Your present level of thinking is your discontentment.

What you are, so is your world. Every soul is a complex combination of gathered experiences and thoughts, and the body is but an improvised vehicle for its manifestation. ~ James Allen

ASAP

February Thoughts: James Allen

Unrest and pain and sorrow are the shadows of life.

Men remain in evil because they are not willing or prepared to learn the lesson which it came to teach them.

You must get outside yourself, and must begin to examine and understand yourself.

Every soul attracts its own, and nothing can possibly come to it that does not belong to it.

What you are, so is your world.

Every soul is a complex combination of gathered experiences and thoughts, and the body is but an improvised vehicle for its manifestation.

To them that seek the highest Good

All things subserve the wisest ends.

All glory and all good await

The coming of Obedient feet.

"The History of New Thought" By Dr. EMMET FOX

The purely spiritual message of Jesus Christ began to be clouded over as the years passed and those who had known him personally disappeared. Early in the 4th century Christianity was made an established and subsidized church by Constantine, and after that the Spiritual Idea rapidly faded out. As the centuries passed, the Spiritual Idea would emerge from time to time here or there among small groups of people (of which the 17th century Quakers are probably the most notable) but it was not until modern New Thought appeared a hundred years ago in New England that the Spiritual Idea became fairly wide-spread in the world. This is really the Second Coming of the Christ prophesied by Jesus himself.

Like all significant movements it came into the race mind through several different channels at about the same time. No one person can be said to have "originated" it. Emerson may be regarded as the prophet of the movement. Phineas Parkhurst Quimby did practical healing in Portland, Maine, and taught several students who afterwards went out and spread the teaching in different ways. The New England Transcendentalist Movement was really part of the same current of thought, and included in addition to Emerson himself, Bronson Alcott, Margaret Fuller, Thoreau, Theodore Parker and others.

Amos Bronson Alcott - Margaret Fuller - Theodore Parker

Amos Bronson Alcott ( 1799 – 1888) was an American teacher, writer, philosopher, and reformer. As an educator, Alcott pioneered new ways of interacting with young students, focusing on a conversational style, and avoided traditional punishment. He hoped to perfect the human spirit and, to that end, advocated a vegan diet before the term was coined. He was also an abolitionist and an advocate for women's rights. Of his four daughters, the second Louisa May, fictionalized her experience with the family in her novel Little Women in 1868.

Mental health is this:

_A man must see that his life is pain and sorrow and fear, and at the same time he must have his first glimpse that it need not remain that way._

He bestowed "Love and Light" on all who met him.

I accept my resurrection as a daily experience of Practicing the Presence of God.
My Christ Consciousness is my resurrection. I am brought forth in His image and I let His Spirit have full expression through me according to His Will.
His Spirit is equal to every experience or test that may come to me; therefore, I consciously trust Him and rest from all struggle or fear, knowing that "He leadeth me beside the still waters; He restoreth my soul."
One-pointed in Divine Mind I live the truth and it demonstrates itself. His law is perfect within me. Obedience to that law is a "must" if I would rise to my spiritual kingdom and have dominion. This is my part of the resurrection.
--Irwin Edwin Gregg

One good healing in a Center brings more converts then a hundred sermons.

New Thought Centers have been most successful when the teachings has been kept strictly on the Christ lines, extraneous subjects being excluded, and where, in consequence, good healing work has been done. One good healing in a Center brings more converts then a hundred sermons. ~Emmet Fox

The real kingdom of heaven is the right state of mind.

Ideas from BIBLE INTERPRETATIONS
Emma Curtis Hopkins
1891

The Bible Interpretations were given during the early nineties at the Christian Science Theological Seminary at Chicago, Illinois. 

The reason for keeping the Bible records, is because they describe the religious experiences of every mind under each class of circumstance recorded. Every mind has its religious aspiration, which is its perfume, as every flower has its perfume. Political history teaches ethics, fixing the mind on the results of injustice, justice, oppression, liberty, as carried on by civil authorities. Material history teaches what can be done with materiality. The Bible records use no meaningless or unnecessary terms.

A Grain of Madness

Lida A[bbie] Churchill ( - 1922) was admired for her resourcefulness, independence and ability to inspire others to do their best and thus she became a role model for young women of her time. Born in England she moved to America while a child and started writing stories for publication by age 12. Her "My Girls," an account of a company of telegraph girls' experience when thrown upon their own resources and drew on her personal experience for the characters.

