Dr. Anne Kunath

There are many organizations, particularly religious science, that do not do much in denials. Denials are considered the face washing, or clearing and cleansing process. What I wanted to do was to send some denials out to each one of you and have you do them for a week.

There's a purpose for this. Emma Curtis Hopkins, who is one of the greatest of the early teachers, had her students do denials for one month before they went into a new class. I've done this to see what effect it had on me and believe me, it pulls things out of the subconscious that you don't know are there.

It pulls things out like anger, hostility, resentment, from the time you were very small until now. It pulls out things that you wish you hadn't been upset about at the time like the thoughts, feelings, and anxieties you had that could have come from something way in the past.

Some of the denials that we use are, "There is no anger in me. Therefore, I do not attract people who are angry. There is no hostility in me. Therefore, I do not attract people with hostility. There is no fear in me. Therefore, I do not attract people who are fearful."

Melinda Cramer has, in her original book on Divine Science and healing, a whole chapter on denials and affirmations and when to use them. Annie Rix Militz has chapters on denials. Emily Cady had denials in there.

A few months ago, one of Ernest Holmes books came out. I had a religious science minister tell me that Ernest Holmes did not do denials at all. In the middle of his book, there was a chapter that said, "If you're building a house, you have to clear the land first."

This is the purpose of denials. You're clearing the land. We don't know what is in our subconscious. What I would like you to do is, tomorrow when you get your denials, read what is said about them from the quotes that I'm going to send in there. This week, I want you to do the denials. Read them over preferably twice a day, once in the morning and once at night. See what that brings up out of your subconscious.

I don't want you to do anything about that except look at it and say, "Oh my goodness, I didn't know that was there. Thank you for showing it to me." At that point, you can let it go. You realize that you've been holding on to something that did not concern you, that did not belong in your life and has just been sitting in this big sea of stuff in your subconscious.

Denials

The quote below is from Glenn Clark who is one of my favorite authors and whose writings helped strengthen the practical approach I love to teach.

"A group in the Twin Cities met weekly to study Rawson's book. It included chiefly members of the orthodox churches, but also an active New Thought follower and a teacher of Christian Science. On meeting, the group would go into a Quaker silence, trying to feel the presence of God. Then the leader would read a list of names of people to be prayed for, and the members of the group would use the technique of denials and affirmations. He discovered, he writes, "that all Mankind was One, and if we cleared our own mind, the trouble of the one we prayed for would disappear. One strong denial and a number of positive affirmations seemed to be the most effective way to clear our minds."

Reminder.   Denials are considered to be the cleansing mechanism, or, the method of rejecting opinions and/or negative beliefs that prevent our desired good from coming to us.

Denials for use the first week.

I am not afraid.

I am not angry

I am not poor

I am not sick

I am not insecure

I do not believe in  suffering

I do not believe in hard work

I do not believe in poverty

I do not believe in struggle

I do not accept limitation of any kind

I do not accept other peoples negative beliefs

I do not  accept lack in any area of my life

Here is some introductory information on Denials and their use.

The first step toward freeing ourselves from our troubles is to get rid of these erroneous beliefs about God and about ourselves

Some may doubt that wrong belief can affect our bodies or our situation.  If so, consider the child who is so afraid of the "bugaboo" under the bed that he has convulsions.  Or imagine, if you received, today, a message that your husband or wife or child, who is absent from you, has been killed, your emotional, physical, perhaps even financial, suffering would be just as great, even if the message was proven over the next few days to be untrue.  In the same way, our imaginary "bugaboos" of divine wrath and false messages declaring our own weakness overcome us.

Denial is the first practical step toward wiping out of our minds the mistaken beliefs of a lifetime. We declare not to be true a thing that seems to be true, and all negative appearances are directly opposed to the teachings of Truth.  Jesus said "Judge not according to appearance, but judge righteous [right] judgement" (John 7:24).

Suppose you grew up believing that the sun moved around the earth, and someone now showed you that the opposite is true.  You would accept the demonstrated truth, but still, at every sunrise or sunset, the old idea would come up, seeming almost too real to be disputed.  The only way to cleanse your mind of the old impression would be by repeatedly denying the old beliefs.  You would say over and over to yourself, whenever the subject came up in your mind, "This is not true.  The sun does not move around the earth; the earth moves around the sun." Eventually, the sun would only seem to be moving.

Similarly, it appears that our bodies and circumstances control our thoughts, but the opposite is true.  Our thoughts control our bodies and our circumstances.  So, if you repeatedly deny a false or unhappy condition, it loses its power to make you unhappy.

What everyone desires is to have only good in our lives and surroundings.  We all want to live lives full of love, to be perfectly healthy, to know all things, to have great power and much joy, and this is just exactly what God wants us to have. All good, of whatever kind, is God made visible. When we crave more of any good thing, we are in reality craving more of God to come forth into our lives so we can realize it with our senses.

Having more of God doesn't take out of our lives the good things¾it only puts more of them in.

