What is New Thought - Part 2

Hello friends - in this episode we pick up where we left off on Episode 1. Exploring the basic ideas of New Thought principles and where it came from.  What is the implication of thinking about God and Spirituality in a new way?  What is the impact on your life and the world?  

here is the link to the video Sunday messages from Rev David at New Thought Center for Spiritual Living: https://www.facebook.com/pg/NewThoughtCSL/videos/?ref=page_internal 

Support this podcast by donating here:  https://secure.squarespace.com/checkout/donate?donatePageId=5c4eb3e5b8a04550fea577bf. 

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:04

Hello my friends. Welcome to another episode of new thoughts podcast with David Alexander. I am your host, David Alexander. And uh, I'm so excited. Here we are. This is episode two, episode to a. That means that I was encouraged after episode one because I put it out there, started this new project and you know what, you're listening, you're writing in, given me feedback. You were responding. The facebook page is growing in popularity. It's, I think over 400 people now following it and we just started it a few days ago. So I'm super excited about this project. Thank you so much for tuning in and a, please continue to provide your feedback. I've started making a list of the folks that I'm going to be sitting in dialogue with a today. I'm going to go back to episode one and recap and do a little bit more of new thought, a basics and history as a, as a paradigm setting for us. Uh, and then we'll start getting into the, uh, interviews beginning in episode three, I started making a list and I've already got like about 25 people that I'm interested in talking to, so no shortage of ideas there. And if you have any ideas, please let me know. You can write to me, uh, at Rev, David1@Mac.com and I will get your feedback there or you can make a comment either on the facebook page, on the podcast page, wherever you are listening. I'm using buzzsprout to, uh, produce the podcast and I want to thank the good folks at buzzsprout because they make it so easy. Their website made it so easy for me to learn exactly what to do, how to get it out there. And so I'm happy to announce that the podcast is now available on stitcher and you can listen on stitcher. You can listen on spotify, you can listen on itunes a, we are working in waiting, pending approval through Google play. Uh, and also, uh, the Alexa App. How cool is that? The Alexa has a skill called any pod and if you enable that then you can say, Alexa, play new thoughts with David Alexander and I'll pop right up. That is so cool. I tried it this morning. It didn't quite work yet because we're still pending approval in that process, but I'm hoping by the time this podcast airs, that will be, um, that'll be the, the, the case. So I'm excited about that. All right, uh, episode two. Here we are. I want to go back and talk a little bit more about, um, new thought as a lens, as a, um, you know, I like to use the word theology, but, uh, you know, you might not be, uh, uh, you might be somebody who identifies as spiritual but not religious. And so I don't want that to turn you off. Um, so really it is a, uh, a way of thinking, a way, a lens and a paradigm of thinking about spirituality and philosophy and this thing called mind in this thing called consciousness and how do we use it and what are the principles that we use. I just finished a four part series on the basics of science of mind, the philosophy articulated by Ernest Holmes, the founder of religious science, and you can find that on the new thought center for spiritual living, a webpage, new thoughts, CSL.org, and there you will find a under a sermons or messages. You will find the audio, a podcast of those messages, and if you want the video broadcast, we video record on a wonderful device and then get that up on our facebook page a very early in the week so you can go to our facebook page for new thought center for spiritual living and find the videos there. I'll post a link as well in the description of this podcast so you can easily find them. Because what I did is I spent a January 20, 19, uh, focusing on the basics of science of mind, a teachings. The first four chapters of the science of mind textbook which are entitled the thing itself, which we talked a little bit about in episode one, right? That was Ernest Holmes way of describing God that the infinite divine intelligence getting away from an anthropomorphic idea of God and getting into a um, energetic intelligence, invisible source idea of God, right? Which is a lot more freeing in so many ways. Uh, so the thing itself at describing what that is, uh, the way it works, it works through our consciousness. It works through the filter of our thoughts and our attitudes in our beliefs, what it does and I, and I'd really encourage you to listen to the message on that one, how it creates through us, uh, how it gives itself to its creation, how it encourages its creation to evolve. You and I are evolving