The Creative Mind and Success
Page 2, The Beginning of Understanding
by Ernest Holmes
Man is beginning to realize that he has life within himself as the great gift of God to him. If he really has life, if it is the same nature as the life of God, if he is an individual and has the right of self-choice which constitutes individuality; then it follows that he can do with his life what he wants to do: he can make out of himself that which he wishes. Freedom is his, but this freedom is with law and never outside it. Man must obey law. If he disobeys it, it has to act as law, and so acting has to punish him. This he cannot change but must submit to. Freedom comes to the individual from understanding the laws of his own life, and conforming to them, thereby subjecting them to his use, to the end of health, happiness and success.
Law obtains throughout all nature, governing all things, both the seen and the unseen. Law is not physical or material but mental and spiritual. Law is God's method of operation. We should think of God as the great Spirit whose sole impulse is love, freely giving of Him-self to all who ask and refusing none. God is our Father in every sense of the term, watching over, caring for and loving all alike. While all is love, yet, in order that things may not be chaotic, all is governed by law. And as far as you and I are concerned, this law is always mental.
OUR CONDITIONS GOVERNED BY OUR THINKING
It is easy for the average person to see how it is that mind can control, and to a certain extent govern, the functions of the body. Some can go even further than this and see that the body is governed entirely by consciousness. This they can see without much difficulty, but it is not so easy for them to see how it is that thought governs their conditions and decides whether they are to be successes or failures.Here we will stop to ask the question: If our conditions are not controlled by thought, by what, then, are they controlled? Some will say that conditions are controlled by circumstances. But what are circumstances? Are they cause or are they effect? Of course, they are always effect; everything that we see is an effect. An effect is something that follows cause, and we are dealing with causation only; effects do not make themselves, but they are held in place by mind, not by causation.
If this does not answer your thought, begin over again and realize that behind everything that is seen is the silent cause. In your life, you are that cause. There is nothing but mind, and nothing moves except as mind moves it. We have agreed that while God is love, yet your life is governed absolutely by mind, or law. In our lives of conditions, we are the cause, and nothing moves except as our mind moves it.
The activity of our mind is thought. We are always acting because we are always thinking. At all times, we are either drawing things to us or we are pushing them away from us. In the ordinary individual, this process goes on without his ever knowing it consciously, but ignorance of the law will excuse no one from its effects.
"What," someone will say, "do you think that I thought failure or wanted to fail?" Of course, not. You would be foolish to think that; but according to the law which we cannot deny, you must have thought that failure might come, or in some way you gave it entrance to your mind.
Thinking back over the reason for things, you will find that you are surrounded by a mind, or law, that casts back at the thinker, manifested, everything he thinks. If this were not true, man would not be an individual. Individuality can mean only the ability to think what we want to think. If that thought is to have power in our lives, then there has to be something that will manifest it. Some are limited and bound by law through ignorance. This law is sometimes called "Karma," it is the law that binds the ignorant and gives freedom to the wise.
We live in mind; and it can return to us only what we think into it. No matter what we may do, law will always obtain. If we are thinking of ourselves as poor and needy, then mind has no choice but to return what we have thought into it. At first this may be hard to realize, but the truth will reveal to the seeker that law could act in no other way. Whatever we think is the pattern, and mind is the builder. Jesus, realizing this law, said, "It is done unto you even as you have believed." Shall we doubt but that this great Way Shower knew what he was talking about? Did He not say, "It is done unto you." Nothing to worry about. "It is done unto you." With a tremendous grasp of true spiritual thought, Jesus even called forth bread from the ethers of life, and at no time did he ever fail to demonstrate that when one knows the truth he is freed by that knowledge.
UNCONSCIOUS CREATION
The author once attended a patient who was suffering from a large growth. She was operated on and about fifty pounds of water were removed. In a few days, the growth had returned. Where did it come from? Not from eating or drinking. Neither did it move from one part of the body to another part, as that would not have increased her weight. It must have been created from elements which she took in from the air. It had to come from something not physically seen, something appearing from nothing that we see. What we call "creation" is the same thing -- the visible appearing from the invisible. Was not this phenomenon a creation?
Cases as remarkable as this are occurring every day. We should not deny this fact but try to explain it. In the case of this woman there must have been an activity of thought molded into form, else how could this growth have appeared? There is nothing manifest but that there is a cause for the manifestation. Investigation proves that behind every condition, whether of body or environment, there has been some thought, conscious or unconscious, which produced that condition. In the case of this woman the thought was not conscious. But creation is going on all the time; we should realize this and learn how to control it so that there may be created for us the things that we desire and not those that we do not want. Is it any wonder that the Bible says, "With all thy getting get understanding"?Jesus understood all this, and so it was no more effort for Him to do what He did than it is for us to breathe or to digest our food. He understood, that is all. Because Jesus did understand and did use these great laws with objective consciousness, people thought He must be God. And when to-day something unusual occurs, people think that a miracle has been performed. Jesus was not God. He was a manifestation of God; and so are all people. "I say ye are gods, and every one of you sons of the Most High."
A thinking person will be compelled to admit, in view of all this, that creation is first spiritual, through mental law, and then physical in manifestation.
Man does not really create. He uses creative power that already is. Relatively speaking, he is the creative power in his own life; and so far as his thought goes, there is something that goes with it that has the power to bring forth into manifestation that thing thought of. Hitherto men have used this creative power in ignorance and so have brought upon themselves all kinds of conditions, but today hundreds of thousands are beginning to use these great laws of there being in a conscious, constructive way. Herein lies the great secret of the New Thought movements under their various names and cults and orders. All of them are using the same law even though some deny to the others real revelation. We should get into an attitude of mind wherein we should recognize the truth wherever we may find it. The trouble with most of us is that unless we see sugar in a sugar bowl we think it must be something else, and so we stick to our petty prejudices instead of looking after principles.