The Fate We Believe In

I have a friend in Austin Texas that most people would label as ‘odd’ or maybe ‘peculiar’. She has never swum the main stream. She has been known to irritate folks a little because she can be quite challenging about her views.

My friend’s name is Robin. Actually she is a ‘Dr.’ now and so we call her Dr. Robin.

Sometime in the 1970’s Dr. Robin introduced me to the idea of affirmations. It was an idea as foreign to me as Czechoslovakian currency.

I found the idea of affirmations amusing.

Over the years I also developed a habit of reading Ernest Holmes, the prolific writer behind the Religious Science movement. I have many sources of inspiration in my spiritual belief system so I don’t want to confuse you that I am a strict Holmes disciple, but I find his work intriguing, intellectual and beneficial to my life.

Holmes introduced me to the concept of ‘denials’. This is the opposite of affirmations. Holmes also spoke of affirmations while writing in 1919, so I suppose Dr. Robin didn’t actually invent affirming as a self development tool.

It should follow to anyone that understands the concept of affirming, that the process of denials is a twin consideration.

I was in a track competition in Canada last July and as my 200 meter semifinal race was minutes from beginning I was overtaken by a surge of negative feeling. I felt hungry. I felt weak. I felt I was too tired. Many of the world’s best runners were there to compete and some of them were sprinkled through the lanes of my semi-final race.

I used a combination of affirming and denying before this race. I told my brain it was thinking incorrectly. I told it I was not weak, but strong. I told it I was not tired, but ready to compete. I told it hunger was completely immaterial in the present context. I felt better. I felt strong and capable.

I won the semi-final race, literally coasting to the finish line to save energy for the finals. The point to me lies not in the race victory, but that I had turned my mental state upside down by simply denying a current state of mind and affirming a new one.

This was added to my set of many personal proofs that Dr. Robin was not all wet and that Mr. Holmes was writing from an enlightened view point in 1919.

The fate we believe in we bring to pass.

This is now evident to me and has been gaining strength with me over the years.

This carries a great many implications with it. I am going to suggest to you that the process of affirming or denying is really just a rail car being pulled by a larger locomotive.

The larger concept is that a great power, a power you cannot physically see is always present and ready to make our lives better, stronger and more spiritual. We have to affirm the presence of this power.

It is a fool’s errand to be arguing for the presence of God in a blog, particularly knowing that 99% of you believe in God in the first place.

I am actually pointing you in a direction skewed from the conventional.

What I was always ready to dismiss, and I still am, are the goofy, flowery books of affirmations written to make money. I mean really, come on. I still feel that way.

The concept is way too powerful to trivialize in this fashion. You don’t need flowery affirmations aimed at some ethereal goal not belonging to you. What you need is faith in something you cannot see, faith that your own power can bring your wishes to reality.

There is a very large truth wrapped in this package. I said ‘your own power’ in the sentence above. It is also the power of the larger entity. In this thought the implication is created purposively that God and you are one, inseparable. Jesus said, “I am with you always”, and this is what I believe he meant. I am you and you are me. We only need to believe this.

Most of us in the Christian culture have been taught to believe first in God then the power of affirming has been brought to our attention via the flowery affirmation books that speak in “Thous” and “Most Heavenly Fathers.”

Try it a different way. Affirm what you want in your own language, without the goofy books. Many will accuse me of blasphemy when I encourage you to believe that you are God when you affirm the good or deny the evil. I encourage you nonetheless. When you have achieved success you will have found God in a very pure form.

Affirm what you want. Deny what you do not want and find the power that belongs to you the same as it belongs to God. You see, it is being shared with you if you will accept the power and responsibility. It is God’s gift to you, the ability to own his power. Find it along the path that leads you there more naturally.

Never try to sell it at the bookstore and never search for it there.

It is an intellectual peasant’s faulty and hollow pursuit.

Find it your way, in your language, and it will be altogether more powerful and sustaining. It has to exist in your soul, not on the page of a book.

The fate we believe in we bring to pass.