In order to help ourselves and others through prayer, we have to have a clear consciousness and a deep sense of the inward meaning of what we do. We have to have realization that each one of us is an outlet of the Infinite because we are an inlet to It. Then we have to realize that there is nothing separate from God. When we use the word God we mean the Truth, Life, the Absolute, the Infinite, the Spirit; everything that means That Presence and Power and Intelligence in the universe, which is the universe.
By the word God we mean Life, Intelligence in action, the Spirit within all nature, animating everything and animating ourselves. When we use the word God we are saluting the Divine Presence in each other and in everything – the beauty that sees and imagines and paints the glory of a sunset or the soft-ness of an early dawn, the aroma of the rose, the enthusiasm of the child at play, the intelligence of the philosopher, the worshipful attitude of the devotee. This is all God.
The moment we draw a line against some part of the eternal Presence which is in all things we shut ourselves off from It. In spiritual mind treatment, or prayer, our purpose is to become actively aware of the unrestricted wholeness of the Divine Presence.
Nothing ever happened to you or to me that need bind us if we free ourselves from the belief in it. This is why Jesus forgave people their sins. He knew that a new world is born every moment; a new spiritual time track, as it were, is created every moment;
He knew that there is nothing that can bind man except ignorance of his true nature. Right now, today, any sequence of cause and effect may be intercepted and changed and everything made new in our lives. If this were not true Jesus never would have forgiven people their sins. If this were not true no one could be healed physically or psychologically today.
Analytically psychology and psychosomatic medicine would be impossible, no new habits could be formed, no transcendence of ancient experience. There would be no invention in science.
That which has brought comfort to modern man, that which has brought luxury that other ages did not have, is not because the time had come when God decided to give us a gas range or an electric light or an automobile, but because man gradually accepted more of that which was there to be loosed. Out of the God that is, the world is eternally discovering a better God.
That which has brought comfort to modern man, that which has brought luxury that other ages did not have, is not because the time had come when God decided to give us a gas range or an electric light or an automobile, but because man gradually accepted more of that which was there to be loosed. Out of the God that is, the world is eternally discovering a better God.
Whatever in our experience seems to restrict, whatever appears to limit, whatever seems to be the cause of our disturbances must be negated. Now that means that we turn from all our beliefs of bondage, whatever they may be. It doesn’t matter who or how many people have believed in them, God the Absolute, God the limitless Infinite, God the eternal Love and Givingness, is right where we are, in fullness. Our own past must not be held against us else we create a new bondage out of the old image.
As we turn within to that Divine Presence, we know that all the ages of the past, all the experiences we have ever had, do not matter today. Here and now we stand forth free from the burden of the past. If there has been what the world calls sin, we are forgiven.
If there has been a sense of rejection, we now know that we are included in the Divine Love and Wisdom. If there has been a sense of separation, we now reunite our imagination and will with that from which we have never been separated, nor could have been. There is One Life, that Life is God, that Life is perfect, that Life is our life now, and we are that Life. “I am that which Thou art; Thou art that which I am” – eternal and perfect, forever blessed.
Within each one of us, circulating and flowing through the rhythm of the heart beat of the Universe is but the one heart. There is but one circulation, unimpeded by anything we have done, and that whole system of circulation is the harmony and the joy of the flow and the return circuit of Divine Intelligence and Wisdom.
We are guided and governed and sustained by Infinite Mind which knows what to do within us, how to do it, and does it.
There is One Mind, that Mind is God, that Mind is in what we are doing just as It is in planting the acorn and bringing it into an oak tree. The eternal process of that Mind, forever manifesting Its limitless imagination and activity, is at the point of our own intelligence, thinking in what we are thinking, creating in what we are doing, and being what we are. There is nothing else. And we shall not be bound even by our own mistakes.
We let no doubt or fear or thought or limitation restrict the flow of that which is omnipotent and present and forever blessed. We are animated by the essence of vitality and energy, we are stimulated by the enthusiastic imagination and will of That which creates everything in the universe, and we abide in the stillness and tranquillity and call of the infinite Peace which knows no confusion or fear, the eternal Life which needs no resurrection.
Transcendent, triumphant, new and perfect, springing perennially from the heart of the Universe is our own heart and mind and will and imagination. All creation is a proclamation of the Creator. All that is beautiful is the atmosphere of that eternal Beauty that flows in harmony and symmetry through everything and makes one grand music of the spheres- the only Presence in everything, the God eternal. We identify ourselves with this living Presence.
Ernest Holmes: Science of Mind-August 1972
