The Statement of Being

From Lesson I of Scientific Christian Mental Practice (faithful paraphrase; short quotes attributed):

1. Set a fixed daily time. Hopkins is explicit: “Have some special time to make the Statement of Being.” It is a standing appointment, not a when-you-remember practice.
2. Sit and write — every day. Her core instruction: “Sit down at a certain time every day and write down on paper what your idea of Good is. Write the highest ideas of Good you have.” The writing is not optional decoration; it is the practice.
3. Name the Good as your God, and as yourself. Begin from her template declaration: > “The Good I am seeking is my God. My God is my Life. The Good I am seeking is my health; God is my health.” Then continue naming Good under each of its aspects — strength, support, defense, supply, intelligence, love, substance — declaring each one: the Good I am seeking is my strength; God is my strength, and so on.
4. Write your “highest ideas,” not modest ones. She tells the student to reach for the highest conception of Good they can form, not a cautious or shrunken one. The point is to lift the mind’s standard of what is possible and true.
5. Combine thinking, speaking, and writing. Hopkins taught three ways of working a truth: “the deep thinking which the mind exercises respecting them; the speaking them forth.; and the careful recording of them, which is writing down what we know of them.” The Statement of Being uses all three — contemplate the Good, speak it aloud, then write it.
6. Return to it daily until it is settled. The Statement is the first lesson because it is the soil the rest grows in. It is repeated day after day until the conviction “there is one all-sufficient Good and it is mine” becomes the resting state of the mind, beneath the denials (Lesson II) and affirmations (Lesson III). (Sourcing note: the “certain time every day,” “write down on paper what your idea of Good is,” “pins you down to the truth,” and the Statement-of-Being declaration are Hopkins’s documented Lesson-I instructions. Wording outside quotation marks is faithful paraphrase.)

Emma Curtis Hopkins (1849–1925) studied briefly with Mary Baker Eddy (Christian Science) and then broke away to found her own Chicago seminary, teaching and ordaining hundreds — many of whom founded the major New Thought churches.

Scientific Christian Mental Practice (1888) collects her twelve lessons; the Statement of Being is Lesson I. The practice flows directly into Unity’s “denials and affirmations” (Fillmores) and into modern New Thought affirmative-prayer and journaling.

Her daily-writing instruction prefigures Florence Scovel Shinn’s written affirmations and modern gratitude/scripting journals.

Affirmations (New Thought) — the spoken descendant of the written Statement.

• Gratitude / good-finding journaling — daily written naming of what is good; structurally the same act.
• Scripting (Law of Attraction) — writing the desired reality as present fact.
• Examen (Ignatian) — a fixed daily appointment to review and name where the good/God was present.
• Expressive & self-affirmation writing (psychology) — the secular, evidence-backed cousin of writing out one’s deepest values.

Skipping the writing. Hopkins made the written record central. Doing it only in your head loses the commitment, focus, and “pinning down” she prized.

• No fixed time. She prescribed “a certain time every day.” A standing appointment is what turns it into conditioning.
• Writing small. She asked for your highest idea of Good. Cautious, hedged statements defeat the purpose.
• Treating it as a wish-list of objects. It is a statement of Good/God under its many names (life, health, strength, supply), not a shopping list — keep it at the level of qualities and sufficiency.
• Using it to deny real trouble. Naming Good is meant to lift the mind, not to pretend a genuine problem (illness, debt) isn’t there and doesn’t need action.