What is a birthright? The dictionary tells us it is “a particular right of possession or privilege one has from birth.” I’m not sure I knew this when I was a child. No one told me I had a birthright? I just grew up with my parents’ beliefs and teachings and then became an adult with a mixture of their thoughts, my thoughts, those of my friends and of course what the media told me. I don’t remember anyone ever telling me I had a birthright until I found the Science of Mind.

Ernest Holmes wrote this, “The Divine Plan is one of Freedom; bondage is not God-ordained. Freedom is the birthright of every living soul.” If this is true than why does it seem that so many of us are not free. Think of people in other countries that do not practice human freedom. Think of what happened to the African Americans and those who have suffered mass genocide. Does this statement of Ernest Holmes still hold true in these circumstances?

The answer is yes because the kind of freedom Dr. Holmes is talking about has nothing to do with the above stated circumstances. Those circumstances are conditions and effects. They are the effects of how some of us have misused our freedom. The birthright called freedom is the right to choose how we will think. This encompasses a wide range of different uses of this freedom. As we can see it is not all positive. There is a caveat to the whole thing. The Law of Liberty is not one of license. We will pay the price through the Law of Cause and Effect. We can never break this Law, but only break ourselves upon it.

However, today, on my birthday, I do not want to focus on the way people have used their birthright incorrectly or without concern for others’ freedoms. I do not want to argue with this powerful statement that Ernest Holmes made. Instead, I want to see how I can use it in my own life.

If freedom is my birthright than I am on the highroad to self-actualization. I always have the freedom to decide how I will live my life. I get to decide how much of my God self I want to live or not live. What does this mean? As God’s expression, I have inherited certain traits. The writer, lecturer and mystic, Thomas Troward called them the “Attributes of God.” They are: beauty, joy, light, love, life, peace, and power. I add wisdom to these. These attributes or powers are my birthright. I was born perfect and whole.

This week in our Radical Spirituality class we discussed the idea of wholeness. Wholeness is a state of being that is ours no matter what is out-picturing in our health or affairs. Wholeness as our identity is our birthright and if it weren’t so, we could never heal. A birthright must be claimed and wholeness must be claimed to be experienced in our lives.

I’m about to turn 70 in a few days and many are saying to me, “70! You look great!” I’m not sure what I’m supposed to look like. I’ve never thought of looking any different than the way I look. I do my best to take care of my body, but I also do something else. I do not get caught up in ageism. Instead, I know that I am not an age; I am a person who is living vibrantly and I am alive. 

I’ve been studying about epigenetics and quantum science and even neuroscience. I am not yet an expert, but I’m going to keep on the study train. For me, the whole science reaffirms what I know about my birthright of wholeness. We are all, for the most part, starting with a set of genes and DNA that is set up by our biological heritage. We have tendencies, but nothing is set in stone. We are in charge of our destiny. Our genes do not turn themselves on and off. They are affected instead by the environment in which they live. They are governed by that environment. What environment are we creating for ourselves. Here is our salvation. There is food. There is the way we take care of our body, but there is also and most importantly our thoughts. Dr. Joe Dispenza writes, “And if we have negative thoughts, we make chemicals that make us feel exactly the way we are thinking.” Could our thoughts make us sick? The answer is yes. This is not to make us feel bad about ourselves. It is to make us realize that we are free to choose different thoughts. Dr. Joe continues his premise by saying. “If our thoughts can make us sick, our thought can make us well.”  He knows this because he healed himself of a spinal cord injury and has helped many people heal from very distressful illnesses.

I know this is true because I have been both sick and made well. I have experienced healings by changing my perception. We cannot get around the fact that our birthright is one of freedom – freedom to think how we want to think and see the results of those thoughts in the conditional world.

This is simple Science of Mind. “Be ever new by the renewing of your mind.” We can rewire our brain and thus create a new software called our life. How? By doing our work in the invisible, the quantum field. Let’s say we are working on being more abundant. We look at our world of conditions and we see our empty bank account. Do we go out and spend money that we do not have to make us feel more abundant. Do we deny we are abundant because of our present condition? No, we see what is and then, we go back to the quantum field, to our meditations, and work on creating a feeling of our abundance that is so real to us that it has to manifest. How much time do you spend in the quantum field (the invisible)?

If we really take a deep look at what we want in life, it isn’t about the things. It is about the feelings the things bring us. We are wanting peace, the feeling of freedom, the feeling of wholeness and connection to Spirit. Healing is the ability to feel these feelings before there is proof for us. This is as easy or as hard as we want to make it, but the rewards are guaranteed. We do not heal by seeking healing, we heal by finding the Love and Power within ourselves that guarantees our healing. We heal because we cared so deeply for ourselves and felt our connection to Spirit, we literally became someone else – the person who is open to receive the things they say they so want and believed they already had them.

So, whatever area of your life you find yourself working on, seek ye first the spiritual nature of yourself. Ernest Holmes writes this to help us not to get discouraged. ““Man cannot forever keep himself from his birthright; all will eventually be saved from themselves — as there can be no such thing as eternal damnation. To believe in such an absurd doctrine is worse than ignorance. Emerson tells us that there is no sin but ignorance. God knows only perfection; when we know as God knows, our troubles will be rolled up like a scroll and numbered with past illusions.”

We are on the right track. We are evolving. All healing and joy in life relies on us claiming our birthright as divine beings.

Love and Aloha,

Rev. Rita Andriello-Feren, Co-Founding Director CSL Kaua`i and the Institute of Magnificence and Author of “What Do I Need to KNOW? 101 Thoughts That Changed My Life” and “This Thing Called Treatment,” both available on Amazon.

Check out my birthday fundraiser for CSL Kaua’i, my life’s work: https://www.facebook.com/donate/718114739784428/