Practitioner Year 1 Study Questions Flashcards
1:1:2 Principle-Centered Living
Explain the differences between Centering, Meditation and Contemplation. What are the objectives of each?
a. Centering: consciously moving awareness to the core of self, where God is felt
b. Meditation: to produce a state of free open attention and expanded awareness of all.
c. Contemplation: deeper comprehension / breakthrough of understanding of given subject.
1:1:2 Principle-Centered Living
What is the purpose of an Invocation and how does it differ from a Benediction?
a. Invocation sets the tone of love, harmony, wisdom, and clarity for the event.
b. Benediction seals and blesses the event: offers thanks for what transpired and blesses participants before leaving.
1:1:2 Principle-Centered Living
Is a treatment the same as in Invocation and a Benediction? If not, how do they differ?
a. They are not the same. All prayer treatments are for the purpose of changing the thought. Treatment is for a specific reason and demonstration through conscious use of the law.
b. Invocations and benedictions are general, for gatherings.
1:1:2 Principle-Centered Living
According to Ernest Holmes, a Professional Practitioner’s success is dependent upon what?
According to Ernest Holmes, a Professional Practitioner’s success is dependent upon the Practitioner’s State of Consciousness.
1:1:2 Principle-Centered Living
10 things a Practitioner should know according to the Ernest Holmes essay in the Student Resource Material:
a. Never lay hands on a patient
b. Never talk about a patient
c. Never take personal responsibility for a patient
d. Money is not the objective of practitioner work.
e. Be frank, open, and honest.
f. Be willing to give 100%
g. Be honest with yourself and others.
h. Never try to convert anyone
i. Be spontaneous and joyful
j. Demonstration is the point of prayer.
1:1:3 Exploring Individual Creation
What are two distinct methods of treatment? What is the difference between them?
a. Argumentative reasoning: denying the experience. Confronts /addresses a problem.
b. Realization: declaring the Spiritual Truth, the perfect state of the client.
1:1:3 Exploring Individual Creation
Define each: Belief, Value, Attitude. How does one give birth to another?
a. Belief: mental acceptance or conviction of something.
b. Value: a personal standard or prinicple.
c. Attitude: state of mind and feeling.
d. Beliefs shape values. Together they create attitude
1:1:3 Exploring Individual Creation
What purpose does “Critical Thinking” serve in the Science of Mind and Spirit?
It allows us to constructively challenge beliefs, values, and attitudes.
1:1:3 Exploring Individual Creation
Why is it important to use critical thinking on the definitions of the words we habitually use?
Words reflect and create reality
1:1:3 Exploring Individual Creation
What is the purpose of treatment?
Demonstration: a new awareness and experience of life.
1:1:4 Exploring mental Cause and the Law of Mind
What is Mental Cause?
Mental Cause refers to the thoughts and beliefs which create our reality.
1:1:4 Exploring mental Cause and the Law of Mind
How do beliefs, feelings, and the Law interact to create reality? Why?
The Law reflects beliefs and feelings to create reality.
1:1:4 Exploring mental Cause and the Law of Mind
What are some of the things that need to be healed in one’s life or in the world? What is healing?
Nothing needs to be healed; only Truth needs to be revealed.
1:1:4 Exploring mental Cause and the Law of Mind
Define Emotions and Feelings and their value in treatment.
a. Emotions: outward expression of inner response
b. Feelings: inner response to external events and experiences as filtered through consciousness.
c. It is our thoughts and beliefs that create our reality, but only to the degree of feeling behind them. In treatment, the degree of feeling creates the demonstration.
1:1:4 Exploring mental Cause and the Law of Mind
Using the Science of Mind and Spirit teaching symbol, describe the creative process.
a. The circle is Infinity, the thing itself, God is all there is
b. Top section = Spirit / Universal Mind
c. Middle = Law / Creative Medium
d. Bottom = Form / Conditions / Demonstration
1:1:5 Exploring Beginning Influences
How do childhood experiences contribute to your beliefs?
