The title of this post is a quote from Ernest Holmes, founder of Religious Science, in his book “The Science of Mind”.
Let’s ‘think’ about that for a moment. What is it to think?
Just because there is a constant stream of ‘thoughts’ going through my mind does not mean that I think, does it?
No. I ‘think’ when I grab one of those thoughts and I shape it and I give it direction.
If “I” don’t take that action of ‘naming’ my thoughts, as it were, and giving them ‘direction’, I am like a ball bouncing around in a pinball machine. I am scattered. The result is that I am infective.
On the other hand, if I catch one thought and I form it by understanding it, I now have to power to give direction to my thinking and hence to my life.
Yet, as Holmes would have it… he says… you do not think correctly simply by holding thoughts but by ‘knowing’ the truth.
In other words, there is a pattern for guiding our thoughts and that is called, “knowing the truth”.
Now we are in philosophical argumentation; what is truth?
For the purpose of this short post I am assuming that truth is the original form from which all visible things are patterned. For example we could say that we have love in the world, because LOVE IS and is the creative pattern that make us able to experience love.
So what Holmes is saying is that we don’t just learn to think by holding on to a thought but by lining up that thought with its original reality. When he says about thinking: “This is not done by holding thoughts, but by knowing the truth”, he means simply that our ‘thinking must be governed by the original idea.
For example a statement like God is Omnipotent (meaning all powerful) is a statement that Power is and hence when I think of Power I must not look at the perverted forms of power I see in the world around me but I must learn to align my thinking with the original idea of power.
I might see parents abusing their children and get jaded about power and then my thinking goes crazy. I need to refer back to the original truth in order to rectify my thinking. I look at the original intent of power and I see all the beautiful creation that is and all the loving relationships that are and the proper uses of power that are. In that way I am released from jaded or faulty thinking and I am now bringing new life and energy to my life because I am thinking right. I am aligned with the truth.
So when I learn how to think by aligning my thought with the Truth I free myself from the crazy ways of thinking I’ve picked up from being abused and watching abuse.
While I am focused on abuse and understand that to be power, for example, I am crazy thinking and my life energy is sapped from me. I could be depressed and down in the dumps because of it.
The way to breath life into my life is by turning my gaze to Source and affirming that the perfection of Beauty that I see there is my life now. I identify with source pattern and so I simply turn away from identification with that which is all around me and hence I change my thinking and I change my life.
By learning to ‘think’ I learn how to live because by learning to think and coming in control of my thinking I am learning to align with Life Itself in its Original patterns and Beauty.
I can become aware that I am in charge of my thinking and not just to let myself be blown here and there by every fleeting thought that sails across my sight line.
I am in charge of the direction of the ships that cross the sea of my mind. I can learn how to think and to thereby think Life, love and liberty and bring that into my actual existence.
Peace.
Normand