he himself,
as included in the general creation, is dependent. This certainly cannot be
called limitation, and we are all free to follow the lines of our own
individuality in every other direction; so that, although the recognition
of our relation to the Originating Spirit safeguards us from injuring
ourselves or others, it in no way restricts our liberty of action or
narrows our field of development. Am I, then, trying to base my action upon
a fundamental desire for the opening out of Truth, for the increasing of
Livingness, and for the creating of Beauty? Have I got this as an ever
present Law of Tendency at the back of my thought? If so, then this law
will occupy precisely the same place in My Microcosm, or personal world,
that it does in the Macrocosm, or great world, as a power which is in
itself formless, but which by reason of its presence necessarily impresses
its character upon all that the creative energy forms. On this basis the
creative energy of the Universal Mind may be safely trusted to work through
the specializing influence of our own thought[1] and we may adopt the maxim
"trust your desires" because we know that they are the movement of the
Universal in ourselves, and that being based upon our fundamental
recognition of the Life, Love, and Beauty which the Spirit is, their
unfoldments must carry these initial qualities with them all down the line,
and thus, in however small a degree, becomes a portion of the working of
the Spirit in its inherent creativeness.

This perpetual Creativeness of the Spirit is what we must never lose sight
of, and that is why I want the student to grasp clearly the idea of the
Spirit's Self-contemplation as the only possible root of the Creative
Process. Not only at the first creation of the world, but at all times the
plane of the innermost is that of Pure Spirit,[2] and therefore at this,
the originating point, there is nothing else for Spirit to contemplate
excepting itself; then this Self-contemplation produces corresponding
manifestation, and since Self-contemplation or recognition of its own
existence must necessarily go on continually, the corresponding
creativeness must always be at work. If this fundamental idea be clearly
grasped we shall see that incessant and progressive creativeness is the
very essence and being of Spirit. This is what is meant by the
Affirmativeness of the Spirit. It cannot _per se_ act negatively, that is
to say uncreatively, for by the very na