Childhood experiences shape your conscious and unconscious beliefs.
1:1:5 Exploring Beginning Influences
What is a Spiritual Truth?
Spiritual Truth is the Truth of our Divine nature; a truth that goes deeper than individual experiences or beliefs. (Think of the God qualities)
1:1:5 Exploring Beginning Influences
Is it necessary to go back through your childhood memories to change your present? Why or why not?
It is not necessary to go back through childhood memories to change your present; you can address and change present beliefs without referencing their origin.
1:1:5 Exploring Beginning Influences
Why are childhood memories such great clues to the present?
Memories reflect beliefs and thoughts that shape experience and become reality.
1:1:5 Exploring Beginning Influences
How would the use of treatment change the effects of negative childhood memories?
Treatment can realign mental cause with Spiritual Truths
1:1:6 Exploring Subjective Influences
What is a Subjective Consensus? What are other terms that mean the same?
a. Subjective Consensus is Race Thought: a belief held by a group, race, or culture
b. The consciousness / accumulated experience of the human race.
c. The collective field of thought and belief that inhabits everyone’s subconscious.
1:1:6 Exploring Subjective Influences
What are some ways to recognize Race Thought?
Race Thoughts tend towards blanket statements: all / always / never / every.
1:1:6 Exploring Subjective Influences
What part can choice play in our embodiment of Race Thought?
a. We can choose to release beliefs that are not true and do not serve us.
b. We can choose to recognize Spiritual Truth instead.
1:1:6 Exploring Subjective Influences
Is Race Thought predominantly positive or negative?
Race Thought is not predominantly positive or negative, but contains both positive and negative because it is the sum total of all human experience, encompassing both positive and negative.
1:1:7 Exploring Sexual Influences
Why is it important for Practitioners to understand their beliefs, values and attitudes?
To come to an understanding of truth for yourself and more easily see it for others. You treat at the level of your own beliefs.
1:1:7 Exploring Sexual Influences
What are the differences between Envy and Jealousy?
a. Envy is desire for what another has.
b. Jealousy is fear that another will take what we have.
1:1:7 Exploring Sexual Influences
What is meant by Thomas Moore’s statement, “…there is nothing neutral about the soul?”
Soul has a natural urge for creativity. Either we respond to the desires of the soul and find fulfillment, or we neglect them and suffer.
1:1:7 Exploring Sexual Influences
On your spiritual path, what is the value of human intimacy and community?
The soul yearns for attachment, for intimacy, and particularity (diversity).
1:1:8 Exploring Addictions and Their Influences
In cases of Addictive / Compulsive behavior, what is the role of the Practitioner?
To know the spiritual truth of the client as separate from their behavior. To reveal the divine nature of the client.
1:1:8 Exploring Addictions and Their Influences
At what point should a Practitioner give up on an alcoholic?
Never
1:1:8 Exploring Addictions and Their Influences
How does Ernest Holmes define “the libido” in his treatise on alcoholism?
Libido is the field of emotion, emotional response, life urge, craving to be emotionally fulfilled.
1:1:8 Exploring Addictions and Their Influences
What is meant by “Spiritual re-education of the mind?”
Training the mind to see true nature as unified with God. Understanding, recognizing and knowing the Spiritual Truth of oneself.
1:1:8 Exploring Addictions and Their Influences
In the article by Jim Munson, “From Denial to Surrender,” he speaks of and describes “Community Heart.” Which part of his description is appropriate for a Practitioner, and which is not? Explain your answer.
a. In the strength of the Community Hearth the mystical presence of God, the Power greater than we are, is felt.
b. The practitioner does not need to share his own story.
1:1:9 Exploring the Mind and its Influences
What is the difference between the individual human mind and the Universal Mind?
a. Individual human mind is the unique consciousness that makes us seem individual (the parts of a whole)
b. Universal Mind is the gestalt of all aspects of the One (the sum of the parts).
