New Thought

The Art of Enjoying Life

2012-01-28T11:44:00.000-08:00

he author of 'Comfort' examines what it takes for people to wake up and be fully alive every day.

BY: Brett C. Hoover

Waiting for a tour company bus at a hotel in Bath, England, I met a young travel writer from California. I was traveling alone and she was with her ninety-year-old grandmother. The bus arrived late, with only one seat left for the three of us. Needless to say, her grandmother got the place on the bus, and the writer and I went off in search of the train station. Later, on the train, we talked about her travel-writing work in France. “My favorite word in French,” she said, “is parfait—‘perfect.’ ” In France, she said, people seem to find it easier to appreciate and enjoy the moment — things can seem perfect. In American English, however, perfect presents an impossible standard to live up to.
I agreed. In a restless country like the United States, we look on perfect as the impossible future to work toward. The present moment is beside the point. We always look ahead to the betterpaying job, the bigger house, a place to live with more pleasant weather. Nothing should stay the same; it must improve. If most of us arrived at some moment that began to feel perfect — a beautiful day, a fantastic job, a magnificent work of art — we would probably begin to look for ways to enhance it. This does many good things for us as a culture, in terms of productivity and innovation. But, as my train companion pointed out, it makes it that much harder to really be happy in the present moment. It makes it harder than ever to just be comfortable.
We might benefit from the Buddhist spiritual practice of mindfulness. This means essentially a discipline of heightened awareness in whatever one does — eating, walking, talking with a friend, working, waiting for the bus. Behind this lies the assumption that much of the time we live an unexamined and automatic life. We do not really know or appreciate what we are doing. We stuff down our food, half listen to the people we encounter, mindlessly groom our amazing bodies, pass by miles of natural wonders without any of them registering on our personal radar. The beautiful and the fascinating surround us, but we do not see them. Once I attended a retreat where, as a meditation exercise, I was instructed to watch insects for half an hour. Initially I dreaded the potential boredom of the exercise, but before many minutes had passed I was captivated. That afternoon I saw butterflies, moths, ants moving large burdens, beetles I could not identify. It was like gaining unexpected entrance to a
secret world. Buddhist mindfulness invites all seekers to slow down and take a look, to listen, to notice. It is an invitation to enjoy ourselves more in every moment.
The world may be imperfect and at times immensely frustrating, but it is also stunningly beautiful, interesting, humorous, and fun. As I sat working at my desk one day, a hummingbird passed by my window, beating those marvelous wings at lightning speed. That same week I had the most delicious tuna in a little Spanish restaurant on an alley in San Francisco. Later that year, in the summertime, my aunt came to visit. My sister and I got her going about her high school dating adventures back in Indiana in the 1950s. Some weeks later I met a woman at a Eugene, Oregon, craft fair who makes eccentric little night-lights out of cat-food cans. As I drove back home to Northern California from Oregon, the moon was a silver crescent over the pine- crested mountains. Back home I visited the home of an architect friend of mine. He has a huge, multiframe architectural diagram of Rome on his wall. I found it lying on the floor of his house in sections on that visit — it had slipped from its moorings during a renovation. He dubbed this the “fall of Rome.” Late in the summer, I made that trip to England. En route home, I picked up a beautiful but sad British novel in which a child’s misunderstanding ruins a young man’s life.
All these details from a few months in my life make up a store of richness and grandeur, yet so much of the time I know I have become too busy or preoccupied to notice such things. What does it take to wake up sufficiently to pay attention? It feels easier to persist in an unconscious, uncomfortable life. During my first year studying for the priesthood, the priest in charge of our novitiate told me he did not believe that Saint
Peter would meet us at any pearly gates when we died. This did not particularly faze me — I had always pictured this as more the stuff of jokes than the literal truth. He went on: there would be no ledger of sins and good deeds, nor would there be an interrogation about doctrinal purity or personal faith in Jesus Christ. I obediently played the “straight man” in this routine. “Well then, what will happen?” He said God would simply ask, “Did you have a good time?” The idea sounded preposterous to me, an existential joke. Is life nothing more than one long frat party? I
must have looked at him as if he had no sense at all. Now I wonder at what he said, and I believe that rather than advocating hedonism, he was trying to get me to think.
If God went to all the trouble of setting in evolutionary motion a remarkable world, what sort of ungrateful creature doesn’t enjoy it? The early Christian theologian Saint Irenaeus once said, “The glory of God is the human person fully alive.” I look around at the astonishing beauty of the world, the sheer blessing and gratuity of being alive. Who am I not to enjoy it? It does begin to feel like a commandment: “Thou shalt enjoy thy
life.”

