Heroes of Healing
A group writing project

by Lyman Reed of Creating a Better Life

Unfortunately, there isn’t a huge amount of information available online about Charles F. Haanel’s life. Much like the previous hero of healing that I wrote about, Ernest Holmes, his work is much more well known than he is.

We do know that he was a successful business man, a pioneer of the New Thought Movement, and the author of a number of books. His best known work related to the mind and success, The Master Key System, was originally published as a 24 part correspondence course.

One of the interesting things about Haanel is that he is often referred to by those who study his work as the father of the Law of Attraction. While many New Thought writers alluded to it, he seems to be the first to have explicitly used that phrase to describe the phenomenon that has recently become known as “The Secret.”

It’s also interesting to note that Napoleon Hill, best known for Think and Grow Rich and a much better known author, credited the principles laid down in the Master Key System with his own success. Hill is also most likely to have come up with the concept of the Mastermind directly from Haanel’s work.

Resources

• Charles F. Haanel on Wikipedia
• The Master Key System As It Was Intended on Free Personal Development Material – my own spin on Haanel’s best known work
• Focus 40 Now Training System and Master Key System Mastermind – a great group of people who study and live the principles found in Haanel’s work (among others) – scroll down to the bottom of this page and click on “Give Me A Free Membership”

What I, Lyman Reed Learned (and Continue to Learn) from Charles F. Haanel

I’ve just recently “restarted” my study of The Master Key System, and two points from the book have really been sinking in for me:

1. From Lesson One:
   “16. Life is an unfoldment, not an accretion. What comes to us in the world without is what we already possess in the world within.”
   An “accretion” is a process of adding on, and in the past, this was my main method of working on personal growth – buy this book, download this seminar, watch this video… adding and adding and adding. Haanel says that this is not the way to go. We need to work from the inside. While personal development material is a great tool, that’s all it is – a tool. If we don’t use it for the purpose of growing and expressing what’s already inside, we’re just spinning our wheels.
2. From Lesson Seven:
   “19. Is it not wonderful that man has such tremendous power within himself, such transcendental faculties concerning which he had no conception? Is it not strange that we have always been taught to look for strength and power “without”? We have been taught to look everywhere but “within,” and whenever this power manifested in our lives we were told that it was something supernatural.”
   I’ve got to thank Matt Geib, a member of the above mentioned Mastermind group, for pointing that one out to me. It’s closely related to the first point, but goes even further. It teaches that it’s not something outside of me that does things for me – it’s a power within me that does them through me. Call that power whatever you want – it’s a part of both me and you right now.

Those two points barely scratch the surface of what I’ve learned by studying Charles F. Haanel’s Master Key System, but hopefully they’ve given you a jumping off point if you are interested in learning more about both the man and his work.

A Bit of Backstory

It’s interesting how things came together to inspire me to write this post.

It started a couple of weeks ago. Steve from MyWifeQuitHerJob.com was kind enough to take a look at one of my current projects: the email correspondence course based on Charles F. Haanel’s The Master Key System that I mentioned earlier.

But he had a question, one that I realized many people who come across the course announcement probably have:

Just what the heck is “The Master Key System”, and who is this Charles Haanel guy, anyway?

I sent him the Wikipedia page on Haanel, but realized that my own interpretation of his life and work would be a good thing to share as well.

So thank you, Steve, for being the catalyst for this post.

I also want to thank Jenny Manion for considering it for her already closed Heroes of Healing Group Writing Project. I really appreciate that, Jenny.

And of course, thank *you* – yes, you, reading this. Without you I’d be blogging in a vaccum… and I’m not sure just how much fun that would be. If you’d like, please share any information or opinions that you have about Charles Haanel or his work in the comments. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

by Lyman Reed of Creating a Better Life

The teachings of Dr. Ernest Shurtleff Holmes (1887-1960) can be summed up by the following quote:

“There is a power greater than you in the universe, and you can use it.”

He was a leader in the New Thought movement, codified the “Science of Mind” philosophy, and founded The Church of Religious Science.

Dr. Holmes referred to his “Science of Mind” philosophy as being “open at the top” – in other words, it wasn’t a hard coded, unchanging doctrine, but a living thing that could be added to as new information came to light, or taken away from if evidence was presented that contradicted it.

There were three major influences on Dr. Holmes:

1. Christian Science – When Holmes lived in Boston, he studied public speaking, and his teacher was a reader at the Christian Science Mother Church. He attended one Sunday in order to see his instructor in action, and ended up being fascinated by Mary Baker Eddy’s philosophy.
2. Ralph Waldo Emerson – Holmes said that “Reading Emerson is like drinking water to me.” I remember reading somewhere that The Over-Soul was one of his favorites.
3. Thomas Troward – Troward’s Doré Lectures and Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science brought the above ideas together in Holmes mind, and helped him to finally put together The Science of Mind.

Holmes was a true independent thinker. He called his philosophy a science because he believed it could be proved experientially, and was more interested in results than in the philosophy itself. Another interesting fact is that he never planned on starting a church – he originally wanted to set them up as teaching centers, but was influenced otherwise. It seems that currently, many Religious Science churches have gone the way of calling themselves “centers.”

[ Disclaimer for those who need it: the above is *not* intended to be a scholarly examination of Holmes' life, just a few interesting facts that I've picked up from the internet, books, sermons, and lectures. Just picture a big old Wikipedia style *citation needed* after every statement ]

Video

I couldn’t find any publicly available video (or even audio) of Dr. Holmes. There are quite a few Religious Science churches who make their sermons and teachings available, but none of Ernest Holmes himself. If you have a link to freely available audio or video, please feel free to let us know about it in the comments section.

Resources

• The International Centers for Spiritual Living and The United Centers for Spiritual Living are the two organizations which grew out of Ernest Holmes’ original Church of Religious Science.
• The Science of Mind by Ernest Holmes
• Creative Mind by Ernest Holmes

What I (Lyman Reed) learned From Ernest Holmes

Like the quote way up there says – I learned that there truly is a power greater than me in the universe, and that I can use it.

Holmes’ core concepts were a very radical departure from my previous beliefs (I used to be a fundamentalist Christian), and one of the reasons that his work was so fascinating to me is it’s openness and practicality. If it works, use it. If not, toss it.

I also remember finding out that he considered himself more of a collector and synthesizer of information than a creator. He understood that there really is nothing new under the sun, and that all we do is put concepts that already exist together in new ways. The truth is already out there – we just need to discover (and use) it!

When I was early in my sobriety, attending The DuPage Church of Religious Science (now the DuPage Center for Spiritual Living) was vital to my survival. I regularly saw one of their practitioners who charged me next to nothing (and often nothing). It’s not an exaggeration to say that Rev. Kathy Mertes was one of the major players in saving my life.

I no longer attend a Religious Science church on a regular basis, but the teachings still guide my life. It really was an honor for me to be able to do a little writing about Ernest Holmes for the Heroes of Healing Project, and I hope that if his work sounds interesting you’ll take some time and explore his ideas further.