Let’s See…Am I Gonna Act Like A Label?!
By Rev. Doris Hoffman In Uncategorized
I stumbled over a couple of images recently on the same topic—one was “Labels are for cans, not people;” the other was of a fellow growling “I am not a label.” Yeah, ok, I get it; I really do. You don’t want me to say, “uh huh, she’s depressed or he’s gay” because those are labels vs. conversational identifiers. Well, isn’t it ironic that I discovered that one of Dr. Holmes’s favorite games with Dr. Hornaday was one called “Labels!”
It seems that Dr. Holmes loved to play this game. When he and his colleague went for a walk or sat on the steps of the Institute in Los Angeles, they would, as usual, observe the people around them. Suddenly, Dr. Holmes would say to Dr. Hornaday, “What’s her label?” The response could be anything from “Offended” to “I Can Sell Anything” to “Invisible.”
In Dr. Holmes’s mind, all of us tend to reflect to the world the very life we have created by our own thinking. In other words, what attitudes of mind are we expressing so clearly that we might as well hang a sign around our neck. [The Inner Light, p 109] That surely sent my mind leaping every which way, such that my self-label for a moment became “Ungrounded Spinning Top.”
Hornaday was perplexed by Holmes’s game and eventually asked, “Even after studying the labels you believe that man himself offers positive proof that God is?” [Ibid.] Holmes’s response was as I expected…”But, of course.”
In Hornaday’s attempted re-creation of their conversation, Holmes makes the point that the life-principle is much greater than what it creates. In reflection, we understand that the life-principle is one of harmony, creation, love, abundance, etc. and it cannot be lessened by how I choose to use that life-principle to create for myself—even if I choose to live an attitude of “I Lack Everything.”
The immensity of the life-principle is embedded in the very energy of God. We also know it when we remember that God is all that I Am but I am not all that God Is.
Working from the premise that we have access to Life’s creative process and that we have the qualities of will and choice, then we can self-express however we choose. It presumes that I don’t need anyone to hang a label on me because I have done it to myself!! Amazing, isn’t it?? I can adopt ‘Bully’ or ‘Pollyanna’ as an attitude of mind with equal ease. What becomes even more exciting is the idea that due to the possibilities of freedom to re-create, I can alter my attitude and live a new, more joyful self-expression.
Yep, time to re-cycle the old label. Today, I am going to embrace ‘Authentic’. What about you?