Greetings God Spirits,
This Sunday, March 31, 2019, at 10 AM we will be meeting with our Science of Mind group. Location: 937 Canvas Back Drive, Charlottesville (Redfield’s) Contact: Kathy 252 312 7322
We will be discussing, “The Power of the I am Presence” by Ernest Holmes. Holmes speaks in very clear language about what it means to not only recognize the I Am Presence in life, he also encourages us to embody that Presence as being who we truly are. This Fantastic article is from the Science of Mind, March magazine. Please take time to read this, it is worth the read. Looking forward to discussing your interpretation of this article.
We will also be hearing “the Power of thought” from Rev Lee Wolak.
The Universal I Am as God means a Living Intelligence in which we are immersed. Nothing made that Intelligence; God did not make God. In a certain liberal sense, God did not make man, because man is a product of the Inevitable necessity of God’s self-expression. It was that illumination that enabled Jesus to say, “The Father is greater than I, ” and yet, “I and the Father are one.” When we call upon that interior awareness in our souls, we are drafting the substantial life of the Almighty; we are, as it were, using the Infinite Energy of the universe. The I Am is a Divine Presence permeating all space, filling all form, in everything, over everything, and around everything. Now it stands to reason that since you and I exist, there is a previous existence, a Reality in which we always have been a potential individualization, in the womb of Nature, in the heart of God, in the mind of the Eternal. We do not earn life, we do not bargain for immortality. God is and does not change, and out of that beingness and that is-ness which God must be, all that is must proceed. We are living in a spiritual universe now, but we do not sense it. In such degree, as we sense it by some interior awareness, by some illumination of our consciousness, then we transform Earth into heaven when the idea of harmony dawns upon our consciousness, the chaotic fear of hell is dissipated. The Infinite Spirit is warmth and color, beauty and light, feeling, emotion. To each one of us, It must be personal, since It is personified in us. We need never overlook that. But It is infinitely personal and the possibility of Its increasing incarnation is without limit. Individually we may transform our thought and so completely enter into the contemplation of the Universal I Am as God that the inevitable deliverance to us shall be a greater freedom, more even of what we call “this world’s goods.” The I Am is a Universal Spirit, responding to us, the breath of our breath, the identity of our person, the integrity of our own soul, the immortality of our spirit; a deathless, birthless, changeless Principle indwelling our own soul.
SCIENTIFICALLY APPLY THE LAW In practical application, this is more than a theory. Unless with our enlightenment, that is, with our spiritual knowledge, we learn to use the Law accompanying that knowledge, we shall find, finally, that we have a lot of beautiful theories and do nothing about them. That is one of the great mistakes of our spiritual life, of our religious philosophies; we are very likely to procrastinate the day of good. The laws of mind and spirit may be just as scientifically applied as the laws of physics and chemistry. The summed-up knowledge in the field of Science of Mind–in its branches of metaphysics, of psychiatry, of psychology, of provable faith and workable thought–has delivered to us a scientific principle and a definite and specific technique, a way to use the principle.
The phenomenon of birth and death, the incoming and the outgoing soul, as it were, in this world has been going on since time began on this planet since the human race evolved, seedtime and harvest, change, change, change. The only permanent thing that there is, is change, and yet with all of this variation, this accumulation, and advance which we call evolution, we notice that the eternal principles never vary. No two days alike, no two incidents alike, no two fingerprints alike, no two rosebuds alike–a vast infinite variation; and yet we are conscious that in all these shifting scenes we remain, the ego. What changes is the action; what remains is the principle. That principle is what we mean when we use the word I AM. I Am is both universal and individual–universal as an abstraction, individual as a concretion. That is, universal, or everywhere present; individual, or immediately present. We might say that God is transcendent and immanent, the over-dwelling God is also the indwelling God, the “highest God and the innermost God is one God.” But if we get confused by the change, we cease to realize that there are eternal principles and we long to get away from the change, so we deny the world in which we live. Being confused by the change, not sensing the permanent in it, we try to make a psychological escape from reality, a compromise with life and living.
