised. This Spirit is happy, whole, free, filled with joy, eternal in Its existence, and can provide you with everlasting expansion. All your highest hopes and dreams have come from It. The echo of Its being is in your intellect, the voice of Its unspoken word is in your mind, the feeling of Its light and life is in your heart, the emotion of Its imagination is in your soul. 

At the other end of the line is your physical environment, including your body, most of your conscious thoughts, your daily hopes and aspirations, fears and failures. All apparently isolated, wandering in a desert of despair, climbing endless mountains, at times lost in interminable forests through which light does not break, fording rushing streams in the turmoil of life—searching, wondering, hoping, longing, yearning toward that other half of its being which alone can make it whole. 

Don't you think this is a good description of your attitudes and experiences? One-half of you in heaven, the other half on a dense earth. The heavenly willing to come forward and answer your every need, the earthly half striving toward the heavenly—and the apparent barrier. If you knew, as you know that you live, that this barrier was only a thing of thought or belief, the first half of your journey would be accomplished. You would know that you have the tools to cut down the forests, level the mountains, bridge the streams and cause the desert to bloom. 

If you listen to yourself long enough you will know this. With hope and enthusiasm, you will start on your journey. You will never become discouraged or disheartened. Your vision will be on this city of good and your feet, your mind, your intellect, your will, will travel toward this city and you shall surely enter its gates. 

Let us use another illustration. Let us think of a tunnel, one end of which is out in the open where there are fertile valleys, glorious sunshine, verdant vegetation. There is song, laughter, happiness, peace and joy. Let us call this the Valley of Contentment. Let us also call it the Kingdom of God. 

You are at the other end of this tunnel in a deep, dark cavern, overlooking a desert through which no refreshing streams flow. Somehow your attention has been drawn to the open end of this tunnel. With a curiosity that you did not put in your mind, you wish to investigate where this tunnel leads, what is at the other end of it. You peer into the tunnel. At first it seems dark, but occasionally a shaft of light shines through it and you catch a vision of the other side. 

You have a great longing to walk through this tunnel, to leave behind the dismal scene of discontent and unhappiness, and to enter into the joy that your brief glimpse has promised. For in this glimpse, you have seemed to see yourself standing at the other end of the tunnel. Perhaps, in this momentary vision you seem to have seen your own spirit. It seems as though something says, "Yes, this is myself. How am I going to unite myself with myself?" Then darkness closes in. Your vision has vanished. It must have been an illusion. 

Now there are two voices that seem to be talking to you. One voice says, "You are following a mirage, an illusion. There is nothing real but this end of the tunnel. Accept things as they are. Make the best of them. Be as happy as you can, but do not hope." This is the voice of despair. The other voice is saying, "Do not be afraid. Your vision is true. Enter the tunnel and walk through. There is nothing solid in it. That which obstructs your passage is vapor, the vapor of unbelief. It is dense only with the denseness of doubt. It is filled with the thoughts of the ages. There is a lamp within you already lighted. As you walk through the tunnel the darkness will disappear because of this light. You will find that other half of yourself and you will discover that this tunnel is your own mind." 

This is a picture of yourself—your efforts, your hopes and longings, your inspirations and doubts, your fears and faiths. 

The barriers between you and your greater good are not barriers in themselves. They are things of thought. It is because of this that all things are possible to faith. Jesus summed up the whole proposition when he said, "It is done unto you as you believe." In interpreting this saying, however, you must pause after the word as.  Think about its meaning and you will discover that he was saying that life not only responds to your belief, it responds after the manner of your believing, as you believe. It is a mirror reflecting the image of your belief. 

While the laws of mind, like  all laws of nature, are neutral, good must finally overcome evil. Evil is a negation. Good is positive. Like light and darkness—darkness cannot overcome light, but light can neutralize darkness. This is why Jesus said if you seek the Kingdom first everything else will be added, and in this "everything else" is included all things in this life that make for full livingness and joy, peace and happiness, health and harmony, and the success that rightfully belongs to a Divine Being. 

The only warning Jesus made against the use of this highest law of your being was that it should not be used destructively. ". . . for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword." The Kingdom of God contains everything that is or could be desirable. This everything already exists as a potential something to be drawn upon. You may use this potential for any good purpose, not only with certainty of success but with safety. It is only when we use natural forces wrongly that they can destroy, and it is ordained that this destruction be of a temporary nature. 

You wish to use the laws of your being in such a way that they cannot bring evil to yourself or others. Therefore, you must be certain that your desire is toward more life for everyone, including yourself. If you follow this rule you cannot use the law wrongly. 

