CREATING YOUR LIFE, DAY BY DAY, MOMENT BY MOMENT

Have you ever been driving along the highway on a long trip, and after about thirty or forty minutes you just realized that you hadn’t thought about the road or seen it in all that time? You were thinking about something else. You subconscious mind took over and handled the car, dodged the traffic, just ran your life, while your conscious mind was re-living that argument with the boss or planning that vacation trip to Mexico.

Your subconscious also kept your lungs breathing, your heart beating, your temperature stable, and your body upright in the seat. Can you imagine doing all those things while driving your car too, if you had to think about it all consciously? The conscious mind is not up to tasks of that complexity – it hasn’t the processing power. It’s all in the subconscious.

Your subconscious thoughts also tend to hold your beliefs, and your faith. They can be programmed from the conscious level, but only over a period of time, and only by real effort. So as you believe, your whole life is done unto you, little by little.

The Science of Mind is about programming that subconscious by starting with the conscious mind. It is done using a process called Spiritual Mind Treatment. It is really an affirmative form of prayer that is modelled for us in many parts of the Bible, and in the works of other faiths as well.

COMPONENTS OF 'TREATMENT':

We are taught that this programming requires several components. There is a beginning phase which is contemplative, consisting of the Recognition of a Higher Power that is Unitary, encompassing all things. Then there is a sense of personal Unification with this Power, allowing our sense of individuality to become merged with the Universal Oneness. Then, there must be an idea; a thought which contains the essence of the Prayer. It must be clear and it must be positively stated. Then there must be an emotion which accompanies that thought, one of gratitude, and the power of that emotion drives the idea into the unconscious and anchors it there. Finally the process concludes by releasing hold of the idea, accepting that once it is placed into the unconscious realm, a Higher Intelligence takes it over and deals with it.

Emotion changes the chemistry of the body; it sets up chemical pathways in the brain, locking things into our memory. Ernest Holmes taught that the two-fold force of idea and emotion is the key to realizing our desires. This is not unique; it is taught under many guises and with many different names.

So why doesn’t it always work? I’m sure there were times when you had the idea, you felt the emotion, and still it didn’t happen. What was wrong? Why didn’t it work as a formula?

There are a lot of possible reasons. Maybe the idea was unclear. Did you ever have an idea that was fuzzy, like it was something you thought you wanted but you hadn’t ever really thought about what you would do if you had one? Would you like to own a yacht? Could you afford the repairs? The fuel? The docking fees? Would you really take time out to sail it? Would you go broke buying gas for a Rolls-Royce? Would you really want to do the housework on a twenty-room home, or to pay the maids? Are you ready to become an employer, and handle payrolls and deductions and health benefits?

Many an idea is not ready to form into anything, and so it doesn’t. Often your subconscious is smarter than your conscious self – it knows when there isn’t a full-grown idea - when the desire is half-baked!

The nature of your emotion is another issue. There are really only two basic types of emotions; fear and desire. They cancel each other out. If you have conscious desire but unconscious fear, guess what happens? Nothing happens. If the fear outweighs the desire, you could even move away from your goal.

Until you identify the source of your blockages and deal with them, things may not unfold as you think you want. Wise people will end up doing multiple prayer treatments for each small roadblock, rather than just one BIG treatment for their great goal in life.

Remember what a prayer treatment is. It is the idea positively stated, plus the corresponding emotion, done in a feeling-state of unity with a Higher Power. Why is it called 'Treatment'? What you are doing is psychologically treating your own mind to enhance belief – to build your faith, in other words.

Religious Science is so named because this is believed to be a scientifically sound process. It is a ‘soft’ science in the same way that psychology is a soft science. The results are provable when applied in a statistical manner, but that does not mean it will definitely work for you in a single instance – that would make ours a formula religion, and it isn’t.

When you treat to enhance your belief, to build your faith in what you desire, eventually it will tip some inner scales to provide you with a certainty. Many individual circumstances will combine to allow this to happen. Because prayer is statistically sound, you will build up the odds in you favour. You treat to enhance your belief until it becomes true faith.

When you achieve faith, the emotions that you should look for are joy and gratitude. When these are genuine, they are signs of a successfully completed prayer. But in the gospel of James 2:17, he says “faith, if it has no works, is dead in itself.” We have a different saying for this; “Treat, and then move your feet.” The proof of your faith, finally, is in your willingness to take action.

You treat to enhance your belief until it turns to faith. Faith is described in the Bible as “The substance of things unseen.” You are giving substance to those things that you have dreamt of.