Spiritual Value: Love as Community Service

September 24 - Spiritual Value: Love as Community Service

We should have no objection to any form of healing, for anything that helps to overcome suffering is good, whether it be a pill or a prayer. We believe in any method which produces results, for each has its place in the Whole.

Ernest Holmes

What ways do you contribute to the alleviation of suffering in the world?

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Spiritual Value: Love as Community Service

September 17

But faith without works is dead. We should not only pray, we should act, each contributing the best [they] have to the common purpose, each willing to make any sacrifice necessary – not a sacrifice reluctantly made, but as one who offers all [they] have for two great purposes – one, in a certain sense, a selfish one, for we all desire self-preservation, the other, in the greater sense, that there can be no individual self-preservation without the preservation of all.

Ernest Holmes

What does selfless-service mean to you?

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September 10 - Spiritual Value: Love as Community Service

The world is saturated with Divinity, immersed in Reality, and filled with possibility. We must take this divine possibility and mold it into a present actuality in everyday experience. This is the way to freedom, the pathway to peace and happiness.

Ernest Holmes

How do you imagine divine possibility can be molded into everyday experience?

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September's Spiritual Value: Love as Community Service

We dedicate our time, talent, treasure, and expertise to the healthy and joyful evolution of our spiritual community, the community in which we live, and the greater community of the world.

Spiritual Living, while focusing on inner personal growth, leads each individual to the realization that they are not only one with the Universal Mind of Creation, but also with everything and everyone. Out of this sense of kinship rises a natural desire to share, help, and nurture, and the understanding that none of us is free if one of us is not free.

This month provides the opportunity to explore the balance between inner personal work and contribution to the world through service.

September 3

It is quite a burden lifted when we realize that we do not have to move the world – it is going to move anyway. This realization does not lessen our duty or social obligation. It clarifies it. It enables us to do joyously, and free from morbidity, that which we should do in the social state.

Ernest Holmes

What do you think your duty or social obligation is?

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Why I Joined the Board of Trustees

Past and current Trustees share why they joined the Board and what they gained from doing so.

We Look Too Far Away for Reality

August 27 - Spiritual Value: Love Compassion, and Caring

The farmer has seen the Heavenly Host in his fields. The child has frolicked with Him at play. The mother has clasped Him to her breast and the fond lover has seen Him in the eyes of his beloved. We look too far away for Reality.

Ernest Holmes

Where do you experience the presence of the Divine most intensely?

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God is Love

August's Value: Love, Compassion and Caring

August 20

The essence of love, while elusive, pervades everything, fires the heart, stimulates the emotions, renews the soul and proclaims the Spirit. Only love knows love, and love knows only love. Words cannot express its depths or meaning. A universal sense alone bears witness to the divine fact: God is Love and Love is God.

Ernest Holmes

What is the difference between the love of God and love for God?

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Love is an Essence

August's Value: Love, Compassion and Caring

Love is an essence, an atmosphere, which defies analysis, as does Life Itself. It is that which is and cannot be explained: it is common to all people, to all animal life and evident in the response of plants to those who love them. Love reigns supreme over all.

Ernest Holmes

What, in your opinion, are the similarities between human love and Divine love?



Photo by Bonnie Kittle

Love is the Central Flame

August's Spiritual Value: Love, Compassion, and Caring

We embrace Love as the Self-Givingness of God to all creation, moving through us into expressing as compassion, caring, mutual respect, and kindness. We express interest in and support for the well-being of ourselves and others. We express unconditional love when observing the suffering of others and do what we can to give aid and show compassion.

Spiritual living may be thought of as the practice of duplicating the nature of the Divine in our human experience. This month’s focus is on the Divine as unconditional love.

August 6

Love is the central flame of the universe, nay, the very fire itself. It is written that God is love, and that we are [God’s] expressed likeness, the image of the Eternal Being. Love is self-givingness through creation, the impartation of the Divine through the human.

Ernest Holmes

What does Divine Love mean to you?

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Surrounded by Love

July's Spiritual Value: Open Communication

"The great love which I now feel for the world is the Love of God, and it is felt by all and comes back to me from all. I understand all people and this understanding is reflected back to me from all. I give friendship and therefore I have friends. I help, therefore, I am helped. I uplift, therefore, I am uplifted. I am now surrounded by all love, all friendship, all companionship, all health, all happiness, all success. I am one with life." ~ Ernest Holmes

Describe the ways in which you express love in the world.

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Collaboration and Inclusion

July's Spiritual Value: Open Communication

"God in me is unified with God in all. This One is now drawing into my life all love and fellowship. I am one with all people, with all things, with all life. As I listen in the silence, the voice of all humanity speaks to me and answers the love that I hold out to it." ~ Ernest Holmes

How can you let the One draw you into an atmosphere of collaboration and inclusion?

