Creative Self-Dominion:
The Gospel According to Dr. Ernest Holmes

In all of his bestsellers, the Divine has told the truth,
custom-tailored to the comprehension of the times.

The word "gospel" means "good news," insofar as the latter represents God's news. A "gospel," therefore, is a report of the good news about God.

Like the great religious teachers who preceded him, Dr. Ernest Holmes also proclaimed the good news about God. He did this by synthesizing their varied "gospels" in a language that was custom-tailored to the comprehension of his times, and calling it "Science of Mind."

Dr. Holmes' gospel assumes - as stated in Genesis - that we are created in the image and likeness of God; and it concludes from this assumption that what is universally true about God is thereby locally true about us. Just as God's consciousness has dominion over the totality of Creation, so does our own consciousness have proportionate dominion over all that we create.

In short, the gospel according to Ernest Holmes is the gospel of creative self-dominion. In addition to acknowledging our local inheritance of God's universal self-dominion - also proclaimed in Genesis - Holmes' gospel especially emphasizes the creative power that resides in our dominion.

The Science of Mind gospel of self-dominion is summarized in two paragraphs, which Dr. Holmes wrote as a "Daily Guide" lesson for the Science of Mind magazine (reprinted in the October, 1997 issue).

I Have Dominion

Now unto him that is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, unto him be glory . . . Ephesians 3:20-21

I know that there is a God-power at the center of everyone's being, a power that knows neither lack, limitation, nor fear, neither sickness, disquiet, nor imperfection. But out of my personal experience come the negative suggestions which arise from the collective unconscious. If I permit them to, they act as a mesmeric or hypnotic power over my imagination. They bring up arguments from everyone's experience, declaring that impoverishment and pain must necessarily accompany us in our experience through life.

But I know that there is a presence and a power within me, irresistibly drawing everything into my experience that makes my life worthwhile. I know that friendship, love, and riches, health, harmony, and happiness are mine. I now let nothing but good go out from me; therefore, the good that I receive is but the completion of a circle, the fulfillment of my desire for all, so I refuse to judge according to appearances, either mental or physical, no matter what the thought says or what the appearance seems to be. There is always a higher power. Upon this power I rely with absolute confidence that it will never fail me. I have dominion over all apparent evil, which is merely a belief I no longer indulge in. I repudiate all its claims, cast out every fear accompanying the belief in it, and continuously exercise the dominion which rightfully belongs to me.

As distilled in the above statement, Holmes' gospel of creative self-dominion acknowledges the primacy of God-power (creative self-dominion) at the center of our being, and the consequences of our inheritance thereof:

• negative experience is proportionate to our exercise of self-dominion on behalf of identifying with and thus allowing negativity;
• our creative power is, nevertheless, always greater than any of our negative creations;
• we can therefore use this power to let go of any creation experienced as negative, and to replace it with an experience of our good.

Creative self-dominion prevails in every situation, as all circumstances are subject to change via the appropriate exercise of self-dominion. This truth is dramatically celebrated in William Ernest Henley's poem, "Invictus":

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Though the "good news" of Religious Science agrees with Henley's assertion of self-dominion, it denies any necessity of the travail in which Henley contexted his assertion.

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