Her highest literary achievement was “A Grain of Madness”. The story involved telepathy and referred to occultism demonstrating her interest in mysticism.

Ideas are living things; you attract people who represent your thoughts.

It was mentioned in a recent magazine that for the last fifteen years, drunkenness, and crime had been terribly on the increase. The whole plan was then made plain, whereby the innocent holders of horrible stories are the shedders abroad of temptation.
For just about fifteen years the eloquent crusaders against vice have transfixed impressionable audiences with stories of wickedness, which they have unconsciously projected, as the beautiful words, ‘The Lord is your keeper,” flew on its mission.
What kind of stories do you fix into the minds of the people you meet? Ideas are living things. They are caged lions of prowess. They are projectiles from small bore-rifles or heavy caliber guns.

December 20th, 1891 BIBLE LESSON

These two affirmations not printed in the books have helped many. Try them:
1. “I am the friend of everybody and everything.”
2. “I forgive everybody and everything.”
You will find you are a reservoir of kindness that can warm the whole world. You can make everything lovely and blessed where you walk. You are bursting, overflowing with forgiving balms. You can pour oils over the troubled thoughts of the world. There is no limit to the conserved good within you that begins to demonstrate very soon after you start these two affirmations.

Remember that there is not a single situation in which you can be placed that has not one little turn for you to make with it to make you absolutely successful.

God will help you, If you think of Mother's Prayers.

Another one of Captain Jack's poems (See Previous post >> Wednesday, April 29, 2009 @ Joy),
Mother's Prayers,
made a strong plea for abstinence:

Oh, my brother, do not drink it,
Think of all your mother said;
While upon her death-bed laying,
Or perhaps she is not dead;
Don't you kill her, then, I pray you,
She has got enough of cares,
Sign the pledge, and God will help you,
If you think of mother's prayers.

John Wallace "Captain Jack" Crawford (1847-1917) , known as "The Poet Scout", was an American Civil War veteran, an American Old West scout, and a poet of western lore. He was a scout for General George Crook and General Phil Sheridan, friend of Wild Bill Hickok and co-actor, performer and scout with William F. Cody (Buffalo Bill). In 1875 Jack was appointed as a Captain of the Black Hills Rangers of Dakota.

Law of Life

Man has control of his physical forces just in proportion to his understanding of the Law of Life, and its manner of operation. His body becomes stronger and healthier as he obeys the law, and weaker and more diseased as he disobeys it.
The Law of Life operates through all things, whether for the purpose of building up bodily tissue, or for eliminating disease, or alleviating pain. When man has placed himself without the pale of this law, he finds it extremely difficult to get back to health again. Disease and pain are registered upon his physical organism, and he cannot use the executive part of himself — the Will — to set himself free.
Here is where your Teacher and Healer comes in. The purpose of the Teacher and Healer is to instruct the patient so he will know how to live in harmony with this Law of Life, which, if properly observed, will enable him to use this power for the up building of his body.

When you listen you experience clarity

"There is true power and there is false. While false power cleverly
resembles the true, fooling millions, it is entirely destructive.
It is like the difference between a real loaf of bread and a picture
of a loaf. Because men and women do not understand this, they try
to feed on false power, resulting in spiritual malnutrition.

False power originates in the false self,
from the unnatural and unenlightened nature of man.
It is power for harm.

True power has its source in the Supermind,
from the non-human forces in the universe.
It is power for good."

Vernon Howard

God is OUR Peace; WE are Creators

Take time, at least twice a day - though preferably as often as you possibly can - to simply, deliberately become aware of what you are connected to, and then drop it in favor of your wish to have God's Life. Prayer is not about asking for things from God, but first to be with Him, then in Him. This is the essence of prayer. It has nothing to do with gifts. It has to do with awakening to that Being that isn't in time. This is the Gift of all gifts. Guy Finley

You are a natural promoter of harmony and social joy.
You have demonstrated this already if you have said often:
“God is my Peace.”
ECH

"Be encouraged toward additional self-knowledge by realizing
that self-insight and self-victory are the very same thing."
Vernon Linwood Howard

Humans Have Souls

 Rudolf Christoph Eucken ( 1846 –  1926) was a German philosopher, and the winner of the 1908 Nobel Prize for Literature.

He maintained that humans have souls, and that they are therefore at the junction between nature and spirit. He believed that people should overcome their non-spiritual nature by continuous efforts to achieve a spiritual life, another aspect of his ethical activism.