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One Human Race

July's Spiritual Value: Open Communication

"Perhaps we have yet to learn that there is but one race, which is the human race; one family, which is the family of God, and that there is but one God, Who is the God of all people." ~ Ernest Holmes

Using your imagination, describe a world in which people live as one human race. What would our communication with each other be like?

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July's Spiritual Value: Open Communication

Open Communication

"There is nothing in the world that can take the place of love, friendship, appreciation and cooperation in our lives. I have thought so much about this all week because these are the only things that have any meaning in the eternal values in which we are so interested." ~ Ernest Holmes

How do you nurture your relationships with the people closest to you?

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July's Spiritual Value: Open Communication

July's Spiritual Value: Open Communication

We communicate openly with each other in an atmosphere of collaboration and inclusion.

Not only is open communication an important value when interacting with each other in our community, but also when practicing prayer and meditation.

July 2

"I believe in a direct communication between the Spirit and the individual—the Universal Spirit personifying Itself through each and all; this is a beautiful, a logical and an unavoidable conclusion. This makes of the human a Divine being, a personification of the Spirit; but if we are Divine Beings why is it that we are so limited and forlorn, so poor, miserable and unhappy? The answer is that we are ignorant of our own nature, and ignorance of the Law excuses no one from its effects." ~ Ernest Holmes

How do you experience communication with Spirit?

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June's Spiritual Value: Accountability

"We did not create our nature; we cannot change its inherent reality; we are what we are and we use this nature for better or for worse. Being what we are there are certain responsibilities that go with our natures." ~ Ernest Holmes

What are your spiritual responsibilities?

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June's Spiritual Value: Accountability

"In studying the order of [our] evolution, it seems certain that it was necessary-from the time that [we were] brought to a point of self-choice-that [we] be left alone to discover [our] true nature. If [humanity] is endowed with the attributes of self-choice and free will, [it] must be allowed to make this great discovery for [itself]." ~ Ernest Holmes

What does freedom of choice mean to you?

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June's Spiritual Value: Accountability

"I carefully guard my thought. I refuse to permit anything antagonistic or unlovely to enter my consciousness. I am learning to live in joy, in peace and in calm confidence. I am putting my whole trust, faith and confidence in the good. I think with clarity, move with ease and accomplish without strain." ~ Ernest Holmes

What can you be trusted to contribute to life through your thinking? How does your consciousness contribute to the world?

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June's Spiritual Value: Accountability

We account for our activities, disclose them in a transparent manner, and accept responsibility for our actions and the obligations entrusted to us.

Being willing to accept responsibility for our choices is an important key to spiritual living. It means being willing to answer for our actions and to live in such a way that our words and deeds are matched to the spiritual truth of our being.

June 4

"Peace comes from the absence of fear, from a consciousness of trust, from a deep, underlying faith in the absolute goodness and mercy, the final integrity of the universe in which we live, and of every cause to which we give our thought, our time and our attention. If we would have peace outwardly, we must first realize peace inwardly." ~ Ernest Holmes

In what ways are you living in harmony with inward peace?


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May's Spiritual Value: Creativity

"What would fill the needs for one person might not do it for another. What one person might regard as normal, possibly would stagger the imagination of another by its very bigness. Our standard of expectancy depends entirely upon ourselves. Every demonstration is made at the exact level of the expectancy, the expectancy embodied in thought." ~ Ernest Holmes

What are you expecting out of life, and is there room to expand and improve upon what you are expecting?


Photo by William Stitt

May's Spiritual Value: Creativity

"There is an urge to express in all people, and this urge, operating through the channels of Creative Mind, loosens energy into action, and compels the individual to do something. Back of all this desire is the impulse of Spirit to express. In [humankind], this impulse must express at the level of [human] consciousness. Some express themselves constructively and some destructively." ~ Ernest Holmes

How do you use and express the creative power of the universe in your life?

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May 14 - Spiritual Living through Creativity

May’s Value is Spiritual Living through Creativity

A cornerstone practice of our teaching is Spiritual Mind Treatment, a form of affirmative prayer in which we mentally accept the idea of the good we wish to have in our lives. But affirmative prayer is not only mental work. It must also be felt. Our founder, Ernest Holmes wrote about prayer that “our mental acceptances should be filled with conviction, warmth, color and imagination. The creative power responds to feeling more quickly than to any other mental attitude. Therefore, we should try to feel the reality of what we are doing when we give a treatment. This reality is felt as we become more and more convinced that Spirit responds to us.”

