Understanding and Guidance

Creative Mind and Success, by Ernest Shurtleff Holmes [1919], at sacred-texts.com

UNDERSTANDING AND GUIDANCE.

THE inner man is always in immediate connection with the Infinite of understanding. We are immersed in a living intelligence; we are surrounded by a Power that knows, for "In Him we live and move and have our being."

If our outer thought were never confused, we should at all times draw from this Infinite source of knowledge; we should be guided by It and never make mistakes; our minds would be like the smooth surface of a lake, unruffled by wind and storm.

But with most of us this is not the case; we become confused in the outer so that the surface of the mind is in turmoil, no longer clear and transparent, and we cannot get the clear vision, the real guidance, and we get things wrong because we do not see clearly.

The development of the understanding is learning to draw from the Infinite understanding; we can never do this while we are confused in our thinking.

The first thing to do when we wish a greater understanding is to be still and listen to the inner voice, to withdraw for a few moments into the silence of the soul taking here

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what we already know, and realizing that a greater intelligence is enlarging it.

Here we indefinitely take the pattern of our thought, the thing that we are working on, and ask for, and receive, new light; we hold this up in Divine Light and try to believe that we are being guided; we state that Supreme Intelligence and Absolute Power are acting upon our thought and bringing it to pass; it is now guiding us and we shall make no mistake; we hold ourselves in the Secret Place of the Most High, and abide under the shadow of the Almighty.