Positive Prayer: Focus on Truth, Not Facts

This article is one of the Unity Classics written by legendary leaders of Unity. Some date back decades, even a century. That’s why the language may seem a bit formal, and the writers sometimes used masculine nouns and pronouns that were considered proper for their era.

Drawing good to ourselves through denials and affirmations

To practice positive prayer, we must focus our attention upon Truth rather than facts.

To practitioners of positive prayer, the word Truth refers to the invisible, eternal realm of God-Mind and the spiritual principles that govern creation. The basic Truth may be stated this way: There is only one Presence and one Power active in the universe, God the good.

If we accept this Truth, we cannot accept belief in any invisible, eternal, spiritual presence, power, activity, or principle opposed to God, for there can be no idea in God-Mind to account for it.

The word fact refers to circumstances, conditions, and things that appear in the visible, temporal, material world; sometimes we call this relative truth.

Facts are experienced through the senses in some way. They are the way the material world seems to be, and they are subject to change and interpretation. That is the state of even scientific facts, for they, too, deal with the material world.

Truth, then, is enduring. It is of God, and God is enduring; so Truth is ultimately real.

Facts are changeable; they only seem real. Truth is powerful because it is of God.

Facts have only the power that we ascribe to them at any moment, for we make the facts with our own perception and thought about the material world. Facts are appearances.

The more attention we pay to something, the more important and influential it becomes in our lives. That is why positive prayer focuses attention upon Truth or only those facts that are accurate reflections of Truth.

But an affirmation focuses attention upon Truth that God provides whatever we need, and frequent repetition increases belief in the power of God to lead us to the good we seek or to draw that good to us.

Denial and Affirmation

Much praying is stimulated by negative facts (those that do not accurately reflect Truth) or appearances that we mistakenly believe have power to take or keep some good from us.

When faced with negative appearances, practitioners of positive prayer withdraw attention from appearances by making denials. They speak, silently or aloud, words that declare the unreality and powerlessness of the appearances. Then they focus attention upon Truth by immediately making affirmations. They do this by speaking, silently or aloud, words that declare the presence of God and good.

For instance, suppose a man who practices positive prayer loses his job. At first, like most anyone, he might react with fear, anger, and worry, but quickly he will be likely to remember a more constructive way to deal with the apparently adverse situation. It is to deny power to the situation with words such as these: “The lack of a job is powerless to take or keep my good from me.”

Then he would affirm the presence of good with words such as these: There is a perfect job at perfect pay where I can serve in a perfect way awaiting me right now. Thank you, God.

Any thoughts of fear or worry over finding a job can then become reminders to repeat the affirmation, and soon he will be focusing his attention upon the solution rather than the problem.

The solution is the perfect job at perfect pay where he can serve in a perfect way, so when he looks at ads for employment or hears about open jobs, he will be alert to a perfect job.

Notice that a denial is used once, but an affirmation is repeated many times.

Because a denial acknowledges the existence of a negative appearance, frequent repetition of a denial focuses attention upon the negative appearance and increases rather than decreases belief in its power.

Drawing Good to Us

Notice, too, that a denial does not declare that the negative appearance does not exist; it declares that the negative appearance is powerless over us. Thus denial, as used in positive prayer, differs markedly from the meaning of denial in common usage, especially as it is used by those in recovery from addictions.

It is, by the way, important to formulate denials as positively as possible because, as psychologists have discovered, the subconscious mind tends to respond best to key words or long words in sentences. Why this is so, we do not know; but we do know that teachers have discovered that pupils frequently overlook words like no and not when they read and often do not seem to hear them when they are spoken.