|
April, 2005
Spirit is the creative cause back and within everything. God is not a spirit, but the Spirit. This one Spirit is the spirit of all people. A philosophy of unity permits many mentalities but only one Mind, innumerable individualized points in the creative consciousness of an Absolute which always remains one, undivided and indivisible unity. It is because the Mind of God, which is the creative mind of the universe, flows through man that man’s thought is creative. It is because of man’s nature and not his will that his thought is creative. Who by taking thought—as though he were independent of the universal Mind to do anything—who “by taking thought” can change his spiritual nature or “add one cubit” to its stature? Man has a mentality. He has a spirit in the sense that the Spirit is individualized through him, but his spirit is not separate from God, for God as man, in man, is man. Man is individual while God is universal. The Universal individualizes Itself in the individual. “The highest God and the innermost God is one God.” This One includes man. Man is an individualized center of Divine Thought and through him the Original Thinker is finding a fresh starting point for Its creative power. Therefore, without violating universal or natural laws, the mind of man steps in to specialize or make personal use of them. Man, then, is given power over his own life. He cannot alter the laws of nature, but he can so alter his relationship to them that that which had bound him may now free him. He has been given the prerogative of spontaneous thinking. He has been given the ability to initiate a new chain of causation. He announces his own activity. This activity is an activity of the Divine Mind operating through him. It is the original creative Cause doing something new through him. There is but one Mind and we use It. The laws of nature are universal. Our use of them is individual and personal. This is the secret of spiritual mind practice. Our thought is operated on by a universal creativity which is infinite in its capacity to accomplish. Thus, in taking thought we do not force anything, we merely decide what thought to follow, knowing that the result is automatic. This idea of the oneness of God is not a philosophy of absorption or annihilism. We do not become absorbed in the universal Self to the loss of individuality. Quite the opposite. We find ourselves, not absorbed, but immersed, in a Universality, each one being a unique, individual and different manifestation of that which itself is one, undivided, indivisible and whole. We cannot think of the Spirit as static, but as forever unfolding Its divine nature. It is doing this in the physical universe independently of our personal thought. In our personal lives It must do this through our thinking. In such degree as our thinking is in accord with the original Nature, the same orderly pro- cession of harmonious ideas will operate in our affairs that is already operating in that larger world which we experience but neither create nor control. This leaves us individual freedom within the law of universal harmony, individual will within a universal coordinating will. As all deep spiritual thinkers have announced, and rightly, we soon come to realize that wherever the individual will is contrary to, or in opposition to, this universal coordinating will, it detaches itself from the source of its power, it goes alone and soon becomes exhausted. On the other hand, wherever the individual will links itself up with the universal harmony, it becomes a spontaneous proclamation of that harmony, now individualized. In spiritual practice we follow the stream of the individual life back to the original Source from which it emerged and in which it still lives, moves and has its being. This is an important part of our treatment, to connect the Universal with the individual, and the individual with the Universal. Instead of denying that God is personal to each, we should emphasize such personalness. It is one of the chief cornerstones of this spiritual philosophy. Each individual life is a unique expression of the universal Wholeness. No two lives can or ought to be alike. The one universal Life flows through every- thing. We give individual expression to It. We are always specializing the Law of cause and effect for some purpose. Mostly we are doing this unconsciously. Now we must learn to bring our thoughts and purposes into line with the original harmony. In doing this we should not be afraid that we are usurping the Divine Will any more than a farmer would be afraid that he is going contrary to the laws of nature or the will of God when he decides to plant corn instead of cotton. The necessity of choosing is ordained by the very nature of our being, and we cannot escape it. We are at liberty to choose what manner of life we shall live. We should feel that in this choice we are backed by all the will, all the purpose and all the law in the universe. Our reliance is on this law and order. It is the creative agency of all life and at the same time our use of it is personal and individual. Here is all the freedom one could ask for and all the freedom that the Divine Mind itself could possibly have given us—the freedom to act as an individual, the freedom to give full rein to our creative imagination, the freedom to do this, at least temporarily, in such a way as to produce discord