The Art of Forgiveness

2012-01-28T11:41:00.001-08:00

Excerpted from BRINGING HOME THE DHARMA by Jack Kornfield, (c) 2011. Published by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston. www.Shambhala.com .

Traditionally the work of the heart begins with forgiveness. Forgiveness is the necessary ground for any healing. To begin with, we need a wise understanding of forgiveness. Then we can learn how it is practiced, how we may forgive both ourselves and others.

Forgiveness is a letting go of past suffering and betrayal, a release of the burden of pain and hate that we carry. Forgiveness honors the heart’s greatest dignity. Whenever we are lost, it brings us back to the ground of love. With forgiveness we become unwilling to attack or wish harm to another. Whenever we forgive, in small ways at home, or in great ways between nations, we free ourselves from the past.

It is hard to imagine a world without forgiveness. Without forgiveness life would be unbearable. Without forgiveness our lives are chained, forced to carry the sufferings of the past and repeat them with no release.

Consider the dialogue between two former prisoners of war:

“Have you forgiven your captors yet?”

“No, never!”

“Well, then, they still have you in prison, don’t they?”

We begin the work of forgiveness primarily for ourselves. We may still be suffering terribly from the past while those who betrayed us are on vacation. It is painful to hate. Without forgiveness we continue to perpetuate the illusion that hate can heal our pain and the pain of others. In forgiveness we let go and find relief in our heart.

Even those in the worst situations, the conflicts and tragedies of Bosnia, Cambodia, Rwanda, Northern Ireland, or South Africa, have had to find a path to reconciliation. This is true in America as well. It is the only way to heal.

Sometimes this means finding the courage to forgive the unforgivable, to consciously release the heart from the clutches of another’s terrible acts.

We must discover a way to move on from the past, no matter what traumas it held. The past is over: forgiveness means giving up all hope of a better past.

Remember these truths:

Forgiveness is not weak or naive. Forgiveness requires courage and clarity; it is not naive. Mistakenly people believe that to forgive is to simply
“forgive and forget,” once and for all. This is not the wisdom of forgiveness.

Forgiveness does not happen quickly. For great injustice, coming to forgiveness may include a long process of grief, outrage, sadness, loss, and pain. True forgiveness does not paper over what has happened in a superficial way. It is not a misguided effort to suppress or ignore our pain. It cannot be hurried. It is a deep process, repeated over and over in our heart, that honors the grief and betrayal, and in its own time ripens into the freedom to truly forgive.

Forgiveness does not forget, nor does it condone the past. Forgiveness sees wisely. It willingly acknowledges what is unjust, harmful, and wrong. It bravely recognizes the sufferings of the past, and understands the conditions that brought them about. There is a strength to forgiveness. When we forgive, we can also say, “Never again will I allow these things to happen.” We may resolve to never again permit such harm to come to ourselves or another.

Forgiveness does not mean that we have to continue to relate to those who have done us harm. In some cases the best practice may be to end our connection, to never speak to or be with a harmful person again. Sometimes in the process of forgiveness a person who hurt or betrayed us may wish to make amends, but even this does not require us to put ourselves in the way of further harm. In the end, forgiveness simply means never putting another person out of our heart.

What New Thought Practitioners Believe

2012-01-28T11:37:00.000-08:00

An umbrella term for diverse beliefs that emphasize experiencing God's presence for practical purposes, such as healing and success. Examples include Unity, Religious Science, and Divine Science.

Belief in Deity
There exists one God--Universal Mind, creative intelligence, omnipresent--a principle (not a being), an impersonal force that manifests itself personally, perfectly, and equally within all.

Incarnations
No particular incarnations, as God is within all equally. Some believe Jesus was exemplary of someone who fully realized his divine nature, and therefore is the "wayshower" (shows the way).

Origin of Universe and Life
The universe and all within it are expressions of God--the creative intelligence--with no beginning and no end.

After Death
Some believe in continual rebirth as a gift from God so that all may become immortal, as was Jesus Christ, with each lifetime a preparation for the next. Others believe the individual soul merges with the universal spirit after death.

Why Evil?
No original sin, and no Satan and no evil. People make "mistakes" due to ignorance of one's true nature as Perfect Mind and Love, which is God.

Salvation
Salvation lies in the realization of oneness with the impersonal life force, thus unlocking one's healing potential. Licensed practitioners counsel on spiritual healing for problems of the mind, body, and life. Some believe Jesus is the "wayshower" to salvation. Some believe that all, regardless of actions, will be saved by the grace of a loving and forgiving God. Most believe that spiritual awareness of God's omnipresence--that God is all and all are God--leads to personal and humanity's salvation. Many believe that repeated reincarnations are God's gift, each lifetime a preparation for the next, until "perfection" is reached, which is God.

