This Thing Called Life Book Reviews

This Thing Called Life by Ernest Holmes Book Summary

The WORLD is crying out for God. Lost in the canyons of disillusionment, where the trail runs out and stops against granite barriers that wall us in, we cry: “Why hast thou forsaken me?” When war devastates the land and tremblingly we stand at the mouth of hell, listening to the screaming of airplanes, the wails of the wounded, and the terror of headlines, we cry: “Why hast thou forsaken me?” 

The answer to our need lies not in God’s willingness, but in our will to accept, in our ability, through faith, to recognize the Divine Presence as the great reality of life. The Power of God within us is like a sleeping giant which must be awakened that it may spring into action. 

What is the secret longing of your heart? If you saw an advertisement which read: You can learn how to be well, happy and successful: you can learn how to influence people; how to create your own destiny, would this have a greater attraction for you than an advertisement which read: You can learn how to help others? or would you be even more intrigued by this advertisement: Do you wish to become one of the molders of human destiny? 

Any one of these propositions would be attractive. We all have a desire to be well, happy and prosperous. We wish to make friends, to be respected and admired by others, and every right-minded person wishes to contribute something toward the betterment of mankind. 

The one who is ill wishes to recover. An impoverished person wishes to become enriched. To the one who is unhappy, happiness stands for heaven. To the lonely, love and friendship are of the utmost importance. Upon a closer examination, however, there is one central, but perhaps unconscious and unuttered thought, running through all these desires— something big enough to include “all this and heaven too.” 

The greatest satisfaction in using the Law of Life is in the consciousness that such a Power is available, rather than in any use we make of It. For any particular use we make of It is a passing thing, whether it be healing oneself or others or producing any other temporary good. All of these are transitory and there is something in everyone that longs for permanency. 

The artist knows that even though he has created something beautiful, it can be destroyed. His real and innermost satisfaction is not in the object, but in the subject; that thing within him which penetrates the mystic splendor of Beauty itself. So it is with all our temporary creations. Empires may rise and fall. Chance and change, the vicissitudes of fortune, the comings and goings of human events, the isolated dramas of our own experiences, the temporary or more or less permanent friendships in our lives, inevitably must give way to something bigger. You are greater than the sum-total of all the experiences you have had. As Walt Whitman said, “There is more to a man than is contained between his head and his boot straps.” 

Your supreme satisfaction will be in the knowledge that the Law of Life exists; that you are one with It, inseparable from It. We must, then, conceive of Life as a Presence so complete that the word Infinite, alone, with all it implies, is adequate to express It. 

There is a Universal Wholeness seeking expression through everything. We are calling it simply Life. The religionist calls it God. The philosopher calls it Reality. Life is infinite energy coupled with limitless creative imagination. It is the invisible essence and substance of every visible form. Its nature is goodness, truth, wisdom and beauty, as well as energy and imagination. Our highest satisfaction comes from a sense of conscious union with this invisible Life. All human endeavor is an attempt to get back to first principles, to find such an inward wholeness that all sense of fear, doubt and uncertainty vanishes.

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This Thing Called Life (Ernest Holmes) Book Reviews 2024

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