Laid The Foundation For Comparative Psychology

George John Romanes FRS (1848 Kingston, Ontario Canada  – 1894) was a Canadian-born English evolutionary biologist and physiologist who laid the foundation of what he called comparative psychology, postulating a similarity of cognitive processes and mechanisms between humans and other animals.

Suspension of disbelief

Suspension of disbelief or willing suspension of disbelief is a term coined in 1817 by the poet and aesthetic philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who suggested that if a writer could infuse a "human interest and a semblance of truth" into a fantastic tale, the reader would suspend judgment concerning the implausibility of the narrative. Suspension of disbelief often applies to fictional works of the action, comedy, fantasy, and horror genres. Cognitive estrangement in fiction involves using a person's ignorance or lack of knowledge to promote suspension of disbelief.

Be faithful to me and I will be faithful to you - The Emmanuel Movement

The Emmanuel Movement was a psychologically-based approach to religious healing introduced in 1906 as an outreach of the Emmanuel Church in Boston, Massachusetts. In practice, the religious element was de-emphasized and the primary modalities were individual and group therapy. Episcopal priests Elwood Worcester [1] and Samuel McComb [2] established a clinic at the church which lasted 23 years and offered both medical and psychological services. The primary long-term influence of the movement, however, was on the treatment of alcoholism.

[1]  Elwood Worcester (1862–1940) was the originator of the Emmanuel movement philosophy. He was raised in an educated middle-class family which fell into poverty as a result of business reversals and the death of Worcester's father. After high school, Worcester went to work at a railway claim-department office. One day, while alone in the office, he had an experience of the room filling with light and heard the words, "Be faithful to me and I will be faithful to you." After discussing the experience with his priest, Algernon Crapsey, he became convinced that he was called to the ministry. At the time he was supporting his family, but he later entered Columbia University on scholarship and earned a bachelor's degree with highest honors. Worcester, Elwood (Emmanuel Movement)

A Practical American Spirtuality and Practising the Presence of God for Practical Purposes.

Alan Anderson passed away in  Nov 2012. See notice in http://www.neweverymoment.com/newsletter.html
Alan and his wife Deb Whitehouse authored "New Thought: A Practical American Spirtuality" and "Practising the Presence of God for Practical Purposes". Besides their blog they were active proponents of the INTA.

God is Love. God is Power.

The 12 Cognitive Biases That Prevent You From Being Rational
@ http://io9.com/5974468/the-most-common-cognitive-biases-that-prevent-you-from-being-rational

Children of securely attached mothers (religious or not) tend to think that God is closer, as compared with the children of insecurely attached mothers.
Read more >> The children of securely attached mothers think that God is close

Only the ETERNAL which sustains all Gods and Selves.

Franklin Merrell-Wolff (1887–1985) was an American philosopher. After formal education in philosophy and mathematics at Stanford and Harvard, Wolff devoted himself to the goal of transcending the normal limits of human consciousness. After exploring various mystical teachings and paths, he dedicated himself to the path of jnana yoga and the writings of Shankara, founder of the Advaita Vedanta school of Hindu philosophy.

In 1936, Wolff experienced a profound spiritual liberation and awakening which provided the basis for his transcendental philosophy. Wolff's published books detailing his experience and philosophy include Pathways Through to Space, The Philosophy of Consciousness Without an Object (both of which were re-published in a single volume entitled Franklin Merrell-Wolff's Experience and Philosophy), and Transformations in Consciousness: The Metaphysics and Epistemology (originally published under the title Introceptualism).

The Compassionate Mind

Joseph Chilton Pearce ( 1926 - ) is an American author of a number of books on child development. He prefers the name "Joe".
He served in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II. He graduated with a BA from College of William and Mary, received a Master of Arts degree from Indiana University, and did post-graduate studies at Geneva Theological College.

Behaviorism

Most of our behavior and feelings are caused by beliefs, which are the result of the meaning we give meaningless events. And meaning requires consciousness. When conditioning does happen it is because the faculty of consciousness that we do possess is not being used. 

Anything that occurs repeatedly (or even once if the incident is traumatic enough) at the same time that something else is causing an emotion will itself get conditioned to produce the same emotion.

Be Pleasant To Yourself

"What you really want is to be pleasant to yourself. What your heart wants is to have something inside of you that likes you.(Laughter) Now, oh, you don’t have that; I see you reacting. Now think from now on of pleasantness as a power, which it is.

