“Life is a mirror and will reflect back to the thinker what [they] think into it.” - Ernest Holmes

I find myself saying frequently, “this is a fundamental part of the New Thought teaching,” and I’ve started to wonder why. There is so much depth in the philosophy, and the philosophy in so many ways reflects the wisdom of the ages. I think I am settling into the personal need to allow the fundamentals to be at the root of my thoughts and experience. A sort of “back to basics” approach to living.

The concept of beginner’s mind comes to the forefront of my thought in considering this. Beginner’s mind is something I strive for often as it keeps me out of judgment, and opens me to greater possibility and potential.

That is the life I would like to see reflected back to me. One free of judgment, and infinitely open with possibility and potential. That’s actually the nature of life… but we get ourselves twisted in knots, and mess it up.

“The eye is the lamp of the body. So if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!” Matthew 6:22-23

How great is the darkness indeed! We are the ones who co-created the experience of darkness, and in that respect it is a pretty great feat of living. There is also a great lesson in knowing that if we created that darkness, we can re-create it as something new. It’s a little backwards in the way that it has been expressed here. Yet, when understood, it makes sense.

We are the responsible conscious beings for the expression and flow of our lives. We get to decide whether we use the eye to look at all creation from the point of view of Love, or from some other consideration. The healthy eye is the one that sees everything through the lens of Love, and the unhealthy eye is the one that sees something else.

What it all boils down to is choice.

“No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.” – Matthew 6:24

There is a concept in religious organizations and faith traditions called the “Prosperity Gospel.” The notion that prosperity is an important part of spirituality seems to fly in the face of this part of the sermon. I will offer this… I don’t think it does at all. In fact, it is very much in alignment with New Thought. New Thought philosophies hold to the notion that prosperity is welcome both in mind and expression. It is not money that is the root of all evil, rather it is the love of money. Prosperity is an inner feeling, and that inner feeling (just as all inner feelings/beliefs/thoughts) expresses itself in our world in perfect alignment and accordance. We experience prosperity not because we have money in the bank – rather we experience money in the bank because have prosperity consciousness.

No, we cannot serve two masters. We cannot live in duality and unity at the same time. To believe that money is something other than Divine expression is to believe there is something other than God, and that is a limited and limiting viewpoint. To love money is to be devoted to the form. A devotion to form may imply that we consider it separate from Spirit. All abundance, all wealth, all prosperity expression comes from one source, and guess what, that source is NOT your job. The source is Infinite Spirit.

Keep this in mind the next time you feel like you have no money in the bank. The potential for flow is within you, and it is in unlimited supply.

The next part is a long quote… so bear with me! Here we go…

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown in the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith?

Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s troubles is enough for today.” – Matthew 6:25-34

I could almost get by with saying this is all pretty clear. Almost. I think there are some fine points, though, that require a little look.

First, the sentiment is clear – do not worry! I can just see Alfred E. Newman’s freckled face grinning from ear to ear with the classic words on the banner below the image reading, “What—me worry?” To have this worry-free freedom is a blessing. We get so bogged down in the minutiae of life. We can become obsessed with where the source of our basic needs is rooted, and many of us are obsessed with that source. The obsession leads us to a belief that the source is beyond our control, and beyond our reach, and beyond our ease. The worry about this creates one thing in the expression of life: more to worry about.

The words in this section of the sermon are asking us to require of ourselves a deeper reliance on the inner good at our core; again the heavenly Father, which is the creative source in each of us, is the provider. When we live in faith, we are provided for. Faith is pretty tricky, though, when you require proof (in fact, that’s not faith!).

If we are able to live completely in this moment (letting go of our past regrets and the anxiety for what lies in our future) and give in to the consciousness of unity, everything takes care of itself. Is this easy? Well if it were I would not need to do things like serve as a minister on Sundays, and host a blog and podcast to consistently remind people of this.

What I think we can work toward is the total and complete giving in to the embodiment of the first two steps of affirmative prayer as we teach them. God is all there is and it is what we are. Recognition of the divinity of all things, and knowing that includes us and is the core of our very identity. When we give in to this without any questioning needed, everything in our lives is provided for.

This is truly a call to us to deepen our Faith and living in the moment more profoundly.

What if you knew you were provided for?

Would you worry?

You are.

So perhaps let the worry go.

I want to take a little more time and continue into chapter 7… here is some good advice:

“Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while there is a log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.” – Matthew 7:1-5

This seems like pretty common-sense advice (as does much of this sermon to me). We live in a world where it seems common sense is not so common. There seems to be a proliferation of purported leaders who all have logs in their eyes, and cast aspersions and judgments on others. The challenge here for me is this: am I casting judgment about them? If I see them and experience them in my life, I think it important for me to remove the log in my eye and recognize that they are a reflection of my consciousness.

This section also reminds us that the law of cause and effect works in perfection irrespective of the user. Just like a computer program will deliver whatever the programmer inputs, the law will deliver whatever the user inputs. It could be a program that brings ease to life, or malware that brings strife. The impersonal nature of the law doesn’t judge.

Ernest Holmes touches on this in his words, “There is a Law, common to all people, which responds to every [individual’s] belief in life, at the level of that belief. No [person] can be happy who lives in a continuous state of condemnation of people, conditions, and things. We must learn to praise and not condemn.”

Sage words from a sage mystic.

“Do not give what is holy to dogs; and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under foot and turn and maul you.” – Matthew 7:6

This may be a downer way of completing today’s exploration. But it is a call to us to keep the high watch for ourselves and in the lives of others. We cannot change anyone else’s life, that is up to them, but we can always claim and know in our own minds the highest and best expression of their magnificence.

It is also not up to us to try to convince them of something, most definitely it is not up to us to convince them that our philosophy and way of life is in any way “correct.” I always say, this is what works for me and I trust each person alive to find what works for them. We do not proselytize. We cannot give to those who are unwilling to receive, so it is fruitless to try.

We are in no position to judge (which seems to be a theme today). Our only job is to live the Truth and be beacons of light. Those who are ready will see it. As the Buddhist proverb suggests: “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”