ETERNAL PROGRESS IS MANDATED
Thought is creative, and the more emotional the thought, the more creative it is. It is not because we have contemplated and meditated and prayed and fasted; our thought is creative because that is its nature. Our nature is God, and the nature of God does not change. No matter where you discover It, the only God you can ever know is the God you uncover in yourself because no man can ever know anything outside of the intelligence within him whereby he knows anything. Then the only God he can know is through the intelligence of himself. And so, Jesus said boldly, “Who hath seen me hath seen the Father.” And when they asked him just what is the truth, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.”
It is evident that Jesus was not talking of his finite, human, temporary, changing personality, but of some principle instinctive, present and latent in the constitution of all men’s make-up. How can we enter other than through our own nature? The Infinite, Eternal God is the impulse of man’s thought, the Spirit of his person, the Power back of everything he does. God is the power by which you and I think. Now God is not evolving, but we are evolving inexperience, unfolding in personality and increasing in the capacity to understand ourselves, and there is a persistent, calm, unhurried, irresistible Power pushing us forward, which we call the principle of evolution.
We have to evolve, we cannot stay still; and when we can no longer evolve in this world, we can leave that thing which is no longer a fit instrument for our expression and go on, because eternal progress is the immutable mandate of an irresistible and a universal necessity that shall be expressed. What is it that we are going to do? We are going to think straight. We are going to think from the basis that there is a Divine Energy and Power that desires us to have every good and perfect thing, not a little but all the love there is, all the wealth there is, all the happiness there is, all the joy and peace and self-expression there is, right where we are. Anyone who can do that will so transform his life that within 12 months it will be a different thing. But it is a law, and if we only half do it, it will be only half done. It does not matter how good we are or how kind; if we are afraid, we will bring things to us that are fearful. Let us learn to get over fear. Nothing bad is ever going to happen to the soul. We wish to be successful. There is nothing wrong about that. We want more friends, we want a keener appreciation of life, we wish a larger opportunity for self-expression, everything good that we are doing today we would like to see multiplied. Why not? We want a larger experience. Why not? More joy, a deeper faith and above all else, increased certainty of the destiny of our own soul. And the moment we get that, there is an irresistible desire that we shall reproduce that in the lives of others whom we contact; and as the biggest life is the one that includes the most, when we permit other people to enter into our experience and increase theirs with it, it inevitably follows that our own experience with theirs. The more good one does, the more good he is and experiences.
THE SPIRIT HAS NO OPPOSITES
There is no use saying it unless we believe it, but as we build up our spiritual thought, then we lose it. It is like climbing up a mountainside–as we start from the limited view of the valley and gradually make the ascent to the top of the mountain, at every step the vista increases, more is taken in and a greater description may be given out, a better landscape photograph could be taken. So as we start with the pain, the fear, the disappointment, the disillusionment of human life, and in our imagination gradually rise above it in our mental world to that place where the eye views the world as “one vast plane and one boundless reach of shy, ” where we see that God is all, over all, in all and through all, have we not more to give, then, when we make a statement that that is the kind of life this man’s life is? We have added to that statement a consciousness of the meaning of that statement and an embodiment of the Power that projects that statement into living visibility. Here is the marvelous thing, here is the subtle thing, the miracle=working, wonderful thing in our science: The practitioner does all this int eh mind if the practitioner, no matter where the patient may be. He does all of this in his own mind and thought and imagination, feeling that the power of the Divine is flowing through him. So we must go up consciously into this mountain place, and here we speak the healing word. Ten we forget it, go about our business every day. We need not retire from life. Every person may heal spiritually whose mind conceives that he can. That is the power of the I Am in us, but it is like electricity; It is; we must use it. And there may come a place in consciousness where the visible and the invisible are so wed in that indissoluble unity of God and man that the healing is instantaneous. Even that will not be a miracle; it will be even more divinely natural. The Spirit has no opposites, and the apparent opposition to good in our lives is not an entity of evil but a misuse of good. Man has but one limitation, and this does not limit him, nor need it to be considered a limitation, and this does not limit him, nor need it be considered a limitation. He cannot do anything that contradicts the fundamental harmony and unity of the spirit, without suffering. Not that God punishes him. His punishment is self-inflicted, through his ignorance. He appears to turn light into darkness because he stands with his back to the light. However, the light keeps right on being a light, and the darkness was never a thing of itself.
Looking forward to seeing you Sunday, March 31. Blessings & Love Kathy