spiritual beings. And then in the final week I focused on how to use it, how we can use it proactively and in a way that creates a compelling vision for our life. So really good summary. Uh, even if you just listened to that last week, which, cause then I kind of recap the first three. It'd be well worth your time if you're not familiar with the basics of science teaching a here, I want to build on that, but also kind of give a broader lens that is inclusive of science of mind, but also of unity and new thought in general. And then again, new thought beyond its religious context to a more a universal spiritual context so that anyone listening to this could say, yeah, I get where you're coming from there as a, as a lens and a paradigm of thinking. So in episode one I said New Thought Theology or new thought philosophy is a teaching of spiritual evolution, which means we already evolving spiritual beings. Uh, secondly, I said it's a teaching of spiritual liberation. Uh, it teaches us how to free ourselves from our doubts and our fears and our worries and our concerns so that we're creating a life that we want to. It's a theology or spirituality of personal liberation. And that to me is very exciting. It's a teaching of radical oneness, right? If God is all there is, then, then everything is a part of that. There is no park. That's not a part of the oneness of God, which I think is really exciting and it's a teaching of personal application and what I would describe as sort of a radical self responsibility, right? And so radical idea to say that you are in charge of your life, you're in charge of your thinking, you're in charge of your mindset, which then affects, uh, the experience that you have and if something's going to be different, if you want your life to improve, it's going to be because you determined that that's going to happen and you create the mindset through which that happens. So there's a part of personal empowerment, uh, that is definitely a part of, of this, uh, new thought, thinking that we're exploring here. So those were the concepts that I, uh, shared in episode one and now I want to expand on them just a little bit. The new thought movement as a organization or as a collection of organizations, uh, came through many different sources. And I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this just because I don't think it's a subject that a whole lot of people that are a too fascinated with. But Hey, if I'm wrong about that and you say, Hey, I wanted you to spend more time on that, then this is your test, right in. You'll know that I get your responses and you tell me that you want more of this, but I'm just going to give you very briefly, uh, in this episode some of the historical context for new thought. Okay. So about 100 years ago in America, this land was burgeoning with, um, with new thoughts, with, with curiosity about a psychology and how the mind works in, in a myriad of different ways. And so there was a number of different things that came together. I described the new thought movement as a fusion movement. New Thought is a fusion movement, meaning what? Meaning, if it is something that, that is a byproduct of the fusion, the coming together of, of different circles of, of thought and different movements that kind of uniquely mixed and interacted with each other. Uh, in America, about 150 years ago, what are those movements? Those movements are one, the transcendentalist movement. So Ralph Waldo Emerson, and I'm a Walden, and, and all of those characters who were, you know, Emerson, who was a minister initially, uh, as most liberal a Christian folks were attracted to the unitarian movement and, and broader the transcendentalist movement, which was looking at nature and, and, and looking at the, the intelligence, the divine intelligence within all of nature. And that there's something bigger called spirit that was really existing beyond the trappings of, of a traditional and fundamentalist religion. The dominant religious voice in America, 150 years ago was a calvinistic theology, which was a very oppressive theology, a very anthropomorphic and its view of God and very traditional. And so new thought came on as a term in direct, a sort of response to the very, a stoic and traditional and, and rigid thinking of calvinistic theology. Let's have a new thought, a new way of thinking about God, about the universe, about this intelligent life that is all around us and the transcendentalists. We're talking about, hey, this intelligent thing is all around us, it's vibrating off of the leaves, you know, and it's, uh, and we can listen to the science of nature to understand the nature of the universe. Uh, the second movement that fused with that transcendental is kind of thinking it was a movement called the mind care movement. And the mind clear movement was, now, this is all, this is before modern medicine. Penicillin wasn't even discovered until 19, 27. And I'm talking about a period here that's like the late, mid 18 hundreds. So 18, fifties, 18 sixties. Uh, there was a great