THE AUTHORITY
OF THE SOUL
      by Dr. Ernest Holmes
Founder of Religious Science and author of The Science of Mind.

"The Word was with God and the Word was God." "The word is nigh thee, even in thy own mouth that thou should-st know it and do it." What does this mean? It clearly states that whatever power there is in the Word (and it says it is All Power) is also in our own mouths. There is no avoiding the fact that the Bible claims for us the same power in our own life and our own world that it claims for God. In the lives of the majority, people do not realize that the Word is in their own mouths. What Word? Little do we realize that this Word that we are so earnestly seeking is every word we hear, think, or speak. Do we who are endeavoring to realize the greater truths of life always govern our words? If any word has power, it follows that all words have power. It is not in the few moments of spiritual meditation that we demonstrate, but we bring out the possibilities of the hidden word when we are allowing our thoughts to run in any direction; not in the short time spent in silence, but in the long hours stretching themselves into days, months, and years, we are always using the word.  An hour a day spent in silent meditation will not save us from the confusion of life; the fifty-one percent of a person's thinking is what counts. It is easy when we are alone to brave the storms of life -- surrounded by our own exalted atmosphere we feel the strength of the Infinite; we rise in Spirit, we think we are experiencing the ultimate of truth, that all things are ours. These moments in a busy life are well spent, but must unavoidably be brief -- but what of the rest of the day, what of the busy street, of the marketplace, and of all the daily contact with life? Do we then obtain? Do we keep on in the same even way? Or do we fall before the outer confusion of our surroundings? We are still creating the word and setting it afloat in the great ethers of life. Are these words creating for us? Yes! We who wish to practice metaphysics must first, last, and all the time, realize that we are centers of the divine activity; we must know that whatever God is in the Universal, God is in the world in which we live. We must know that all things are made out of Spirit, which is First Cause; nothing comes before Spirit. Operating upon itself out of itself, it makes what it will out of its own perfect desire. We must think of Spirit as the Father/ Mother of our own life, eternally bound to us, eternally binding us to it. We must know that Spirit not only can manifest through us, but that it wishes to do so; -- The Father seeks such to worship Him.? The practitioner who understands the truth knows that as long as God exists, we will exist -- that we could no more become nonexistent than God could. Walking, talking, moving in God, we must not only see the Divine Being as the great unknown Cause, but we must go a step further and see God as the great self-knowing, understanding power of Infinite Intelligence, thinking through our own thought and willing into our own lives all peace and all good. More than this, God must become within our own soul the greater self, the inner life, the inner light that is to light our path to the attainment of the greater ideals. God is to become the great friend of our life, understanding us and helping us at all times to understand all things. Like produces like, attracts like, creates like. If we could see our thought and take a picture of it and of our conditions we would see no difference between the two, for they are really but the inside and the outside of the same thing. We cannot make affirmations for fifteen minutes a day and spend the rest of our time denying the thing which we have affirmed, and affirming the thing which we have denied, and obtain the results which we seek. We send out the word and it sets the power in motion; then we think the opposite thing that neutralizes the first word, and zero is the result. We cannot demonstrate one iota beyond our mental ability to conceive and steadfastly to embody. Infinite as Creative Power is, receptive and quick as it is, it can only become to us what we first think into it. God can do for us only what God can do through us. Dare to say, "Great people have come and gone, and behold, a greater now stands here where I stand, and I am that one." The world will laugh and perhaps scorn. The Christian world will hold up its hands in holy horror, lest you blaspheme; the unchristian world will smile knowingly. Neither the one nor the other will understand, but the understanding of either counts for nothing. You are now free, and your freedom will yet save the world from itself. The great soul finds within itself the divine companionship that we need. We find within ourselves the "Peace which passeth all understanding" and the power to do all things. All Power! We speak, our word is Law, and it is done unto us by all the power there is. Our word knows itself to be the law of life unto all for whom it is spoken and who receive it. There is only one Power, but we use it in two ways, either to destroy or to save. The blessing and the curse are one and the same thing; the power of mind used either affirmatively or negatively, the word used in fear and doubt or in faith and assurance. We trust our own word because first we "Know in whom we have believed." The sooner we who are striving to attain realize that truth must become revealed through our own souls, and not that of another, the sooner we will attain. No more books, no more teachers, preachers, creeds, or candlesticks will we ever need. The old methods must vanish into their native nothingness, as the great realization that God is all in our life dawns upon our awakened thought. We must then become immune from the collective belief in a hypnotic power that sets itself up as an authority. There is no other authority than your own soul, as "There is no law but that your soul has set." Leave authorities to smaller minds and to those who need a leader because of this, their own self-confessed weakness, and be free. Dare to "Stand amidst the eternal way" and proclaim your own At-one-ment with all the power there is, was, or ever will be. Practically the whole human race is hypnotized, thinking whatever it is told to think. We get our concepts from our physical environment, we say, "See sin, sickness and death, misery, unhappiness, and calamity." And this concept we are giving to the creative, impersonal Mind, and so we are making a law for ourselves that will produce what we believe in.  Remember that in the divine plan no mistakes are made and that if God could have done it in a better way, God would have done it differently. No souls are lost, for all "live and move and have their being in Him" and "God is not a God of the dead but of the living, for in His sight all are alive." Too long have we believed in the negative simply because we have allowed ourselves to become hypnotized by a few strong-minded people, and by those who have imposed upon the race a mass of false philosophy.

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