Try this method to connect with the feeling of your prayer. Imagine that whatever you are praying about has been accomplished. If it is good health, imagine you are healthy. If it is excellent communication with a parent or friend, imagine you are communicating successfully and well. Then ask yourself, in this imagined future outcome, what are you feeling. When you identify a feeling that goes with the answered prayer, you can focus on bringing that feeling into your prayer work. For example, if you imagined feeling joyous, choose words for your prayer that cause you to feel joyous now.

Describe the role that emotion plays in your prayers.

Warm regards,



Edward Viljoen

May's Value: Spiritual Living through Creativity

We allow the ongoing activity of Spirit into our hearts, minds, and activities to bring forth new forms and expressions to inspire and guide.

This month’s quotes by Ernest Holmes are about the creative power of the universe and how it works in us by responding to our feelings and thoughts. Let the quotes stimulate your thinking about the role of e...motion in affirmative prayer and what happens when the creative power of the universe is allowed to express itself through you.

"When Life created us It gave us the two great endowments of God, the two highest gifts of heaven: love and creativity. Love, so that we may have confidence in life, a sense of security and peace and joy in living; creativity, so that we can really live as persons and express ourselves individually. Life has done very well by us."

Ernest Holmes

In what ways do you allow your individuality to be expressed in your life?

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April's Value: Transformation and Evolution

"It has been written that the Truth shall make us free, provided we know the Truth, and we note that the evolution of [humankind's] consciousness brings with it the acquisition of new powers and higher possibilities."

Ernest Holmes...

How can a person know the Truth?

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April's Value: Transformation and Evolution

"We might desire to do something today that is destructive as an emotional impulse, but when we stop and think about it we know it is not best. That intellect is given to us in our evolution that we may discriminate and no longer be led by blind emotion, because so long as the world was led by blind emotion there was no civilization, and if the world e...ver returns to be led by blind emotion, as we now understand it, it will disappear."

Ernest Holmes

What are you being led to do by your spiritual discrimination?

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April's Value: Transformation and Evolution

"But we should not overlook the significant fact that it is the Mind which discovers and makes use of the mechanical law! Is not this mind the Spirit in us? We can never completely fathom the Infinite Mind: we shall always be discovering new lands. Consequently, evolution is an eternal unfoldment of the more yet to be."

Describe a recent discovery you ...have made about the way Spirit’s mind works in you.

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April's Value - Transformation and Evolution

April 9

In all sacred literature, you read references to this. It is that spark which impregnates everything and is buried in everything. It is the spark which Browning said we can desecrate but never quite lose. It is there, and it contains within itself the upward push of all evolution.

How do you increase your awareness of the inner spark Browning is referring to?

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April's Theme – Transformation and Evolution - A Year of Values Based Spiritual Living

April

The Evolution of New Thought

Value: Spiritual Living through Transformation and Evolution

We do deep inner personal work of self-discovery and healing to reveal the greater truth of our divinity, wholeness, and freedom.

The Oxford Dictionary defines transformation as a thorough or dramatic change in form or appearance. In other words, a radical shift from one state to another. Evolution, in spiritual terms, may be thought of as the ongoing process of journeying from change to change, each progressively revealing more of the one true nature of being.

Although ultimate reality does not change, awareness of its nature can grow and increase in us. Let the quotes by Ernest Holmes on the following weeks stimulate you to write about your expanding understanding of your spiritual nature.

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April 2

In looking over these generations of the teachings of India, we find a very great concept of the unity of all life. They believed in one God and only One. They didn't call it God; they called it the Absolute, or Brahma; but it doesn't matter what you call it. They believed in one Presence and one Power, and only One in the Universe. They believed (which later came out as a theosophical teaching) in the mind that sleeps in the mineral, waves in the grass, wakes to simple consciousness in the animal, to self-consciousness in the human and to cosmic consciousness in what they call the upper hierarchies, or an ascending scale of evolution, ad infinitum.

How has your understanding of divinity evolved?

March's Value - Education and Continuous Improvement

March 26

There should be a flexibility and a willingness on your part to cooperate but there should also be a determination to prove your Principle. This determination is ever growing. It is rooted deep in spiritual soil. Its branches are forever spreading and the fruit of this knowledge is forever falling into the lap of [the one] who knows.


Comment on your balance between flexibility and determination.






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March's Value - Education and Continuous Improvement

March 19

It follows, then, that the range of our possibilities at the present time does not extend far beyond the range of our present concepts. As we bring ourselves to a greater vision, we induce a greater concept and thereby demonstrate more in our experience. In this way there is a continuous growth and unfoldment taking place.

Ernest Holmes


How do you bring yourself to a greater vision for your life?

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