curiosity about how the mind, um, has influence over the body. Uh, so for Anton friends, Mesmer, which is where we get mesmerism from a, it was a French guy who was studying the influences of the, the subconscious mind and a student of his came to America to display this thing called animal magnetism. The influence of the subconscious mind. And a guy in the north east quimby, his name was phineas Parkhurst. Quimby saw this demonstration and he was a clockmaker and he was really curious about, wow, what is this stuff? And uh, so he began his own experiments and discovery and referencing a looking at the Bible and saying, you know, every time Jesus healed somebody, he asked permission, he gets sort of conscious in input conscious buyin from the individual. And so there's something about this conscious connection and, and, and subconscious mind that buys into the idea of our own healing capacity. And it began to explore that. And, and, and so this movement grew out of it called the mind cure movement, which was really about the power of the mind over the body. And the third movement that all of this kind of fuses together with a was called the was called Progressive Christianity. Uh, and that movement of course exists today and is really growing today and getting more and more popular today than it's ever been. But Progressive Christianity has been around since Christianity. We tend not to think of it that way, but as far back as the first century, there were a liberal versions of, of theological thinking. There were theological schools that said, you know, uh, as early as the first century that said, you know, this, these, these writings and these stories that we have in the Bible, it's all metaphor. It's all symbolism. It's all, it's not so much literal, uh, events in places, but it's story and, and out of that story, it applies to our life. And there were more traditional thinkers that said, no, no, this was real events and real people. And in the second coming is a literal event, not a event in mind or in consciousness. And that voice over time kind of became the dominant religious voice, but you can go back and you can find evidence of the liberal or Progressive Christian voice from the very beginning. And over time it's sort of been squashed and attempted to be snuffed out. But I describe it as kind of like sitting on a beach ball in the pool, right? Eventually you can suppress it for awhile, but eventually that beach ball is going to find its way up and it's going to pop back up to the service. And that's what's happened over the last 2000 years, that liberal voice has never been completely squashed out, continues to pop up, and there's lots of evidence of that. And we might explore some of that in this podcast. Uh, so those are the three things, a transcendentalist movement, the mind care movement, and this, this, a ever present, a progressive Christian voice which was predominantly president in the development of new thought through a guy by the name of Emanuel Swedenborg. Swedenborg wrote some theory, what at the time would've been heretical thinking, uh, about Christianity in the 16 hundreds. And, and his movement became very popular in early American fact. Johnny appleseed, we all know Johnny appleseed, right? He went around planting apple orchards. Uh, he also went around distributing Emanuel Swedenborg literature because he was a member of the suite. Important Church helped build churches and help that movement. Some of our founding fathers were very familiar with Swedenborg writing's fascinating character. Invite you to explore him if you're new to that name. So the fusion of these three movements, along with the backdrop of what I would call the perennial philosophies and the ancient wisdom, and that includes everything from, uh, the, the native religions of this land to Greek philosophies, to the Egyptians, uh, to, uh, to all of that kind of stuff that, that through that there's a golden thread and, and the, the crafters, the authors and the architects of this thing called new thought were very keen to, to, to discover and had an eye out for what is that common thread. There's a wisdom in the universe that has always been in the universe and we can find it in, in the Greek philosophies. We can find it at h and Egyptian culture. We can find it in Christianity. We can find it in Judaism and Buddhism and Hinduism. We can find it in nature. And so new thought became a fusion movement to bring all of that together and articulate it in, in a, in a new way. Ernest Holmes, the founder of religious science and and the current movement are known as centers for spiritual living, said that religious science is the correlation of the laws of science, the opinions of philosophy and the revelations of religion applied to human need and the aspirations of humanity, religious sciences, a correlation, the laws of science, the opinions of philosophy and the revelations of religion applied to human need and the aspirations of humanity. That's a pretty good way of, of summarizing. Ernest Holmes was a great