1:1:9 Exploring the Mind and its Influences
Define “intuition.” To whom is intuition available?
Intuition is the inner knowing, beyond the 5 senses, the still small voice inside. It is available to anyone connected to Spirit.
1:1:9 Exploring the Mind and its Influences
How do you differentiate between acting on impulse and acting on intuition?
a. Impulse has an absence of thought (reacting without consideration or forethought)
b. Intuition is responding to a calm knowledge from within, not a reaction.
1:1:9 Exploring the Mind and its Influences
What does intuition draw on for knowledge?
Intuition draws on all that has gone before; the experience of the self and the collective consciousness as well as Universal Mind.
1:1:9 Exploring the Mind and its Influences
According to the Science of Mind textbook, what is memory? Why is it important?
a. Memory is an unconscious operation of what was once a conscious thought. Through memory we come to reality.
b. Memory is the recall of a conscious thought. In the memory we create a reality, which can be changed.
1:2:11 Overview of Term 2; the Creative Process & the Power of Choice
According to Ernest Holmes, what realization comes of knowing that all thing in the visible world are effects?
Back of all effects are ideas, which are the real cause of these effects. (SOM p.131.1)
1:2:11 Overview of Term 2; the Creative Process & the Power of Choice
In Living the Science of Mind, what does Ernest Holmes say is “The starting point for creating a better future…?”
Starting at the center of our own being leads to the discovery of the Presence in all people, events, and nature. (SOM 194 last sentence)
1:2:11 Overview of Term 2; the Creative Process & the Power of Choice
In Living the Science of Mind, when and where does Holmes say we are to make changes?
Since today is the only day in which we live, the change that we need to make within ourselves must start today. (LSOM 190.5)
1:2:11 Overview of Term 2; the Creative Process & the Power of Choice
Our choices are always limited by socially accepted mores and morals. True or false? Why?
False: we are only limited by our own thinking and beliefs.
1:2:11 Overview of Term 2; the Creative Process & the Power of Choice
What is one of the first steps to a more positive future?
Stop dwelling on thoughts of a negative past.
1:2:12 Consciously Using the Creative Process
Explain Core Concept 2 without the use of jargon.
God is threefold / triune in nature: having spirit, soul, and body.
1:2:12 Consciously Using the Creative Process
Discuss your understanding of the difference between blame and personal responsibility.
a. Blame = external, creates negative energy
b. Personal responsibility = gets rid of negative energy, can be used as an
1:2:12 Consciously Using the Creative Process
In the Science of Mind and Spirit do we deny a circumstance to know the truth?
No, we try to discover what’s wrong and why so we can handle through treatment. We look deeper than circumstances to Spiritual Truth.
1:2:12 Consciously Using the Creative Process
If God is all there is, how does Science of Mind and Spirit explain cancer, child abuse, disease?
Everything is life expressing. Everything is an effect of the Law manifesting. If we say these things are not God, we are saying there is something other than God, and that’s not true.
1:2:13 Consciously choosing Spiritual Principles
What spiritual principles would you use with a client to bring resolution to the fear of death?
God is everlasting Life and we are one with God. The truth of our being is Spirit, which is eternal.
1:2:13 Consciously choosing Spiritual Principles
What spiritual principles would you use with a client to bring resolution to the conditions of being always in debt?
The abundance of the Universe is available to us. There is a Law of Prosperity and Abundance. (“Debt” is a personal consciousness of lack.)
1:2:13 Consciously choosing Spiritual Principles
What spiritual principles would you use with a client to bring resolution to drug addiction?
No substance is greater than God. God is the source of perfect health, whole, perfect, and complete.
1:2:13 Consciously choosing Spiritual Principles
What spiritual principles would you use with a client to bring resolution to the loss of a job?
Life is evolutionary. Divine activity puts you on the perfect path. God is the source of all things.