Ernest Holmes on Emma Curtis Hopkins: "What she did was almost like a wind, or a breeze."

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Holmes on Mysticism 7-9-1957

I knew Emma Curtis Hopkins. I did take her course. Anyone who would say he "studied with" Emma Curtis Hopkins would be misstating the fact. No one ever "studied with" her that I know of. You went and she talked for an hour and you left and you went again and this happened 12 times and that was it. I know I bought the course at that time and was more familiar with the then than now but it wasn't the ideas but the consciousness she imparted that you did get. It was a very definite Impartation in what she did from what she said. At times it you might be familiar with what is called a "psychic breeze", like something alive and animated.

Emma Curtis Hopkins when I studied with her about 1922 was nearly 80 years old I believe. She was a very stately old dame. She wore a long dress and I never saw her without a hat. They say she was never without one, why I don't know. I went to the door and was announced, a beautiful place, a hotel apartment in the old Iroquois Hotel in New York.

I entered and she made a stiff little bow, with her head and motioned me to a chair and she sat down and began to talk. It was about 10 minutes before I said to myself, "this is the first lesson", which it was and she talked for an hour, and when she got through, she got up and made a little bow and walked out. The first four times I went, I didn't know whether she knew who I was, of course I was much younger then and it bothered me a little. This was 35 years ago.

2-Now about the fourth or fifth time the old gal loosened up and I used to stay after that and have long conversations with her. She turned out to be very witty and cheerful and sweet and lovable. She was telling me one time about a fellow named Burrnell who was a student of hers. She had a convention in Chicago and he came in and he was an absolutist he came in screening, "I am God." She said," there, there, Edwin, it's all right for you to play you are God but don't be so noisy about it." She was a very sweet character.

Now it is what you felt and not what she said. She showed me the only instance of mysticism that I know about that enables us to tie the mystical concept with the way we use the principal.

I presume that may have been because she was in the early days associated with Mrs. Eddy and was the editor of her first publication but left because of the Star-Chamber performances, so she told me. She was a very profound student of the spiritual classics of the ancients, this is all real.

How I Became the Whole in the Donut

Imagine a giant donut shape with the “whole” in the center of the donut filled with “me”, a vast beingness occupying the center of a circumference of energy. This vision came to me while sitting in meditation during a church service on a Sunday morning. I wasn’t in this container, I was the actual center of this container, peaceful, calm, and centered. Suddenly, this donut-shaped container around me began filling up with thoughts and feelings that had no reference to my immediate experience. This led me to the conclusion that these thoughts and feelings were not exactly my own, or had originated within me. I had entered the building that morning at peace, calm, centered and clear of any residual thoughts or feelings from the past. These thoughts and feelings from my environment felt foreign as if they didn’t quite fit with my internal experience of who I was or what I was doing.
I felt myself being drawn into these mixed feelings and thoughts; a swirling and twirling sensation that confused me; I became disoriented. I experienced a wide variety of emotions: first, anxiety, then sorrow, next frustration, some passing anger, a deep resentment, humiliation, and then again confusion. I had been floating peacefully in calm waters when the waters began to churn; I began to sink into the surrounding mix of fluid thoughts and emotion. A still small Presence within guided my attention back to the center of that donut-shaped container, back to that still place of grace I had known just moments before. Internally I shifted to the center, looked around with the inner eye and watched, with detachment, all of the feelings and thoughts that did not “belong” to me swirling all around in the donut space around me. I felt and knew a clarity, a deep understanding of the confusion I often experience in other situations as being this phenomenon of being the center of a container that held all that is around and within my environment.
Ernest Holmes, a new thought spiritual leader from the early 1900s says:
Telepathy is the act of reading subjective thought, or of receiving conscious thought without audible words being spoken. But there must be a mental tuning in, so to speak, just as there must be in radio. We are surrounded by all sorts of vibrations, and if we wish to catch any of them distinctly, we must tune in; but there is a great deal of interference, and we do not always get the messages clearly. We often get the wrong ones, and sometimes many of the vibrations come together and seem to be nothing but a lot of noises, without any particular reason for being. It is only when the instrument is properly adjusted to some individual vibration that a clear message may be received. (Science of Mind, Pg 240)
There is much more to be said about the phenomenon of telepathy. In some ways this is how my thoughts and your thoughts become our thoughts. We enter the kingdom and are One, individuated, yet One in the container that is One container.

Meditations for Daily Use

This handy booklet is available at the Stepping Stones Bookstore at the Center for Spiritual Living in Santa Rosa. There are 128 pages of meditations arranged by theme or subject. This one is listed under the "Harmony of Life" section. I like to carry this 4"x6" spiral bound booklet around with me and just open it and read. I am transformed by it. $12.95 www.steppingstonesbookstore.org

STILLNESS AND RECEPTIVITY
I am still and receptive to Life.
I let Life flow through me into all
that I do, say or think.
I shall let my Life be what it is,
and shall not worry nor complain.
I am now entered into the Secret Place of the Soul
where complete quiet
reigns supreme and
where God talks to me.
I receive.

"...turn entirely away..."

"...turn entirely away from the condition, because as long as we look at it, we cannot overcome it. By thinking upon a condition, we tend to animate it with the life of our thought, and thereby it is perpetuated and magnified. To rise above the contemplation of conditions is to enter that field of Causation which makes all things new in our experience." Ernest Holmes
There are those days when I am at peace with my spiritual beliefs and teachings in New Thought/Science of Mind, and then there are those days when I am completely thrown by a statement that stimulates so many questions that I am lost in my faith; when I become so bewildered by a statement that I am thrown into a tailspin and know no peace with the tradition I had just yesterday strongly aligned myself with. I am looking for the Truth in this quote with a capitol T. My mind naturally gravitates toward solving problems, studying a situation in order to understand its parts and effects. I feel I must understand what is my part in facilitating any changes that will benefit and uplift the situation. (Like solving our environmental dilemmas.)I have been trained to never ignore or deny the shadow but to acknowledge its presence as a way of neutralizing the dark effects it can have. To turn entirely away from a situation can also mean to go into denial, to oppress, to disassociate when direct attention is the healing mechanism. Unless Ernest Holmes in this statement is referring to the tendencies sometimes to unnecessarily obsess or perseverate about a situation I am right now in disagreement with him. And I am in deep contemplation about the implications herein. One day inner peace, the next day not as much...Peace is not an easy or passive path.