New Thought

New Thought, to make it easy for people who are not really familiar with it, is that it’s positive thinking, knowing God is in charge, and believing in the oneness that we have with all people, that the oneness is controlled by our attitude. It is knowing that we create our own experiences through the gift of free will. Now we have reached the point of “knowing” that we are making our own choices and learning to use wisdom in what we choose.

Understanding this we begin to make changes in our lives by deliberately evaluating the ideas, thoughts,directions, and inner guidance to ensure that we are choosing positive, successful and productive goals.

The principles in New Thought are not new. However, every time we have a new thought our lives change. Eventually we will have changed our words and thoughts so that we only have wonderful events in our lives.

New Thought is bible based because we believe that Jesus came to teach us a way of life. That way of life is to live in total harmony with each other, to love our neighbors, to follow the golden rule and to expect a good life.

We believe in Original Christianity, (before the man made rules), before the laws that were put in by people and is continuing to change. We believe the Spiritual Universe (God) gives us the ideas and we do the work. We believe that God is Spirit and as such, we must be the mouth, the hands, the feet, the love, the joy, the wealth, the goodness. We are the expression of the ideas of God. As soon as we accept that we become one with the creativity of the goodness of the universe.

What is Metaphysics

Metaphysical means beyond the physical. It is the study of the mind and body connection, the energy of the universe and how we relate to these studies of the spiritual world.

Metaphysics is one of the five branches of philosophy.

One of the misunderstood words is the word “consciousness”. Many people claim they (or others) have either a “high consciousness” or a “low consciousness”.

The word “consciousness” explained metaphysically is simple. It means that a person is the sum total of everything they have ever heard, read, seen, felt, touched or smelled (all of the senses) including beliefs impressed upon them by others. Most people believe that “high consciousness” means someone who is kind, loving, healthy, prosperous, etc. and that “low consciousness” means someone who is angry, sullen, hurtful, poor, ill, etc.

I believe that is a poor choice of words in giving a judgement of “where people are spiritually” which is not our business to judge.

It is true that we give and receive “according to our beliefs”. It is true that who we are now is determined by what we believed, thought about and acted upon in the past. It is also true that we can change our future by changing our beliefs, thoughts and actions.

We suggest that each person evaluate their beliefs systems by what they believe and what they wish to believe and change their beliefs accordingly. For example, if you were told as a child that the male members of your family always worked in the family business of running a warehouse and your real desire is building houses, you can make a success out of building houses. Or, if you are a female and you were told all the women were wonderful mothers and had 15 children each to carry on the family name….. and you don’t want 15 children, you really can choose another vocation.

The reality is in the study of metaphysics we learn that we can make new choices by changing the way we think, feel, speak, and believe.

What are the Different New Thought Organizations

The Oldest of the New Thought groups is Divine Science founded by Malinda Cramer in 1888 in San Francisco. She travelled extensively beginning in 1890 with a trip covering classes in Denver, Kansas City, Chicago, and St. Louis.Malinda also published the magazine Harmony from October, 1888 through April 1906. She advertised and promoted many of the early New Thought teachers giving us a vast amount of early history In Denver 63 lessons were given which included Fannie B James, (sister of Nona Brooks who lived in Pueblo at that time.) Later. when Nona and the other sister, Alethea Small moved to Denver they all studied under Malinda. Nona later went to California to study under Malinda and was ordained there in 1898. When Malinda died in 1906 the Denver group (Nona Brooks) took over the training of new students.

Next came Unity founded by Charles and Myrtle Fillmore in Kansas City . It is currently the largest of the organizations.

Ernest Holmes was ordained in Divine Science, then went on to found Religious Science. There are two branches, both have recently changed their names. United Church of Religious Science became United Centers for Spiritual Living. Religious Science International became International Centers for Spiritual Living. Both are headquartered in California.

International New Thought Alliance is an umbrella for all New Thought Organizations and has a yearly conference. The 2009 Conference will be held in Chicago August 24th-28th. For details contact INTA at 480-830-2462. There are currently 29 separate New Thought Organizations represented at the Annual Conference.

This is just a brief overview of metaphysics/New Thought.

Terrie