There is a law of faith and belief which is just as definite as any other law in nature. This law utilizes the Creative Principle of Life in such a way that all lesser uses of It become submerged. This is the triumph of Spirit.  

This Thing called You, chapter 2,

Ernest Holmes

This Thing Called You, Chapter 1

This Thing Called You, Chapter 1

You, like all others, are seeking the joy of living. You wish to be needed, to be loved, to be included in the great drama of life. This urge is in every individual.  It is in everything. The rose exists to express beauty. Root and branch conspire with nature to give birth to blossom. An artist will starve in his garret that he may chisel an angelic form from a slab of marble, compelling the unyielding substance to accept his breath of creation. 

Not only human beings, but everything in nature is endowed with this creative urge. When moisture is precipitated the desert receives it with gladness and breaks forth into a song of creation. Making the most of its brief season, it blossoms in joy, storing within its bosom the seed of a future flowering. It is impossible to escape this creative urge. Everything must find fulfillment or perish. 

No man willed this so. Evolution is proof of an irresistible urge which pushes everything onward and upward. Man did not create life, he is something that lives in, from, and by it. He cannot escape life or the necessity of giving expression to it through living. 

In some way which you know not of, through some process which never reveals its face, Life has entered into you and with it the irresistible impulse to create. Divine Intelligence has willed it so, nor you, nor any other person, nor all the wit, science or philosophy of man, nor the inspiration of saints or sages, can change one bit of it any more than man can arrest the eternal circuits of time, the revolutions of the planets or the desire of the fledgling to leave its nest, to soar and sing. 

Create or perish is the eternal mandate of nature. Be constructive or become frustrated, is an equal demand. You cannot escape the conclusion that whatever this thing is which is seeking expression through everything, it can find satisfactory outlet only through constructive and life-giving creativeness. You may call this process good or evil, right or wrong, God or the devil, heaven or hell. Would it not be simpler to say that finally things work out for the best only when they are life-giving. 

We are all some part of a universal order. The very urge for personal gratification is incomplete until it finds a universal outlet. This is the cause back of all upheavals in human history. The pattern is trying to fit the pieces into greater and greater units as though it could not accomplish its purpose through anything other than a democracy of Spirit, a union of all. This union, however, does not mean sameness, for while unity requires conformity to principles, unity never means uniformity. Every blade of grass, every crystal, every drop of water, like every individual, is a little different from any other one of its species. 

Humanity is made up of innumerable individuals, no two alike, and yet society is a composite whole moving gradually toward some ultimate goal. What could this goal be other than that everyone, while remaining individual, shall find a more complete expression in and among all other individuals? This has been the dream of the ages, that the lion shall lie down with the lamb, and "a little child shall lead them." As Jesus said, ". . . that they may be one, even as we are one." 

You belong to the universe in which you live, you are one with the Creative Genius back of this vast array of ceaseless motion, this original flow of life. You are as much a part of it as the sun, the earth and the air. There is something in you telling you this—like a voice echoing from some mountain top of inward vision, like a light whose origin no man has seen, like an impulse welling up from an invisible source. 

Your soul belongs to the universe. Your mind is an outlet through which the Creative Intelligence of the universe seeks fulfillment. 

This is your starting point for investigating the meaning of those impulses, longings and desires which accompany you through life. You may accept that the source through which they come is real. You may accept that the universe is filled with a Divine and Infinite Presence, perhaps the infinite of yourself. Not the infinite of your limited self, but the infinite of the Divine Self you must be. There must be a pattern of yourself in this invisible. 

The greatest minds of the ages have accepted that such a pattern exists. Socrates called it his spirit, Jesus his Father in Heaven. Some ancient mystics called it Atman. Why don't you call it just you, your complete self? For surely this is what they all have meant. 

Just try to catch the larger vision and realize that there have been and are people, many of them, who have wooed and wed some invisible Presence until Its atmosphere and essence have become woven into the fabric of their own existence. Every man is a doorway, as Emerson said, through which the Infinite passes into the finite, through which God becomes man, through which the Universal becomes individual. 

You are to believe with utmost simplicity and with complete faith that there is a pattern of your being, or a real spirit of you, which is as eternal as God, as indestructible as Reality, and as changeless as Truth. This pattern is seeking to manifest through you. Back of it is all the will and purpose of the universe, all the irresistible laws of being. Finally, it will win. 

It is because it is there that you have these irresistible urges—the longing to live more fully, the feeling that life belongs to you. There is something within you beyond all doubt and fear, something which has never been limited by your acts or destroyed by your feeling. This is the only something that can make you whole. 

This Thing called You, Chapter One,

Ernest Holmes