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Spiritual awareness is important in the use of the Law of Life for the Law is a servant of the Spirit. Our spiritual awareness is the secret place of the most High within us. Our conviction and faith are the Mount of Transfiguration where we receive a deep conviction that there is a Spirit in man and that this Spirit is God. Since so much in the world contradicts this, the one seeking to demonstrate the principle of good must spend much time in the silence of his own thought, gathering into himself the spiritual energies of the universe until they become more real to him than that which contradicts them. There seems to be no shortcut. Since everyone is an individual, each must generate his own consciousness and establish his own spiritual equilibrium. Jesus said that the door to the larger life is always open. He must have meant that heaven is ever-present with us. Always, at the other side of confusion there is peace; always, at the other side of disturbance there is poise; always, evil is dissipated by good, if we persistently view good instead of evil. This may appear madness to the intellect which has accustomed itself to accepting things as they appear to be. To the intellectually blind, spiritual awareness seems folly, just as faith is folly to fear or happiness folly to disillusionment or health to disease. The universe can only give us what we take, and since our taking is a thing of consciousness, the universe can only give us what we are aware of. No doubt our eternal evolution is an everlasting process through which we become more aware of life. It is at least a thing of joy to contemplate that no matter how much good we may be experiencing today, it is but a forerunner of more good. But if we are fulfilling ourselves today and tilling the present with happiness and the highest sense of wholeness we can entertain, we are doing well. The logical sequence of the much and more will take place in due time. We are not yet ready for more than we can understand, and when we understand and embody the more, it will be there. It is as though we were dipping up water from a limitless sea. Each day we may use a larger measure and each day dip up more. The ocean will never become exhausted. As a matter of fact, everything we dip up will again run back into it, only to take a new form. Thus the play of Life goes on within Itself for ever—spontaneous self-realization flowing from an infinite sea of self-knowingness. We should think of our lives as an increasing awareness, an ever-growing and expanding consciousness, a never ceasing progress of individual and collective evolution. There should be a constant joy in expansion, an enthusiastic sense of adventure in the progressive unfoldment of spiritual awareness. It is enough to know that our good is with us today, that tomorrow this same good can be multiplied, and so on forever. This is a true spiritual relationship with the universe, for God is not some far-off event, but an ever-present reality. We should not think of the Spirit as separate from us, but as within as well as around us. While we entertain the concept of a God who is distant our search will be to reunite ourselves with the Divine Source of our being. It is not really union with God that we are searching after. The search after union is merely one of the intellectual steps we take. Gradually this search after union must cease and we must learn to live from a unity which is forever established. This has been the secret of the lives of the mystics throughout the ages. Those who have been blessed with cosmic consciousness no longer say, “I will go in search of Him,” but rather, “This is what He is.” As Jesus said, “Who hath seen me hath seen the Father.” Not all of the Father, of course, but that which is of like nature to the parent mind. These too few people, whose words and thoughts we study as pearls of great price, have so blended their thought and feeling with the Invisible that the very essence of Its being has proclaimed Its nature through them. Let us see how this works. Let us consider the life of one who has been more or less consumed with jealousy, hatred, bickering and resentment. He has become so isolated that love neither flows from nor to him. Human affection itself appears to have dried up at the source. If he is an intelligent person he will realize this. He will know that something is wrong. Because life has implanted intuition within him, he senses that there is something which could readjust him to Life in such a way that he would be loved, be happy. If he is rightly guided, either through his own intuition or by someone else, he will begin to travel backward within himself to see where the trouble lies (for trouble always lies, it never tells the truth). Through faith or understanding he determines to retrace his mental steps, to go back in imagination to the place where he is one with all. Although it is not easy, something stimulates him to persist in this effort, so he gradually reverses his thoughts about people. He comes into harmony with life. He unifies with living. He begins to see good in everything. As he does this, the good that was already in him, the love that had merely been wearing the mask of hate, the jealousies, animosities and resentments which had been born of a sense of isolation, disappear. The love which was already there comes to the surface. People begin to see that a great change has come over him, that, after all, he is not such a bad person, there is much in him to admire. Gradually, this thought changes from one of speculation to one of confidence, from one of intellectual analysis to one of deep emotional response, and finally, to one of spiritual awareness whereby people see in him the embodiment of love, of kindness, of sympathy and of fellowship. He has found union with love. He no longer seeks it. He is it, therefore, its being passes through him. Can we say that the love we now experience in him is any different from, or other than, that love we ascribe to the Divine Being Itself? We should not feel that this divine beneficence is ordained for a few. It is the gift of heaven to all. This is the very essence of religion. No religion can have this essence unless it is founded in love. It is wonderful to contemplate that one may realize such love, unify with it, and live from it.• Excerpted from How to Use The Science of Mind, by Ernest Holmes, published by Science of Mind Publishing.
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