Embodiment · “Being Precedes Having”
Holding Love and Harmony
Deliberately generate and hold a felt state of love and goodwill so that hate, resentment, and discord are crowded out — keeping the inner life harmonious as the ground of well-being.
Make love your governing attitude — Patterson: “Love is the greatest of all, because it includes all.” Actively generate felt warmth and goodwill toward self, others, and circumstances, and let it displace ill-will: “when the feeling of love enters the life, the false feeling of hate must go out.” Extend it to the people who provoke friction and keep the inner life harmonious, carried as a steady tone through the day. Not a cure; keep your medical care and your boundaries.
What it is
Patterson treats love not as sentiment but as the governing attitude of a harmonious inner life, and harmony as the condition in which health is natural. He ranks it first among the forces of mind: “Love is the greatest of all, because it includes all.
‘Love is the fulfilling of the law.’” And he describes its working as displacement, not struggle — “When the feeling of love enters the life, the false feeling of hate must go out.” The practice, then, is to deliberately generate and hold the felt state of love and goodwill so that resentment, ill-will, and discord are crowded out, keeping the inner life harmonious — which for Patterson is the standing ground of well-being.
The Method
Faithful to Patterson (The Will to Be Well, esp. “Law of Attraction,” “What the New Thought Stands For”):
- Recognise love as the inclusive force. Begin from Patterson’s ranking — “Love is the greatest of all, because it includes all” — and intend to make it your governing attitude, not a passing feeling.
- Generate the felt state. Actively call up warmth and goodwill — toward yourself, toward others, toward your circumstances — until it is felt, not merely intended.
- Let it displace the contrary. Trust Patterson’s mechanism of displacement: “When the feeling of love enters the life, the false feeling of hate must go out.” You do not fight resentment directly; you fill the place with love so hate has nowhere to sit.
- Extend it outward. Hold goodwill toward the people and situations that usually provoke friction, dissolving the felt discord between you and them.
- Keep the inner life harmonious. Treat sustained harmony — not occasional warmth — as the aim, since for Patterson the inner state pictures itself outwardly and in the body.
- Carry it as a continuing attitude. Return to generating love whenever ill-will or discord reasserts itself, making goodwill the habitual tone of the day. (Sourcing note: quoted phrases are Patterson’s own words; the numbered structure is an attributed reconstruction of his teaching.)
Source & Lineage
Charles Brodie Patterson (1854-1917) made love and harmony central to his “law of attraction” and his health teaching, in line with the New Thought conviction that the inner state shapes outer condition. Contrast (don’t duplicate):
- Fersen’s law of love / radiating goodwill frames love as raising a universal vibration radiated outward; Patterson’s frame is displacement — love entering crowds hate out — and harmony as the ground of health.
- Lovingkindness / metta uses set phrases and a graduated sequence of recipients; Patterson’s is a plainer, attitude-level generation of goodwill without a fixed phrase-script.
- Trine’s outflowing love and service emphasises love expressed in action/service; Patterson emphasises the held inner state of love and harmony as such.
Common refinements
Forcing love / spiritual bypassing. Manufactured warmth that suppresses real anger or grief backfires; the move is to generate goodwill genuinely, not to paper over feeling. Legitimate anger that signals a boundary should be heard, not erased.
- Using “harmony” to stay in harm. Goodwill is not a reason to remain in an abusive or unsafe situation. Keep your boundaries.
- Treating it as a cure. A loving, harmonious state is good for stress and relationships; it is not a treatment for disease.
- Refinement: pair with the silence to generate the state from calm, and the right-thinking practice for the resentments that resist.