|
"It takes but one positive thought when given a chance to survive
and thrive to overpower an entire army of negative thoughts.” – Dr.
Robert H. Schuller
“Never talk defeat. Use words like hope, belief, faith,
victory.” – Dr. Norman
Vincent Peale
“Man often becomes
what he believes himself to be. If I keep on saying to myself that I
cannot do a certain thing, it is possible that I may end by really
becoming incapable of doing it. On the contrary, if I have the belief
that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I
may not have it at the beginning.” –
Mahatma Gandhi
"It is done unto you as you believe," is the Master Mind
Jesus' statement of an eternal and changeless spiritual and mental Law.
The key to this statement is belief, and it is not as simple as it
appears. In metaphysics we know that what we refer to as the soul
is the subjective part of us. And Dr. Holmes writes in The Science
of Mind: "The reason we have a subjective mind is that Subjectivity
existed in the Universe prior to our use of It; and where we use It, It
forms around us a subjective personification of ourselves, which is a
result of the action and the reaction of our thought." The
subjective mind is what we would call in modern terms, a
"photographic memory" of every experience that we have ever
witnessed. In our life experiences we have witnessed many things;
some true, some false, some beautiful, some ugliness, some fair, and
others unjust. Through movies, plays, television and real-life
experiences, we have witnessed both poverty and wealth. Our
reactions to these experiences has created our subjective life that is
always a part of who we are until new images and reactions over-shadow
them.
And so we go back and examine
"belief." What we believe is what we have accepted as
true from the images that we have witnessed. Our acceptance is
based on many factors. Our family's beliefs more often than not
shaped our earliest ideas of what is true or false. And then there
is the "commonly held beliefs" of the culture in which we
live, also referred to as "race-suggestion" of
"collective beliefs." Many of these beliefs that we have
accepted from family and the collective consciousness benefit us, some
do not. Many of our reactions are based on these commonly held
beliefs, even when these reactions negate our good or block us from
realizing solutions to the seeming problems we may face.
Recently I talked to someone experiencing a
financial challenge. He had been earning over $200,000 per year
for over the past ten years of his life. His words, "it is
personally humiliating for me to tell you this ... " gave me a
glimpse into his "subjective life." This statement came
from a "collective belief" about finances and self-worth.
The world will tell us what we are worth by our accumulation of material
possessions and the amount of money that we have. Having accepted
this as true, this man felt the humiliation that goes with the belief.
Sadly, the humiliation was making his situation more dire as it had
become his "mental atmosphere." I could feel the
humiliation before he made the statement. His presence evoked
morbidity and gloom. I know that no matter what solution was
presented to him, unless and until his mind was cleared of the
humiliation, there was no avenue within his mind for a greater idea to
be expressed. In reality, the man had everything that he had
before his change in finances. His mind had simply been shadowed
by the false belief that as his finances changed, he changed with them.
The less money he felt he had the less confident he felt in his ability
to prosper and succeed. But, the same mind that earned over
$200,000 a year, was still available to him. He had believed in
his ability to earn more and according to his belief he tuned into the
Infinite Mind and drew from It all the ideas and knowledge that he
needed to succeed and prosper. His financial condition changed in
the material, but not in the metaphysical until he began to accept his
temporary losses as uncontrollable. Yet, all the while he had
complete control, but what he had accepted as true from the collective
belief, became true for him. He was convinced by a false idea and
now he must be convinced of the Truth, that his mind is powerful and he
can tap into the Mind that knows the right ideas and solutions for him.
He was humiliated because he thought his financial loss was personal to
him. Poverty is a "collective belief" ... it is not
personal to any of us until we personalize it.
As we accept what we see with our physical
eyes, or hear with our physical ears, we will fail to believe anything
greater and eventually we will find ourselves in experiences and
conditions that challenge us. The Master Mind Jesus' teaching of
"be in the world but not of the world" brings us into a
greater realization of what can happen if we accept what the world
believes. To be self-reliant means that we gain a greater
awareness of our subjective life; that is the thoughts, ideas and
beliefs that we condition our mind to accept. From Thomas
Troward's "The Creative Process In The Individual," we can
read: "What we dwell upon is the idea of an Infinite Power
producing the happiness that we desire, and because this Power is also
the Forming Power of the universe trusting it to give that form to the
conditions which will most perfectly react upon us to produce the
particular state of consciousness desired."
A prosperity
consciousness (subjective life) produces prosperous conditions.
But, it is up to us to reject all that the world tells us about poverty
and loss each time it comes to our awareness and instead spend time in
the silence of our mind dwelling on the happiness that we desire.
As we firmly convince ourselves that Life is always for us, never
against us ... and put our full faith and trust in this Truth, we can
expect to experience all the good that we can accept for ourselves.
AND
SO IT IS!
Keep
the faith!
Rev.
Dr. Henry Lee Bates
Visit Rev. Bates BLOG: Living
the Science of Mind
|
