First Things First:

Let's start today with the method for following along this year. If you've listened to my podcast posted yesterday you will know that it is my intention to follow the daily readings in "The Science of Mind" by Ernest Holmes. If you would like to read along, grab your book (don't have one? Order one on Amazon by clicking here), make sure it is the 1938 edition (not the readily available 1926 edition which is in the public domain).

Preceding my comments on the daily reading I will indicate the reading for the day indicating the rage to be read with page numbers and paragraph numbers. For instance today's reading is 439.2-439.3, where you begin reading on page 439, paragraph 2 and read through page 439, paragraph 3. When counting paragraphs remember to please count a partial paragraph at the top of the page as one.

On some days there will be published meditations to be read from the book. These are indicated with a page number followed by the letter "M" and a number following that to indicate which meditation to read on that page.

Make sense? Let's go!!

TODAY'S READING:
439.2-439.3

What a great way to start the new year. Let's shed the old. That may seem a little ironic given that I've decided to take a year long journey through a book that will be 80 years old this year. Is there anything new to glean from such a text? Of course there is! There is provided it is reviewed and studied with the current climate in mind—and that we truly consider what we are reading with a lens of critical thinking.

Holmes mentions himself this very idea when he writes, "Continually, we must accept new revelations of old truths." This can be the approach we take with this book. Yes, these are "old truths" but we can approach them with the consciousness of today and see how we are informed to live greater lives than yesterday.

So how does this align with a shedding of the old (which is what I've suggested in the beginning)? Well, shedding the old doesn't mean abandoning that which works. It means recognizing when something is no longer necessary in our experience. That's when we must shed it. For instance, long ago, when I was in my early 20s, I was like a young pup in the world of being an out an proud gay man. I put on airs of behavior which I believed were the way in which I was "supposed" to act because I was buying into old and useless paradigms from the past. I was a new cloth sewn into an old garment.

What I came to realize is that I wasn't comfortable being this person because this person was ill-fitting to my inner-truth. That person is there somewhere within me (were it not then I couldn't have expressed as that person), but my truth was stronger than the airs I was presenting. I had to first have a willingness to shed the old so that I could make way for the new. I say willingness to shed the old because willingness is where it starts. I had to give in to a place where I felt vulnerable and exposed. After all, if I shed the old garment I might find myself naked in the world. What would that be like?

Well, what I have come to discover is that is a feeling of freedom. And I like it. I opened myself up to the unlimited possibility inherent within me. The result a Happy New Me!

So, what old garments are you willing to shed now to reveal the masterpiece that is you?

Live a Happy New You!