Since I recommended New Thought proponents to help people, I thought I'd give an example of what the New Thought philosophy is like and how it's practitioners help people. Chapter One covers the theory. Chapter Two covers the method. Chapter Three gives two examples of New Thought philosophy and practice helping a physical ailment and a financial need.
Below is the text of Visualization and Concentration and How to Choose a Career by Fenwicke L. Holmes, a practitioner of Divine Science in New York City, copyright 1927.
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Visualization and Concentration, and How to Choose a Career.
by
Fenwicke L. Holmes
Copyright, 1927 by Fenwicke L. Holmes
Foreword
The first volume of this series showed the nature and laws of the subconscious mind and how they may be used to bring success and financial freedom. The object of this volume is to show how the individual subconscious mind is related to the universal and how we may get Universal Force to work for us. We can never reach a goal unless we have a goal to reach. This book shows that the ego or self always has a goal, that it has come into this world for a purpose and how we may find out what that purpose is. Then if we go to work scientifically we can carry out that purpose; for all the forces of law, and our own nature will be with us instead of against us. Many of us are working against our own nature, and the biggest enemy we have is ourselves for we are standing in our own way. We are here for self-expression, and if that self-expression is denied, we are likely to be the victims of neuroses, complexes, mental wretchedness and consequent failure. The answer is therefore found in discovering our own particular genius and making the choice of a profession along that line. There is a way in which this can be done. It is the object of this book to show that way. Having discovered it, we find ourselves in harmony with the forward movement of Universal Life, Love, and Wisdom. Working with it we CANNOT fail.
Fenwicke L. Holmes.
San Francisco, California
September 7, 1926
Introduction to Volume Two of the Financial Freedom Series
Just as every cell in the body is related to every other cell, so every truth is in harmony with every other truth, every fact with every other fact in the universe. At the same time the world is in constant quarrel over what is fact and what is not fact, and especially at variance over the interpretation of facts. The advancement of science and the progress of civilization largely depend upon the simplification and unification of ideas and conduct, and the consequent removal of friction in the intercourse of man with man. The kingdom of heaven on earth may be conceived as the ideal state to which mankind may aspire in the words of Jesus when “they may all be one even as Thou Father art in me and I in Thee.” Science, philosophy, and liberal theology are definitely lined up to the advancement of this ideal, and their interrelationship is undeniable. In fact, we are coming to perceive that all phases of human activity must be of one fabric -business and religion, science and society, health and happiness: a man is one self engaged in manifold forms of self-expression.
Bearing this in mind I have for some years desired to write a new volume embodying some of the oral teaching I have been giving throughout America along the line of harmonizing some principles hitherto supposed to be at variance, having been encouraged to do it by unnumbered requests. Believing with Jesus that “where a man’s treasure is, there will his heart be also,” I have selected the field of Financial Freedom and shown how it may be secured through the employment of a law which obtains not merely in business but in religion, ethics, sociology, psychology, and in fact every form of human knowledge and action. It is a law which the devotee of any religion and the student of any business alike may use; indeed must use, and is using whether aware of it or not.
In this matter I have particularly sought to show the meeting point between two systems of thought which have considered themselves at variance with each other. I refer to the schools of applied psychology and practical metaphysics. The former has felt that the latter was too vague and mystical; the latter has held that the former is too materialistic, and hypnotic in method. But disaster has frequently befallen each through disregard of the other. Vast numbers of sincere men and women have lost faith and courage through attempts to win financial freedom or health by the employment of pure thought without the acquisition of technical and psychological knowledge. They have sought to win it by spiritual principle without mental practice or development. The promises made to them have often been too glowing; speeches have inspired them “with zeal but not according to knowledge.” They have been urged beyond the field of the present development of consciousness or understanding and, blinded by the sun, have fallen into a pit. The consequent despair of metaphysical principles and the abandonment of them altogether is one of the saddest chapters of the great new movement which should mean so much to the mind and heart of humanity.
On the other hand, there have been unnumbered others who have been “psychologies” with high expectancy and lofty promises whose fulfillment has been equally disappointing. Some, because the promised method was never adequately taught; others, because their first zeal was not backed with the faith inspired by the realization that no man ever works alone, but that back of him is the unlimited resource of a universal mind which understands his problem and bears within itself the solution of all problems, and to which he may transfer his burden. He has started out faithfully to daily affirm that he is “getting better and better,” richer and richer, happier and happier, but the “spell” did not last because he knew naught of the law by which he was to get better and better and he was uninspired by the joyous contact which with fuller knowledge might be made with the Heart and Mind of the Universe.
There is an essential harmony between these two great bodies of mental workers, and their cooperation and coordination will mean much to advancement of the truth they seek to utter. It is only through this unification that scientific fact can be allied with scientific faith, and the world, as a body, brought safely along the pathway which leads to spiritual vision and wisdom. And it is to this spiritual vision and wisdom that we must look for the emancipation of the race from sin, sickness, and poverty.
Fanaticism is unnecessary to the attainment of results. Zeal may be rational while fanaticism is irrational. Whole-hearted commitment to a principle is the very essence of success, but we may have whole-heartedness without intellectual stultification or the abandonment of sense.
Let those who have failed, therefore, to attain all that they had hoped for not lose courage or faith in the law but rather let them go back a bit, tracing again the path they have traveled to see whether or not they have followed the rules; whether their zeal has been according to knowledge. And when they find that the law is true but their use of it was wrong, again let them not despair. For it is possible to train the consciousness until we can rationally use the law; to train the mind to make better choices and to act more intelligently because we are better equipped with mental and technical skill. It is better to move slowly than not at all, and the acquirement of technical and mental skill is in itself a demonstration of the power of mind to open up the way to success.
My thanks are due to the thinkers of the past from the antiquity of the Bhagavad Gita to the latest writers on economics and sales psychology to whom I have assigned the appropriate recognition on the pages wherein I have quoted them as authority.
This book goes forth blessed by my desire to help all those who seek its counsel. The realization of your emanicipation is the treatment with which I endow this book. Let the “truth that shall make your free make you free indeed.”
Fenwicke L. Holmes.
San Francisco, California,
September 7, 1926
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CONTENTS
Chapter
I The Creative Power of Mind
1 The Unity of Nature
2 The Universal Subconscious
3 The Impersonal Nature of Universal Mind
II Metaphysics and Psychology
1 Suggestion and “Realization”
2 Metaphysical Treatment
3 Psychological Suggestion
III Mental Telepathy
1 Illustrated in Physical Healing
2 Illustrated in Financial Treatment
3 Avoidance of Hypnosis
IV Visualization and Dramatization
1 Rules of Visualization
2 Illustrations of Visualization
3 The Seed Idea and the Universal Plus
V Concentration
1 Steps in Concentration
2 The Control of Thought or Mental Pictures
3 Entering the Subconscious in Falling Asleep
4 The Joy of Contacting Universal Mind
5 Planting the Seed Idea or Mental Impression
6 The Mystical Consciousness
VI How to Choose a Career
1 The Genius in Everyone
2 Self-Discovery
3 Your Unique Personality
4 Using the Psychology of “Interest” in the Choice of a Career
5 How to Use the Subconscious in the Choice of a Career
6 Use of the Intuitions in the Choice of a Career