synthesizer of the new thought movement that came before him and that he was fascinated by and wanting to know more about and became a great architect of eventually. Um, so I often say that that new thought is both a, an evolutionary teaching and a liberation teaching. I want to expand on both of those thoughts a little bit in today's episode. Evolution evolution is the gradual development of something, especially from, from a, from a simple state to a more complex estate, into a recognition of a living organism that is growing and developing and expanding. And that's certainly true for the new thought movement, right? It's not a static teaching, we don't have bibles per se. We have some authors like Ernest Holmes and Charles fillmore and emily, Katie, and, and many others who we look to their works for inspiration, uh, but we also have modern authors and architects of the Movement, um, uh, people like Mark Nepo and Wayne Dyer and Deepak Chopra and others who, who their writings are sources of inspiration, uh, as well. Uh, now that in and of itself is enough to make us a heretical sort of cultish teaching to most, uh, uh, forms of Christianity. But nonetheless, it is an evolving teaching that draws from inspiration wherever we find it. I also say that the new thought movement is a liberation teaching. And what I mean by that is a liberation is an act of setting something or, or someone free from imprisonment, right? From slavery, from oppression to release and new thoughts, teachings it, we often say, we teach you not what to think, but how to think. So if you can understand consciousness, if you can understand how life got to be this way, if you can understand the influence that your beliefs and behaviors and your attitudes and ideas about the world, how those influenced the experience you have, and you understand the consciousness and the law that's operating behind that, then you can change those behaviors, you can change those beliefs and you can liberate yourself. You can become free from your own doubts in your own fears. And so it very much in a real way, new thought is a liberation, a personal liberation theology. And to me that's a very exciting idea about, um, about what we are. All right? Uh, so let's summarize some new thought basics and then I want to play a little game that I call if this, then that, if this, then that will get to that in just a minute. Uh, so here's some new thought, basic ideas. Number One, God is all. There is a god, divine intelligence, whatever you want to call it. God is the, all in, all through, all, as all. There's one infinite intelligence in the universe. All right? Number two, the individual being is in the one being you and I exist as individual beings, but we exist inside of the one being that is here. So I like to say there's only one thing happening here and that's the intelligence of the universe expressing as you and as me and as all life we forget because we tend to look through the lens of separation and we think there's you and there's me and, and different ideas, but there's really only one intelligence trying to work itself out. We're trying to remember that a number three, this one thing, a responds by corresponding. It responds to our attitudes and our beliefs. We've kind of covered that already. I'm a number four. All thought is creative, meaning it has creative energy behind it and it, and it sets a law into motion that it creates the experiences of our life. And, and number five, all things are evolving. All right? Uh, so I'm going to play a little game a called if this, then that kind of based on, um, based on these ideas, if God is all there is, then what is the implication of that? I want you to think about that for a moment. If God is all there is, what does that mean? And one of the things I think it means is if God is all there is, then I am one with God. I can't be separate from it, right? So if God is all there is, then I am one with God. If God is perfect and whole than I am, perfect and whole, how about that? How about all the places in your life where you don't think you're perfect or you're holding you're good enough? But if God is all there is and God is perfect and whole, then what are you? Aren't you an expression of God? Alright? So, uh, let's keep going. If, uh, if I forget this truth, which I do, I forget this truth. I've been in this movement my whole life and ministering and it for 15 years, but you know, sometimes I wake up and I don't, I don't consciously remember. I get wrapped up in other thoughts of, of separation and in my own doubts, in my own insecurity. So if I forget this truth, if this then that, if I forget, then what do I need to do? The only thing I need to do is to remember that's my only activity, my only task. If I forget, then I just need to remember. And finally, if I can train my mind to remember daily, then I can be a liberating presence for all of humanity. Let me say that last one again. If I can train my mind to remember daily that that becomes my spiritual practice. My spiritual practice is to