Sacred Texts: New Thought

Creative Mind and Success: Part I: Transcending Previous ...

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*Creative Mind and Success* (1919) by Ernest Shurtleff Holmes is a work of New Thought philosophy — an early 20th-century American metaphysical tradition — focused on the practical application of mental and spiritual "law" to shape one's circumstances. This excerpt argues that while past thoughts and actions produce consequences (karma/cause and effect), those consequences are not inescapable: changing one's mental attitude effectively redirects the same universal law from punishing to liberating, like catching a ball before it breaks a window. Holmes uses this as grounds for a pragmatic self-forgiveness ethic — drop the unwanted thought, refuse to dwell on past mistakes, and begin again without guilt. A distinctive claim is that this is not a violation of natural law but a *redirection* of it, reconciling the apparent contradiction between karmic inevitability and Biblical promises of forgiveness. The piece culminates in an optimistic, semi-pantheistic exhortation: human consciousness is a co-creative instrument of a "Great Mind" or "the Infinite," and aligning one's thoughts with that cosmic purpose is both the method and the reward. Readers drawn to early New Thought, the precursors to modern self-help, or the theological roots of the Law of Attraction will find this a representative and historically significant primary text.

Creative Mind and Success: Part I: Transcending Previous ...

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