What is pleasantness? It’s not, of course, the exterior smile; it’s not being friendly to someone outwardly. Pleasantness, authentic pleasantness is exterior manifestation of interior harmony. All is well with you, why are you afraid of anything on the outside? All you have to do is express outwardly the nice, good, feeling of harmony that you have inside of you.

Pleasantness is a solitary rose that knows it has no relationship to the surrounding weeds outside itself."
~ Vernon Howard [from a talk given 4/5/1992]

All things are exactly as they should be.

Because without you, they wouldn’t be. www.tut.com

"Sentimentality is bad because it includes too much of our unseen selves,
but a simple affection without self-reference is good."
Vernon Linwood Howard

Kenneth Wapnick, Ph.D. discusses how to use this year
(on a daily basis)
as seeing the world always giving us the opportunity to choose again.

View the world through Christ’s vision instead of the ego’s judgment.
Heaven or hell.

I choose to live in connection with my deeper knowing.

Through awareness you see and experience the beauty of who you are.

IS DISEASE REAL, OR APPARENT?

In dealing with the reality or unreality of disease, the first thing to be established in the mind is the sense in which we are to use the word “reality.”

If we can accept the definition of the word “real” in its philosophic sense as that which is insusceptible of discord and decay, dissolution or disintegration, we will have a sense of reality which admits only that which is perfect and permanent. According to Plato’s idea, the real is the ideal, of which the materialist’s real is a more or less imperfect representation to the sense. The real, as we know it through the senses, is in a constant state of change, but, as science reveals it, it is “the same, yesterday, today, and forever.”

As the word “real” is susceptible of so many meanings, so is the word “apparent.”

1865 ~ The year a new thought of God and man and the universe was born.

In 1849 Dr.Chalmers, one of the most noted divines of the Anglican Church, gave it as his opinion, based upon mathematical observation of spiritual truth in the Bible, that in the year 1865, or thereabouts, Jesus would again manifest himself to the earth in person. So careful had Dr.Chalmers been in spiritual investigations and observations, as well as mathematical calculations, that when Jesus did not appear in person in the year 1865, 1866 or 1867, he became discouraged and said on his deathbed that it was one of the  greatest disappointments of his life, because everything in the Holy Scriptures pointed to the second advent at that time.

We have only to open the inner eye of the understanding in order to perceive.

A noted Hindoo teach er, visiting this country, once said that if he announced a lecture on “How to Get Rich,” the hall would be packed, but if he advertised one on “Self-Surrender,” he would not attract a baker’s dozen. He felt that the paramount object of the West, particularly of the United States, was to accumulate this world’s goods, irrespective of methods employed, or the uses to which these were to be put.

Mental Science or Psychology

 “Here is a player-piano. You have been using the wrong rolls of music. You have been playing sad pieces, funeral marches, monotones, chants and wails. Throw those away and put in lively rolls, glees, dances, two steps, jazz music and happy melodies. They will give you a complete change of spirit and you’ll forget all your woes and troubles and build up a new mental condition.”

“Discard your negative rolls and put in positive rolls. Don’t play negative music. Play positive music. The result will be that you will have a new state of mind and life will become pleasant instead of gloomy.”

Master manipulators

'Terrifying,' A Perfect 'Advertisement For Gun Control'

White House denies petition to deport Piers Morgan

Man behind ‘Deport Piers Morgan’ petition has meltdown on Morgan’s show

I was wondering whether to blog this and was struck with the phrase “master manipulators”. True teachers tell us to seek God. Another persons beliefs are their truth, not the Truth. It’s not “who’s right but what’s right”. If you’re centered in God then what’s to fear?

Here's to Good Living and Good Reading!

You will believe in plenty of gold and silver and laugh at poverty if you do hold daily:
"The Al­mighty is my defense and I have plenty of all things."
Emma Curtis Hopkins

You are who you are and what you are because of what has gone into your mind. You can change who you are and what you are by changing what goes into your mind.
 - Zig Ziglar,
 American author, salesman, and motivational speaker

If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves. Carl Jung

It is NOT "Who's Right" but "What's Right"

This blog developed after receiving an email from Gemma Stone with this quote:

Jung said, "It is a bewildering thing in human life that the thing that causes the greatest fear is the source of the greatest wisdom."

