You Can Create an Exceptional Life

Though she has established a self-help publishing empire, legendary author Louise Hay has herself written just a few books, and is really only known for one - the paradigm-changing and trend-setting You Can Heal Your Life, originally published over 20 years ago, and in recent years turned into a really very good movie.
I recently saw Ms. Hay live on stage at the I Can Do It! Conference in Sydney, and she was looking sprightly for an 80-something woman. She announced and launched her brand new book that day, a small dialogue with Life Coach and Oprah favourite Cheryl Richardson called You Can Create an Exceptional Life.
Though slight it is a well-edited and quite fascinating book, teaching many of the basic principles of New Thought and filled with autobiographical detail about Louise Hay, much of which real fans have heard before. The fresh re-telling actually works well, however, putting the stories of rising above hardship into a new context, and giving the much younger co-author Cheryl Richardson something to bounce off and react to.
The book is basically created from a series of Skype conversations between the two women, much of the time while both were in pyjamas, apparently. I hope they recorded the sessions - what a vision for future generations!
There is in the book a hint of defiance, a creeping weariness with the cynics and nay-sayers who instinctively dismiss everything the two women represent. Richardson says, "I no longer defend the spiritual principles that have guided and shaped my life. They work and I know it." In an age of radical atheism and hegemonic negativity, I am beginning to notice that advocates of a more feel-good spirituality and world-view are becoming ever-so-slightly radicalised. It would be interesting to chart this new turn.
Both women credit the influence of the great New Thought ideas and thinkers, in particular the work of Emmet Fox and Florence Scovel Shinn. At the heart of those teachings is the idea that most humans are possessed of enormous potential powers to re-shape the world and to create a life of abundance and happiness.

The Science of Mind on Personality

"Personality is the objective evidence of individuality. Our personality is the use we make of our Divine Individuality. Just as a fine architect uses only the best materials, and plans most carefully how to construct his building, so should we, in the building of personality, choose most carefully the kind of materials we wish to use. Each one builds according to the pattern of his own desires."

~ The Science of Mind by Ernest Holmes, p. 618

"That Was Ernest" by Reginald C. Armor

There is surprisingly little biographical material about the early figures of the New Thought movement, so I was intrigued to read this eccentric little memoir about Ernest Holmes by his longtime associate and lifelong devotee Reginald C. Armor.
Armor was one of Holmes' first and most devoted followers, and one of the first official "practitioners" of Religious Science, the philosophy invented and taught by Ernest Holmes. That Was Ernest is the account of an unusual life spent entirely in the shadow of a great man and a forceful personality, and serves more as a hagiogrphy than serious critical biography.
That said, it is a fascinating read, packed with information not just about the beginnings of the Science of Mind movement, but also about Holmes the man, his foibles, vanities and absolute sincerity.
Starting life in a dull clerical job in local government, Holmes took advantage of his light duties to read the great spiritual and metaphysical classics in his office, eventually becoming convinced of a unified philosophy that he saw lying behind each of the world's religious systems. He saw God and the Universe in terms of laws and principles which all people had access to, and which they could turn to their advantage (and, it must be stressed, spiritual and moral advancement).
By 1935 Religious Science - the movement Holmes had begun to teach these universal spiritual principles - had become phenomenally successful in California, teaching the New Thought philosophies of Emma Curtis Hopkins, Thomas Troward and, of course, Holmes' own unique take on things.
Armor tells us that by the 1950s Religious Science had become a huge religious institution, much to the discomfort of Holmes himself, who was uncomfortable with officialdom and dogma, and wanted only to see people educate themselves to make the best possible decisions. Indeed, after the death of his wife Holmes began to explicitly reject the church and its work, returning instead to the closer and older circle of original students who, while less well-trained than the new generation of Ministers that served his church, were more sympatico with the original spirit of the movement.
Armor, the book's author, was involved with the Holmes family from childhood, being a parishioner at Ernest's brother Fenwicke's small Congregational Church. Obviously in thrall to this charismatic, clever and religiously obsessive family, Armor quickly became enamoured of the older Ernest, who made himself known by curing Armor of his warts by advising him:

"You practice not seeing it. Think of it each day as being gone."

Armor's position is surely unique in having known and worked with such an influential figure for such a long period, and through such diverse experiences. It is this incredible insight into the man Holmes that makes this book, as quaint as it may occasionally appear, so fascinating, and such a rich resource for the scholar of twentieth century American religion.