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People are the most interesting things in the world. While it is true that we do not always get along with them as well as we might, it is also certain that we could not get along without them. We need each other more than we realize. The world is made up of people, and human relationships are merely reactions of people to each other. Many business firms maintain human-relations departments for the purpose of helping their employees to appreciate each other and get along together in their work. We are told that the two things people are most interested in are love and personality. This is not strange, because everyone wants to love and be loved; everyone wants to feel needed. Every individual wishes to feel that he plays an important role in life. All are attracted to the person who has a winning personality. One thing is certain—whatever our personality may be, or whatever it is to become, is wrapped up in the one idea that there is a Spirit in man, and God Himself is incarnated in every living soul. This Spirit within us is the gift of heaven, and without it we would not be alive. It is a recognition of this Spirit within us that is the true starting point for the development of personality. We often think we have to pattern our lives after the lives of others. But our personality, no matter how winsome it may be, or how convincing, or how dominant, is more than a mask we wear; it is a manifestation of an inner, hidden Principle, a Divine spark within us which uses both the mind and the body for Its own Self- Expression. We could think up all the beautiful things to say and the most wonderful and best method of approaching people, and study all the arts of personality development that have ever been taught, and still fall flat on our faces as far as the real personality is concerned. For personality is not the clothes we wear, nor is it our physical appearance alone. It is not just a dominant or domineering something so powerful that it brushes everything else aside. Personality is the flowering of the Spirit within us, the coming forth of a secret relationship that we all hold to God. The people who have most completely influenced the human race throughout the ages are those who have known this, and who have made but little effort to influence others. They are the ones who have had the deepest feeling of the Divine Presence within them. No one will ever be satisfied or happy or secure in developing a dominant personality. Those who win their way through life by force eventually become weary with the struggle, the purpose of which never reaches its final goal. Personality is not an external thing, for everything we do and say and think, and everything that we appear to be outwardly, is always the result of some hidden fire burning at the center of our being, some Divine Reality which we did not create but which we may discover. I think we can say without hesitation that the person who finds himself in God will discover at the center of his own being something which dominates without effort, something which does not have to assume a false front, something which, by the very nature of its being, is both human and Divine. But someone may say, “Now you are introducing religious ideas that we don't want to be bothered with. What we want is something that can take us into the activities of life in a triumphant manner.” Now this is both right and wrong; right, in that we wish to be successful in living; wrong, if we think that of ourselves we can add to or take from what God already has given. For while we can, and should, develop an outer personality, back of this there is something you and I never thought up—we did not plan it, we did not create it. Finding this something is like exploring a new land. This country already existed before we discovered it. There are heights and depths to our own being which we have not plumbed. There is a Divine Person back of our personality—a unique manifestation of the Living Spirit. It is never alike in any two people. This is proved by the fact that no two persons’ thumbprints are alike, no two blades of grass are alike, no two any things are identical. And yet everything is rooted in One Life, One Presence, and One Power. Why, then, should we expect that any two individuals should be alike? God Himself has placed a unique stamp on everyone. We should not study to be alike, but rather to develop what we really are. Unity does not mean uniformity. Our unity with other people does not mean that we must think and act as they do. All it means is that we should get along with them. We should unify with everything, while at the same time keeping intact and whole that God-given something at the center of our being which is the Spiritual Ego. To find this true center is the end and aim of our search. This Divine Person within us has, in a sense, one hand placed in the hand of God and the other outstretched to humanity, for the person who finds himself in God will discover God in others. He will see things in a different light than will the one who thinks he is alone. He will draw strength and inspiration from Life Itself, for no man can live without God and be whole. Since everything is included in God—for God is the only Presence and Power that there is—the person who wants to be the most himself will have to be the one who has discovered more of himself in that which is greater than he is. Our capacity to think, to live, and to move is nonphysical. There is an invisible Presence hidden within us which has Its source in a higher Power, and which acts through our actions, wills through our minds, and reveals Itself in what we are doing. At the center of our being there is a Divine Person, a unique incarnation of God. This is the Source of all real inspiration; here, and here alone, at the center of our being, is the real Creative Power. The question is whether we are living from this center, or whether we are thinking of ourselves as detached, separated, divided, alone, and inadequate. We all have direct access to the Infinite Presence, the Universal Person. There could be no more beautiful thought than that the Divine Spirit Itself, infinite as It is, is also within us. And with this acceptance of God there must come an acceptance of the real self, that self which blossoms in our relations with others and finds fruit in its own action. • Excerpted from Living the Science of Mind by Ernest Holmes, published by Science of Mind Publishing.
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