Affirmation · “The Subconscious Says Yes”
Affirmative Prayer / Scientific Prayer Treatment
Pray about a specific need not by pleading but by moving through a set sequence — recognise God as the only Presence and Good, unify with it, release (deny) the negative appearance, affirm the desired truth, give thanks, and let it go.
Colemon’s treatment in brief: Recognise that God/Good is the only Presence and Power. Claim your oneness with it. Release (deny) the negative appearance and the fear — as she refused the diagnosis. Affirm the desired good as already true, and feel it. Give thanks as though received. Let it go. Then do the practical work the situation needs.
What it is
Johnnie Colemon, the Unity-trained founder of the Universal Foundation for Better Living (UFBL), taught prayer as affirmative or “scientific” prayer treatment: a structured act of changing one’s own consciousness rather than begging an external God to intervene.
Where petitionary prayer asks for an absent good, treatment declares the good as already true in Spirit and then releases it. Colemon’s conviction came from her own reported healing: told in the early 1950s she had six months to live, she “refused to accept this diagnosis as the truth,” studied Unity’s principles of spiritual healing, and credited her recovery to releasing fear and affirming God’s healing power — the experience she later set out in Open Your Mind and Be Healed.
Treatment is that same move applied to any need: health, supply, a relationship, a decision.
The Method
Colemon taught the Unity / UFBL prayer-treatment sequence — recognition, unification, denial, affirmation, thanksgiving, release — applied to a definite need (faithful paraphrase; short attributed phrases only):
- Recognition — God / Good is the only Presence and Power. Begin by turning the mind to the spiritual fact: there is one Presence, one Power, all good. Colemon’s keynote: “God’s desire for everyone is absolute good.”
- Unification — claim your oneness with it. Affirm that you are God’s creation with “a birthright of health,” joined to the one Presence, not separate from the good you seek.
- Denial — release the negative appearance. Refuse to give the appearance the last word, exactly as she refused the diagnosis. This is a release of fear and of the belief in lack or sickness, not a denial that the situation exists.
- Affirmation — declare the desired truth. State the good as already so, in the present tense, and feel it: health, harmony, supply as a present spiritual reality. The affirmation is held with conviction, not anxious repetition.
- Thanksgiving — give thanks as if received. Close in gratitude, accepting the good as already given.
- Release — let it go. Turn the prayer loose; stop watching for results; trust the word and come back to ordinary life. (Sourcing note: the six-step shape is the standard Unity/UFBL affirmative-prayer treatment Colemon taught and ministered; bracketed phrases are attributed to her teaching and Open Your Mind and Be Healed, not full reproduction.)
Source & Lineage
Johnnie Colemon (1920-2014) served in the Unity movement for eighteen years before founding UFBL in 1974; her prayer method is Unity’s affirmative/scientific prayer carried into a Black New Thought ministry.
Her healing methodology is documented in Open Your Mind and Be Healed (DeVorss) — which presents her account of the stages of faith healing — and in It Works If You Work It (UFBL Press).
The Traditions' versions
“Recognise the Good, deny the appearance, affirm the truth, give thanks, release” is shared across New Thought; the files differ in framing and origin: - Spiritual Mind Treatment (Ernest Holmes) — the canonical five-step Recognition / Unification / Declaration / Thanksgiving / Release of Religious Science.
- Affirmative Prayer (Myrtle Fillmore) — the Unity prayer in the Silence that is Colemon’s direct lineage: enter the silence, release fear, affirm the good as already true, give thanks.
- Scientific Prayer / Treatment (Emmet Fox) — less formulaic; simply “knowing the Truth” about a condition until fear lifts.
- Denials & affirmations (Cady / Fillmore) — the deny-then-affirm core Colemon also taught as a paired practice.,
Common refinements
Pleading instead of declaring. Treatment is affirmative; if it slips into begging, return to the recognition that the good already is.
- Using “denial” to pretend the problem isn’t there. Denial here releases fear and the belief in lack, not the bill, the symptom, or the appointment. Treat and act.
- Anxious repetition. Affirm with quiet conviction, then release. Watching for results re-installs the worry.
- Skipping thanksgiving and release. The close — gratitude and letting go — is what turns the prayer loose; without it the mind keeps gripping.
- Reading persistence as failed faith. Outcomes are not a scoreboard of belief; hold the practice gently.