Undeserved Suffering
Suffering results from ignorance of one's true nature as Perfect Mind and ceases with complete realization that we all are one with God, the Universal Mind. One can heal personal suffering through New Thought practices, often with the assistance of New Thought practitioners.

Contemporary Issues
There is no official doctrine on abortion; therefore, abortion is not condemned.

New Thought

2012-01-28T11:32:00.000-08:00

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

New Thought promotes the ideas that "Infinite Intelligence" or "God" is ubiquitous, spirit is the totality of real things, true human selfhood is divine, divine thought is a force for good, sickness originates in the mind, and "right thinking" has a healing effect.^[1]^[2]
Although New Thought is neither monolithic nor doctrinaire, in general modern day adherents of New Thought believe that "God" or "Infinite Intelligence" is "supreme, universal, and everlasting", that divinity dwells within each person, that all people are spiritual beings, that "the highest spiritual principle [is] loving one another unconditionally ... and teaching and healing one another", and that "our mental states are carried forward into manifestation and become our experience in daily living".^[1]^[2]
The New Thought movement is a spiritually-focused or philosophical interpretation of New Thought beliefs. Started in the early 19th century, today the movement consists of a loosely allied group of religious denominations, secular membership organizations,^{[citation needed]} authors, philosophers, and individuals who share a set of beliefs concerning metaphysics, positive thinking, the law of attraction, healing, life force, creative visualization, and personal power.^[3] The three major religious denominations within the New Thought movement are Religious Science, Unity Church and the Church of Divine Science. There are many other smaller churches within the New Thought movement, as well as schools and umbrella organizations.

1 Overview

Overview

William James, in The Varieties of Religious Experience, described New Thought as follows:

... for the sake of having a brief designation, I will give the title of the "Mind-cure movement." There are various sects of this "New Thought," to use another of the names by which it calls itself; but their agreements are so profound that their differences may be neglected for my present purpose, and I will treat the movement, without apology, as if it were a simple thing. It is an optimistic scheme of life, with both a speculative and a practical side. In its gradual development during the last quarter of a century, it has taken up into itself a number of contributory elements, and it must now be reckoned with as a genuine religious power. It has reached the stage, for example, when the demand for its literature is great enough for insincere stuff, mechanically produced for the market, to be to a certain extent supplied by publishers – a phenomenon never observed, I imagine, until a religion has got well past its earliest insecure beginnings.
One of the doctrinal sources of Mind-cure is the four Gospels; another is Emersonianism or New England transcendentalism; another is Berkeleyan idealism; another is spiritism, with its messages of "law" and "progress" and "development"; another the optimistic popular science evolutionism of which I have recently spoken; and, finally, Hinduism has contributed a strain. But the most characteristic feature of the mind-cure movement is an inspiration much more direct. The leaders in this faith have had an intuitive belief in the all-saving power of healthy-minded attitudes as such, in the conquering efficacy of courage, hope, and trust, and a correlative contempt for doubt, fear, worry, and all nervously precautionary states of mind. Their belief has in a general way been corroborated by the practical experience of their disciples; and this experience forms to-day a mass imposing in amount.^[4]

History

Main article: History of New Thought

Origins

The earliest identifiable proponent of what came to be known as New Thought was Phineas Parkhurst Quimby (1802–66), an American philosopher, mesmerist, healer, and inventor. Quimby developed a belief system that included the tenet that illness originated in the mind as a consequence of erroneous beliefs and that a mind open to God's wisdom could overcome any illness.^[5]
His basic premise was “The trouble is in the mind, for the body is only the house for the mind to dwell in…Therefore, if your mind had been deceived by some invisible enemy into a belief, you have out into it the form of a disease, with or without your knowledge. By my theory or truth, I come in contact with your enemy, and restore you to health and happiness. This I do partly mentally, and partly by talking till I correct the wrong impression and establish the Truth, and the Truth is the cure.”^[6]
During the late 19th century the metaphysical healing practices of Quimby mingled with the "Mental Science" of Warren Felt Evans, a Swedenborgian minister.^[7]
New Thought was propelled along by a number of spiritual thinkers and philosophers and emerged through a variety of religious denominations and churches, particularly the Unity Church, Religious Science, and Church of Divine Science.^[8] Many of its early teachers and students were women; notable among the founders of the movement were Emma Curtis Hopkins, known as the "teacher of teachers", Myrtle Fillmore, Malinda Cramer, Ernest Holmes, and Nona L. Brooks;^[8] with many of its churches and community centers led by women, from the 1880s to today.^[9]^[10]

