The affirmative approach we take in the Science of Mind philosophy and practice is uplifting and can be tremendously empowering. Our prayers are positive, and we speak them with creative authority. We call forth new possibilities, refusing to be bogged down in conditions or held back by less-than-ideal circumstances. We purposefully align with everything desirable and constructive, claiming All Good as our “Spiritual Truth.”

It grooves beautifully with this time of year, too, as we welcome in a new calendar of opportunities: Out with the old, in with the new! Accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative! So long lack and limitation, hello hope and transformation!

There’s another neat part to this. Because we don’t want to postpone our fulfillment into some vague future, we claim it RIGHT NOW. We affirm our good as the capital-T Truth in the present tense, with surety and conviction. This comes straight from the mysticism of Jesus in the Bible: “Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” (Mark 11:24)

All of this is compelling and exciting stuff. It inspires me. It can be fierce in the face of despair and downright unstoppable as an approach to life’s challenges. Name Good and claim Good, and so it is.

It can also sound like a load of malarkey. A friend gave me a magnet on Christmas Eve that said, “Believing bullshit doesn’t make it real.”  Excellent point.

The important thing to remember as we exercise the power of our word through affirmation and prayer is that it’s about declaration — not observation.

The observable, already-experienced world is loaded with hardship, pain, limitation, lack, separation, injustice; that’s all pretty obvious and it would be silly to deny its existence or reality. The future, on the other hand, can be a wide-open clearing for us to claim something shiny and new into our experience.

Here’s where it gets tricky (and where the spiritual practice of Science of Mind can stall out as idle feel-good nonsense if we’re lazy about it): We declare something, and the world happens. Life occurs. Some of it will seem to line up perfectly with all the positivity we spoke into it. Some of it will seem like the exact opposite. The whole enchilada will be a mix of “good” and “bad,” what we prayed-for and not. AND WE GET TO DEAL WITH IT ALL.

The occurring world is always life’s answer to our creative intentions. But our participation with it and in it doesn’t end when we speak a prayer like a magic spell, calling it done and good. Our ever-unfolding opportunity always is to work with Life, to meet the world in its all convoluted contradictions, to make the sense we can of it, to practice some more, and to re-imagine new possibilities out of our fresh experiences and wisdom.

And the more willing we are to reckon honestly with what shows up in our experience, the more powerful we remain in our ability to declare new possibilities into existence. There’s very little juice in willful detachment from observable reality. There is great strength, however, in freely acknowledging the mixed and messy bag of the real world, and still daring to declare a positive tomorrow.

In this spirit, here is my declaration:

• I declare that we can be authentic and forthright with ourselves and each other about what’s working and what’s not, what we hope and what we’re afraid of, where we feel stymied and blocked as well as where we see the glimmers of brighter possibility.
• I declare that we step boldly into 2019 with sparkling minds and open hearts.
• I declare a world that works for everyone, step by step by honest step.
• I declare that our togetherness is constructive, progressive, and creative.
• I declare that each of us has exactly what it takes to meet life’s every invitation, that you and I have been called to this moment to bring and be our heart’s desire for the world.

Happy New Year, friends. I can’t wait to see you this Sunday, December 30. XO, Drew