Obviously his interests in “the archetype, the collective unconscious, the complex, synchronicity, The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI , a popular psychometric instrument), dream analysis and symbolization, Eastern and Western philosophy, alchemy, astrology, and sociology, philosophy and the occult” are fascinating but the it was the references to Rowland Hazard III and the Oxford Group that caught my attention.

The Archbishop of the Free Churches.

F(rederick) B(rotherton) Meyer ( 1847 – 1929), a contemporary and friend of D. L. Moody and A. C. Dixon, was a Baptist pastor and evangelist in England involved in ministry and inner city mission work on both sides of the Atlantic. Author of numerous religious books and articles, many of which remain in print today, he was described in an obituary as The Archbishop of the Free Churches.

F.B. Meyers Works

Habits of prayer need careful cultivation. The instinct and impulse are with us by the grace of the Holy Spirit, but we need to cultivate the gracious inward movements until they become solidified into an unbending practice.

Example in Prayer

The story of George Muller, of James Gilmour, or of David Brainerd; the writings of Samuel Rutherford, Andrew Murray and Frances Ridley Havergal; the poetry of Horatius Bonar and John Keble, are of perennial use in this direction.

I can't say till I know what's in it

Dear reader, in these times there are thousands of bad books published, and herds of bad teachers sent forth to deceive the unwary; you must be on your guard, lest you be led into error. Take nothing for granted, enquire into things for yourself, and try every new doctrine, and professedly old doctrine too, by the Word of God.
…
But reader, is your own present religion good for anything? Do you know what's in it, and what it is made of? May it not be mischievous and false? Search thyself, and do not take a hope into thy soul till thou knowest what it is made of.
…
Whatever may be the ground of trust which men may offer you, take care to KNOW WHAT'S IN IT before you accept it.

The Meek and Lowly One

January 7
 You have wondrous sympathies, and philanthropy. Carry out your greatness   by determining: "I am meek and lowly of heart." Emma Curtis Hopkins

"Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."—Matthew 11:28-30.

A Sermon (No. 265)

Delivered on Sabbath Morning, July 31st, 1859, by the
REV. C.H. Spurgeon
at the Music Hall, Royal Surrey Gardens.

Here are the Unhappy Results of Believing Only What You Want to Believe

by Vernon Howard

1. You will be nervous and uncertain and afraid.

 2. You will try to cover up your nervousness by bluff and bluster and one lie after another.

 3. You will be in a state of self-deception, a state which angrily refuses self-honesty.

 4. You will be desperately eager to claim that other people, especially prominent authorities, support your false claims.

 5. You will be unable to see the strain and the unnaturalness of believing that untruth is truth.

 6. You will receive a neurotic thrill from the inward burning of your confusion.

 7. You will have no hesitation in attacking and hurting anyone who threatens to expose your deceit.

 8. You will be unaware that you are believing only what you want to believe, for your preferences for delusion has succeeded superbly.

 9. You will be the self-chosen victim of repeated mental movies in which you see yourself as heroically right and everyone else as wrong.

10. You will refuse to see that the sense of doom you feel is caused by your own refusal of the light.

11. You will be inwardly tortured, while pretending outwardly to other people that you are free and happy.

12. You will continue to fall and get hurt unless you stop believing only what you want to believe, and have the courage and the decency to  receive what is true and good.

You are the creator not the creation.

Why you don’t need to forgive anyone

 We have to come face-to-face with the fact that most of the knowledge we have accumulated over the years is false. I’m not talking about the practical things, but all of the other ‘stuff’ from which we live. We have ideas about what our priorities should be in life, how we should handle relationships, how we should be treated, etc. We have ideas about what it means to be ‘spiritual’. In fact, we are being told what to believe at every turn. One lie that has recently been circulated and is no doubt being absorbed into the belief system of many people is that in the near future, there is going to be a sudden and dramatic increase of collective or global consciousness on earth; that the entire planet is somehow going to ‘wake up’. It’s just a more modern version, in today’s jargon, of the rapture. The reality is that, as time goes on, there is more and more of a collective and global mass hypnosis taking hold. Vernon Howard once said that there is no such thing as instant salvation, that the idea itself is a cruel hoax. There can only be individual awakening, the ‘individual victory’ mentioned above. http://www.anewlife.org/html/points_archive_1.html

 Vernon Howard mentions the Four Golden Keys to New Freedom and Happiness. They are: 1) A sincere desire for inner change, 2) Contact with workable (genuine) principles, 3) Self-honesty, 4) Persistence. http://www.anewlife.org/html/points_archive_3.html