The Five Principles: A Guide to Practical Spirituality

by Ellen Debenport

The Five Principles was written to provide tools for daily living and suggests answers to the great questions of existence that humans have been asking since the dawn of conscious awareness. Questions such as What is this greater Presence that we sense around us? Who and what are we? Why do things happen in our lives the way they do? How can we communicate with this Presence? and What are we here to do? The five principles constitute the core teachings of the Unity spiritual movement founded in 1889 by Charles and Myrtle Fillmore. These same principles reflect the laws of the universe that apply to everyone, all the time. They show up in every major religion, and are all reflected in the teachings of Jesus Christ. The author encourages every listener to "work with the principles, test them, apply them to your life, and watch what happens."

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Published November 24, 2025

About the author

I was 8 years old when I whined to my mother, “I’m bored!” Schoolteacher that she was, she sat me down at the kitchen table and told me to write a poem. I wrote a dozen before bedtime. I’ve been writing ever since.

When I went to college, I was told writers majored in English or journalism. I wasn’t entirely sure what journalism was, but Journalism 101 was the class that clicked. After working on the campus newspaper at Baylor University and earning a journalism degree, I wrote and wrote and wrote, on deadline, starting with the police beat in Beaumont, Texas, and ending with the morass in Washington, D.C. Along the way, I covered everything from weather to high school basketball to hog markets for United Press International and focused mostly on politics at the Tampa Bay Times, covering campaigns for president and governor.

No one was more surprised than I when “the call” came for ministry. I’d always heard that term — he was “called” to ministry — and never believed it until it happened to me. It is a call, a voice within, a pull toward a life I never imagined from the press plane. Even after I began to hunger for spiritual connection in my 40s, I never expected it to yield a new career. But my spiritual path literally became my full-time job.

I was ordained in the Unity church in 1999, served as associate and senior minister at Unity of Dallas and now have a small church full of smart, delightfully wacky people in Wimberley, Texas, in the Hill Country outside Austin. They support me in writing and speaking about the power of the human spirit.

My work is intended to awaken people to their innate possibilities, inner resources and divine abilities, lighting their way through life’s difficulties and joys.