Law of Mind

Then another idea came to him: the whole thing was in accordance with law. He had discovered a law of mind just as he, at another time, discovered a law of electricity. If it were law, then he could always use it and it would always respond. From this he gradually built up a definite technique for the practice of right thinking.

He found that if he always thought of himself as being perfect he would always feel better. But what should he do with his body when it appeared sick? How was he to think of himself when he was sick? Could he deny that he was sick when he was suffering? Yes; for his sickness was the result of thought, and by changing the thought he could change the effect. He learned to turn away from the body when it was sick and go back into mind and think of the body as being perfect; for his thought worked independently of the body. He turned from the image of sickness to the idea of health and said, “I am perfect, no matter what the appearance may be.”

- The Science of Mind, by Ernest Holmes, 1926 and 1938


This kinda stuff fascinates me to no end. This combination of 19th-century New Thought and Christian Science. However, it is at radical odds with the truth that I know of my Catholicism. So I read a little bit of it, try to apply a little bit of it to my life via some habits of thought, feel guilty like I am betraying Who I know to be Truth, and give it up. For a couple of weeks or months.

But I find it oddly attractive. Not sure exactly why; perhaps it has something to do with the “self-help” culture that saturates 21st-century America, which is heretical to Catholic belief (you cannot “earn” salvation). Indeed, and don’t laugh, but I found great solace in the works of Emmet Fox nearly twenty years ago when I had my first and only great tangle with the Law.

Anyway, the part of me that’s interested in this stuff says, “Hey, you know you need to treat your body well, get fit, exercise. Do you think God has a problem with the books you’ve read about Diet and Nutrition? Weightlifting? He is the one that probably put them in your path. Could these New Thought books merely be teaching you only how to govern your noggin? After all, St. Paul says in Philippians to focus your mind on what is beautiful, noble, true and worthy.”

I find the argument both extremely enticing yet just shy of persuassive.