remember, and I do that through prayer and through meditation and through reading and studying and through quiet contemplation, but my job ultimately is to remember, remember the divine truth of who I am, and if I can do that, then I can become a liberating presence for all of humanity. You see, accepting our wholeness can really become a holy act of reclamation. It can become a holy act of liberation for ourselves and for the planet in the January issue, issue of science of mind magazine. By the way, I have a column in science, my magazine, and I really would encourage you to pick up the magazine. It's great for many things. The magazine produced by centers for spiritual living magazine that Ernest Holmes started back in 1927 and every month I'm in there a column called philosophy in action. It's usually somewhere towards the back. It's right after the article or the excerpt of a feature from Ernest Holmes, so they publish some writing of Ernest Holmes and then I write about it and kind of a modern context. And I'm going to take one of these episodes every month and focus on what I'm writing about in science of mind magazine is sort of some cross pollinating a advertising here. So if you don't know, science of mind signs my magazine a look them up online, check out their facebook page and you can pick up a copy of science of mind magazine at any Barnes and noble, uh, throughout the United States. So just go into Barnes and noble and look for it. It's a little, uh, it should be there somewhere near Reader's digest and things like that. Because it's about that kind of size. And so in this week's, this month's rather a issue of signs my magazine, I said this about our teaching, uh, that from the very beginning, new thought, the new movement in his head, a universal and sort of ecumenical approach to it saying so I always had a conviction that the spiritual truth of the universe can only be revealed, um, in some parts of every religion and spiritual expression, but it's not limited or contained by any of them. Right? So it's expressed in all of them, but it's not contained by any of them. Um, uh, further said that, uh, the, the emphasis on personal empowerment comes through the application of spiritual principles in our individual lives. And it's up to each of us to practice these principles, to demonstrate the truth in our own experience, rather than rely on the words of others. And here's what I really want you to get from, from this month's issue. When you take something that has within it a universal oneness, a, an ethic of universal oneness, and you marry that with a philosophy of personal freedom. Liberation from our thinking, from our negative thinking. Then what you end up is with a global ethic of liberation for everyone you can see there's no private good in the universe. The principle that makes it possible for you to manage and force for good in your life is the same principle that is available to anyone and everyone everywhere. Therefore, our own awakening serves as a liberating force for good that propels us into service for others. Dr Martin Luther King Junior said it this way. I cannot become what I ought to be unless you become what you ought to be and you cannot become what you ought to be unless I become what I ought to be. We are bound together and a garment of destiny. We are bound together in a garment of destiny. And so, uh, uh, right here, as we bring it, close to this, a second episode of new thoughts, um, I invite you to take a deeper look at your thoughts, the filter through which you see the world and make a commitment to a deeper awakening of your own divine self. Knowing that as you commit to it, you have to commit to your spiritual practices. You commit to your own growing and learning. Something that I've said in this podcast has sparked you to want to read or explore or learn more. I encourage you to do that. Um, and that as you do that, as you make that commitment, you ultimately are helping the world become a better place through the emancipation of your own soul. You become a liberating presence for others. And I think that is an idea worth expanding on. Alright, my friends, that's gonna do it for this episode. We're going to wrap things up here and next time I will have a guest with me. Uh, I hope and that's my plan. And uh, if you have an idea about who you'd like me to talk to and what you'd like me to talk about, please give me some feedback. Make a send in an email, check out the podcast on buzzsprout a or go to my personal webpage and Reverend David Alexander Dot Com. All the information is there. You can support this podcast there as well. There's the donation page, or you can check out our listing in stick stitcher, spotify, itunes, Google play, Alexa, all of those things are all coming online very soon if they're not there already. And, uh, of course you can always find more sermons and more messages from me from the new thought center for spiritual living on our facebook page and add new thought. CSL Dot Org. All right, my friends. Bye for now. Peace and blessings.