instead of harmony; and more important, the freedom to produce harmony instead of discord. If we couple with this the idea that no one can harm another without ultimately hurting himself, that good alone can finally win, we shall see that when any individual’s consciousness is in tune with the Infinite he need no longer ask, “Does God wish me to be happy or whole?” or, “Does the Law of Good desire me to have this thing which I desire?” He need merely ask, “Can I conceive of this as being done? Am I certain that my desire is in line with good? If it is, nothing is against me and everything is for me.” The Divine Mind does not necessarily contain a mental blueprint of everything the individual is going to do. It does, however, contain the possibility of all individual action. When anyone conceives a new idea, thinks up a new plan for procedure, which is in accord with the Divine Nature, then God Himself is going forth anew into creation through that individual. And that person may, and should, expect that all the power and all the presence there is will creatively flow through his individual word because he has complied with the fundamental law of harmony governing all life. This should be particularly interesting to an inventor, an artist, a writer, or anyone who is introducing new ideas into the world. In actual practice he trains his mind to listen to the Divine Harmony. He affirms that this Divine Harmony is now operating through his own intelligence, governing it, directing it, stimulating it into action. He so formulates his thoughts and ideas that they will in no way detract from this Divine Harmony. He can test them easily enough by being certain that they are life-giving, that there is nothing in them that could rob or hurt anything that lives. When we say there is one Cause back of all manifest form, one Intelligence back of all consciousness, and one Spirit within all men, we are not denying the reality of created forms or individual experience. We are affirming the unity of all life, a unity which includes all variety. Unity passes into variety and multiplicity without division. In each creation Life brings Its whole nature to bear upon that individual expression. Thus every man’s life not only has God, but all of God, back of, within and through him. The significance of this we but dimly perceive, yet, by soft interior awareness which all people possess, we sense the Divine Presence and know that we are part of It. Everyone should feel in intimate relationship with the Spirit. This has been the essence and the vitality of all religious convictions throughout the ages. No matter how crude they may have been, they have been built on a solid, substantial, permanent and changeless Reality. Everyone needs the warmth and color, the imagination and feeling of a sense of intimacy with the creative Spirit. Our intellect yearns toward It as naturally as a rose turns to the sun. In spiritual mind healing it is important that we sense an infinite Personalness back of, in and through everyone. Without this our work would have no warmth or color. It would be without feeling, therefore, unproductive, uncreative, dead. Listening to the Divine Presence, desiring only that which is right, the practitioner of spiritual mind science must know that he is using a Law of cause and effect which is immutable. It knows how to do anything. It knows how to take his thought and ideas and actually project them into specific conditions. These conditions will automatically correspond to his mental acceptance, to his real, actual and embodied subjective acceptance and identification. Man not only has a right to individualize creative power; nature has imposed this necessity upon him. He has no choice other than to use this creative power. His thought will always be creative, whether he knows it or not. The creativity of man’s thought has nothing to do with his will or his belief; it is here, just as nature is here. It is the use of a creative power that man has control over, not the thing itself. The conscious use of spiritual power is the finest of arts because it has deep feeling. It is the greatest of all intellectual perceptions because it is the most penetrating. It is religious in that its whole thought is based on the intimate relationship of the Spirit with everything that is. It is scientific in that it deals with law and order. We should accept this proposition and see what we can do with it. Have we enough conviction to turn from negative conditions and mentally contemplate their opposites? Can we turn from poverty and want to the acceptance of abundance? Can we turn from sickness to a belief in health? Can we turn from unhappiness to happiness? Can we shut out discord long enough to contemplate harmony? And have we the courage to proceed on this basis? The effective practitioner in this science has the will to try, the courage to make the attempt, the faith to believe in himself because he has confidence in the Law of Good. The simplicity of this conviction is enhanced when he realizes he has nothing to change outside himself. Excerpted from How to Use the Science of Mind by Ernest Holmes, published by Science of Mind Publishing. •
|
 |
|
Visit Ernest Holmes archivesTo
read further, pick up your copy of Science of Mind Magazine United
Church of Religious Science Web
Design and Graphics Copyright © 2003 Marty
Bunch Art Originals
|
|
