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"The
person who fears life gets but little pleasure from living. The
antidote for fear is faith. The person with great faith has no
fear. Faith is a mental attitude, hence it can be
cultivated." - Dr. Ernest Holmes, This Thing Called Life
There is but One Creative Principle.
It is always responding to us. There is but One Power and we are
always using It either negatively or affirmatively. In scripture
this is referred to as "praying without ceasing."
Thoughts are centered on ideas and our ideas about anything and
everything can be either negative or affirmative. The choice is
ours. And we are constantly choosing.
We have ideas about home, money, work,
relationships, marriage, health ... and these ideas are what we have in
our life ... the things that we see and experience. Everything
that we possess or experience is our idea of the thing. And for
many of us ... we might consider changing our ideas about these things.
If my idea about money is that I have to work hard for it ... that I can
be shortchanged ... or that there is never enough. I must expand
this idea if I am ever to have more money than I do now. I must be
willing to work on my beliefs about this idea we call money. We
must "loose" these ideas and think about how they have
benefited us. We must do this for everything that concerns us;
health, home, work, relationships, marriage etc. And we must be
willing to eliminate those beliefs from our consciousness that keep us
attached to conditions that we are no longer at peace with.
Conditions that may have made us happy at one time in our life, but are
no longer satisfying.
Our thoughts are the tools that we use in
affirming the Creative Power into our experience. This Creative
Power, God, works through us ... through our thoughts and ideas about
the conditions in our life. This creates a necessity for us to
"think" a better "idea" about the things in our
life. But first, we should recognize what we have. And let
me caution everyone here that we must be careful about what we say about
what we have ... because we have to live with the consequences of the
words that we speak. In other words, use words that reflect
gratitude for what we have. For example, I am grateful for all
that I have because I know that with the "right idea" about it
... I can increase the Good in it. Remember, Spirit, God, works
with "ideas" ... not with "things."
Knowing that God, Infinite Intelligence, works with
ideas, our next step is to "contemplate" our "ideal"
of the things that we would like to experience. Take the idea of
marriage, for instance. Different people have different ideas
about marriage. There is no "ideal" marriage ... there
are many "ideals" of marriage. Everyone must develop
their own "ideal" of what marriage is to them. And
unless we have developed this "ideal" in our consciousness
through contemplation and examination of our beliefs and ideas about
marriage ... then for many, this will mean that their marriage will
become less than "ideal" to them. As we come to the
conclusion of what our "ideal" is about anything, we will find
that this "ideal" is fluid ... in other words, it can change.
And the reason for this is that the consciousness that demonstrates the
"ideal" is the consciousness that is open and receptive to a
greater "ideal" still.
We must always acknowledge that what we have is Good.
A good example is that at one time everyone had a black and white
television set. And it was very good and most people were very
happy with it ... and then along came color television. And for
most people, once they became aware of color they were no longer
satisfied with black and white. Now, this did not make black and
white televisions bad ... it just meant that they no longer met the
"ideal" of the consciousness that had gained the awareness of
color. This is the simple truth about everything that we are
currently experiencing. When our awareness is heightened and
expanded many of the things that we are now experiencing will no longer
fit our "ideal" of the thing.
No matter what the conditions in our
life may currently be, or what we have experienced in our life, we can
rearrange our thinking in such a way that we permit new ideas to come to
our awareness. We must always keep uppermost in our thoughts that
Spirit flows through our mind ... and Spirit is Power and Intelligence.
In reality, there are no problems for any of us ... there are only
opportunities for a greater self expression ... a greater ideal to
experience.
And
So It Is!
Letting
Love Use Me In Its Own Good Way,
Rev.
Bates
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