Divine Guidance, Practical Application

—Ernest Holmes

Here is a very simple story of the practical application of divine guidance in everyday life. And the lesson we should learn is that we all have access to the power and the intelligence of This Thing Called Life.

There is a place in your mind where it merges with the Divine. There is a secret place of the Most High within everyone, and we should seek to discover this secret place. There is a Power greater than we are, and we should learn how to use it.

Why shouldn’t we think of business as an activity of Divine Intelligence since the exchange of thoughts and ideas and commodities is necessary in human affairs? Why shouldn’t you feel you have a silent partner, that you can receive inspiration and guidance from the supreme Intelligence? . . .

Life gives us the tools; we have to use them. But it is from the high mountaintops that we receive the inspiration to act. “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and Earth.” God provided a mountaintop in every man’s mind. We all receive power from on High. Life comes from an invisible source that flows down through us from a Power greater than we are.

— Excerpted from the August 2021 issue of Guide for Spiritual Living: Science of Mind magazine

Four Steps to Living in Congruence

In the August issue of Science of Mind magazine, Christopher P. Lahiff and Leigh H. Taylor write: “As spiritual stewards of our planet, we must end the separation between our spiritual lives and our financial lives. Just as we are mind, body and soul, every aspect of our personal and professional lives should be included in the whole.”

To shift the existing paradigm and become guardians of our natural resources, they offer four simple yet significant ways we can make environmentally conscious choices with our money:

1. Shop consciously for your home. Purchase domestic, regional or local goods to reduce your carbon footprint. Buy certified organic foods and goods marked as fair trade and ethically sourced.
2. Leverage technology using smartphone apps, such as Buycott and Good-On-You, that allow you to select causes you support.
3. Recycle, repair, reduce, reuse. Living in congruence with Science of Mind principles and sustainable practices means recycling or limiting use of plastics, buying products second hand, repairing what can be repaired and donating items that are still usable.
4. Invest using socially responsible strategies. Lahiff and Taylor write, “Not only is SRI investing the proactive thing to do, it is increasingly becoming the lucrative path as well. As investors actively choose to pull our dollars from companies that are out of alignment with our spiritual beliefs and move those funds to more humanitarian and environmentally aware businesses, we create another step forward toward a world that works for everyone.”

Choose Value-Based Investments

According to Kiplinger, values-based investors should understand the differences among three types of investments.

1. Socially responsible investing (SRI) screens possible investments to exclude businesses that conflict with the investor's values. Kiplinger reports SRI is the simplest and sometimes least expensive approach values-based investing.
2. Environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) investing focuses on companies actively working to either limit their negative societal impact or deliver benefits to society (or both).
3. Impact investing connects an investor’s values with the use of capital. Kiplinger says, “These funds not only report on financial performance, but they also try to generate and quantify a positive societal impact — for instance, number of schools built, measures of economic activity in a low-income community, or reduction of carbon footprint by X units.”

Learn more about values-based investing at www.kiplinger.com/investing/601240/sri-vs-esg-vs-impact-investing.