Affirmative prayer and spiritual mind treatment

Domain XIV · Western esoteric, divinatory & new spiritual movements · Ernest Holmes, Charles Fillmore · 1926 · Los Angeles, USA

What it is

Affirmative prayer is the prayer form of the New Thought movement (see 085 New Thought; XIII 281 points here). Instead of petitioning a distant God, the person states as already true a good they wish to experience, on the premise that God or Spirit is a universal presence within each person. Unity…

Format

• The therapist's frame (for a client who uses the practice). No source sets session counts for psychotherapy with such clients; the phases below are:

Who practises it, and how they are trained or regulated

• The practice's own structure (as published). A single treatment is one short spoken or silent prayer moving through five steps; there is no course length. Reference works list the steps as Recognition ("God is all there is"), Unification ("I am one with God"), Realization (speaking the desired good), Thanksgiving (grateful acceptance) and Release (letting go). Some secondary accounts call the third step Declaration.…
• Who teaches and offers it. Centers for Spiritual Living (formed when the two main Religious Science branches merged in 2011 or 2012) and Global Religious Science Ministries train licensed practitioners and ministers who give individual treatments. Congregational pages describe practitioner certification as a multi-year course with written and oral examination and yearly licence renewal, with practitioners seeing…

Evidence status, as the guide reports it

• Working with the practice as resource and as problem. Goal: support the parts the client finds helpful (calm, gratitude, hope, community) and work on harms (self-blame, suppression of feelings, delayed care, cost) with ordinary evidence-based methods. Continue as long as the presenting problem…

Questions to explore with your client

• What drew you to it, and what are you hoping it will change?
• Does it involve any substance, plant preparation, remedy or supplement? Has your doctor or prescriber been told, especially about any medication you take?
• Does it involve intense or unusual breathing? Have you been told about the medical conditions for which that is not advised?
• Is it a group, retreat or community? How do they respond if someone wants to leave or raises a concern?
• How do you and the practitioner understand what is happening, in spiritual or cultural terms? Is that a source of comfort, worry, or both?
• Who runs it, and what training or registration do they hold?
• What actually happens in a session or meeting, and how often?
• What does it cost, and is there pressure to commit to more?
• How do you feel afterwards, in the hours and days that follow?
• Does it fit with, or clash with, the work we do here?

What practitioners of it watch for

• shame about money; defensiveness of a teacher. Working: chosen, affordable involvement.
• concealment, family split. Working: the child's care is in place and family conflict reduces.
• the client feeling handed off; conflicting messages. Working: consistent support across systems.
• spikes of anxiety after naming feelings (go slower); relief and tears (often a sign it is working).
• confirmation bias in either direction. Working: a diagnosis, or none, that the client feels respects their faith.

When to involve someone else

• New or worsening physical symptoms, or advice to stop or change prescribed medication: involve the client's doctor or prescriber.
• Signs of coercion, isolation from family and friends, escalating costs or secrecy: discuss openly and consider safeguarding.
• A crisis or thoughts of suicide: follow your crisis protocol. In the US, call or text 988; in the UK and Ireland, Samaritans on 116 123.

Drawn automatically from the guide's own sections. Stay curious: neither endorse nor dismiss what the client values, and check anything that matters against the full guide and its sources. Not medical advice.