Now, we may be able to see the possibility of our own God-being, which never changes,  but what we need is to realize our oneness with the Creator at all times. And in order to realize it, we must deny, in ourselves and others, any appearances that seem contrary to this.  We deny their reality.  We declare that they are not true.

Denials for Error Thoughts

There are four common error thoughts that most people grant power to.  People who have grown out of trouble and sickness through daily practice have found it useful to deny these thoughts in order to cleanse themselves of the distressing effects of having believed in them.  They can be denied like this:

1.      There is no evil.

2.      There is no absence of life, substance, or intelligence, anywhere.

3.      Pain, sickness, poverty, old age, and death are illusions and cannot master me.

4.      There is nothing in all the universe for me to fear, for greater is the One in me than anyone in the world.

  There is no evil.  There is one and only one power in the universe, and that is God: good.  God is good and God is omnipresent.  Apparent evils are not entities or things of themselves.  They are simply apparent absence of the good, just as darkness is an absence of light.  But God, all good, is omnipresent, so the apparent absence of good must be unreal.  It is only an illusion, like the moving sun.

There is no absence of life, substance, or intelligence anywhere.  We have seen that the true reality is spiritual.  "The things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal" (II Cor. 4:18).  By using this denial you'll soon break your bonds to matter and material conditions.*  You will know that you are free.

Pain, sickness, poverty, old age, and death are illusions and cannot master me. God is all life, eternal. God is all substance, everywhere present.  God lives in and through you and is the truth of you.  The "I" of you, therefore, experiences eternal wellbeing and can never be touched by these material illusions. 

There is nothing in all the universe for me to fear, for greater is the One in me than anyone in the world. The "I" of you is the infinite omnipotence of all that is!

You need not wait to discuss this matter of evil, or of illusion, or even to understand fully why you deny them.  Simply begin to practice the denials in an unprejudiced way and see how wonderfully they will, after a while, deliver you from some of the so-called evils of your daily life. Repeat these four denials silently several times a day, not with effort or anxiety, but calmly realizing the meaning of the words spoken:

1.      There is no evil.

2.      There is no absence of life, substance, or intelligence, anywhere.

3.      Pain, sickness, poverty, old age, and death are illusions and cannot master me.

4.      There is nothing in all the universe for me to fear, for greater is the One in me than anyone in the world. 

Denying Negative Experience

Denial of negative experiences brings freedom from bondage to the world around us, and happiness comes when we can effectively deny the power of anything to touch or trouble us.

Almost hourly, little issues and fears come up in your life.  Meet each one with a denial.  Calmly and coolly say to yourself: "that's nothing at all; it can't hurt me or make me unhappy." Don't fight it. Let your denial be the denial of any possible superiority over you, just as you would deny the power of ants in their hill disturbing you where you stand across the road.

If you feel anger, stand still and silently deny its power.  Say that you are not subject to anger; you are Spirit, love made manifest, and cannot be made angry, and the anger will leave you.

If someone is mean or tries to hurt you, remember that the One in you is greater than anyone outside of you and silently deny anyone's power to hurt you or make you unhappy.

If you feel jealousy or envy, deny their power over you. Declare that you are really Spirit, love made manifest, and that negative feelings have no power over you. There is, after all, really no reason for jealousy or envy, for all people are one and the same Spirit. Shall the foot be jealous of the hand, or the ear envy the eye? Remember that in reality, you, however insignificant you may appear, are absolutely necessary for God to make the perfect whole.

If you find yourself dreading to meet someone or afraid to step out and do what you want or have promised to do, immediately begin to deny the power of fear.  Say "It's not true. I am Spirit, and no one¾nothing¾in all the universe can hurt me; I have nothing to fear."  Soon you'll find that all the fear has disappeared; all the anxiety is gone. 

Creating Our Circumstances

Chances are, you've been living in negative thinking for years, denying your ability to succeed, denying your health, denying your Godhood, denying your power to accomplish anything. That pattern of denial has paralyzed you and weakened your power. When, in the next lesson, you learn the use of affirmations, the opposite of denial, you'll discover how to lift yourself out of the realm of distress into the realm of success.

For now, remember: no person or thing in the universe, no chain of circumstances, can in any way come between you and all joy, all good.  You may think something stands between you and your heart's desire, and so live with that desire unfulfilled, but it's simply not true.  This "think" is the bugaboo under the bed that has no reality.  Deny it. Deny it and you will realize that this appearance was false.  Deny it and you will find yourself free.  Then you will see the good flowing toward you and into you, and you will understand clearly that nothing can come between you and your own.

Denials are for us alone.  Speak them silently or aloud, but not in a way to create antagonism or invite discussion.  This is your work, and its results will be felt around you when you have fully realized the truth of the words you speak.

To some, this sort of mechanical approach may seem a strange way into a more spiritual life.  But our thoughts determine our experience and changing our thoughts is an essential first step toward experiencing Spirit in and around us, every moment of every day.  Practicing these steps wholeheartedly, without prejudice, is the very best thing we can do for growth in divine knowledge and fullness of joy in everything we undertake.