Growth

Major gatherings

The 1915 International New Thought Alliance (INTA) conference – held in conjunction with the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, a world's fair that took place in San Francisco – featured New Thought speakers from far and wide. The PPIE organizers were so favorably impressed by the INTA convention that they declared a special "New Thought Day" at the fair and struck a commemorative bronze medal for the occasion, which was presented to the INTA delegates, led by Annie Rix Militz.^[16] By 1916, the International New Thought Alliance had encompassed many smaller groups around the world, adopting a creed known as the "Declaration of Principles".^[8] The Alliance is held together by one central teaching: that people, through the constructive use of their minds, can attain freedom, power, health, prosperity, and all good, molding their bodies as well as the circumstances of their lives. The declaration was revised in 1957, with all references to Christianity removed, and a new statement based on the "inseparable oneness of God and Man".^[8]
There are regular conventions and conferences today, including those hosted by the major denominations, Agape International Spiritual Center, and others.

Belief systems


New Thought Beliefs

Divinity Omnipresent God · Ultimate Spirit · Divine Humanity · Higher consciousness ·
Beliefs Universal law Law of attraction · Power of choice · Metaphysics · Life force
Actions Affirmations · Affirmative prayer · Creative visualization · Healing · Personal magnetism · Positive thinking Glossary
This box: view talk edit

The chief tenets of New Thought are:^[17]

Infinite Intelligence or God is omnipotent and omnipresent.
Spirit is the ultimate reality.
True human self-hood is divine.
Divinely attuned thought is a positive force for good.
All disease is mental in origin.
Right thinking has a healing effect.

Evolution of thought

Adherents also generally believe that as humankind gains greater understanding of the world, New Thought itself will evolve to assimilate new knowledge. Alan Anderson and Deb Whitehouse have described New Thought as a "process" in which each individual and even the New Thought Movement itself is "new every moment". Thomas McFaul has hypothesized "continuous revelation", with new insights being received by individuals continuously over time. Jean Houston has spoken of the "possible human", or what we are capable of becoming.^[18]

[edit] Theological inclusionism

The Home of Truth, which, from its inception as the Pacific Coast Metaphysical Bureau in the 1880s, under the leadership of Annie Rix Militz, has disseminated the teachings of the Hindu teacher Swami Vivekananda, is one of the more outspokenly interfaith of New Thought organizations, stating adherence to "the principle that Truth is Truth where ever it is found and who ever is sharing it".^[19]^{[not in citation given]} Joel S. Goldsmith's The Infinite Way incorporates teaching from Christian Science, as well.

Therapeutic ideas

Divine Science, Unity Church, and Religious Science are organizations which developed from the New Thought movement. Each teaches that Infinite Intelligence or God is the sole reality. There are New Thought adherents believe that sickness is the result of the failure to realize this truth. In this line of thinking, healing is accomplished by the affirmation of oneness with the Infinite Intelligence or God.^{[citation needed]}
John Bovee Dods (1795–1862), an early practitioner of New Thought, wrote several books on the idea that disease originates in the electrical impulses of the nervous system and is therefore curable by a change of belief.^{[citation needed]} Later New Thought teachers, such as the early 20th century author, editor, and publisher William Walker Atkinson, accepted this premise. He connected his idea of mental states of being with his understanding of the new scientific discoveries in electromagnetism and neural processes.^[20]

Movement

New Thought publishing and educational activities reach approximately 2.5 million people annually.^[21] The largest New Thought-oriented denomination is Seicho-no-Ie.^[22] Other belief systems within the New Thought movement include Jewish Science, Religious Science, Centers for Spiritual Living and Unity. Past denominations have included Psychiana and Father Divine.
Religious Science operates under three main organizations: the United Centers for Spiritual Living; the Affiliated New Thought Network; and Global Religious Science Ministries. Ernest Holmes, the founder of Religious Science, stated that Religious Science is not based on any "authority" of established beliefs, but rather on "what it can accomplish" for the people who practice it.^[23] The Science of Mind, authored by Ernest Holmes, while based on a philosophy of being "open at the top", focuses extensively on the teachings of Jesus Christ.^[24]
Unity, founded by Charles and Myrtle Fillmore, identifies itself as "Christian New Thought", focused on "Christian idealism", with the Bible as one of its main texts, although not interpreted literally. The other core text is Lessons in Truth by H. Emilie Cady.

New Thought

The Art of Enjoying Life

he author of 'Comfort' examines what it takes for people to wake up and be fully alive every day.

The Art of Forgiveness

What New Thought Practitioners Believe

New Thought

Contents

Overview

History

Origins

Growth

Major gatherings

Belief systems

Evolution of thought

[edit] Theological inclusionism

Therapeutic ideas

Movement