For those of you who tuned in late, The Philosopher's Stone , Alan and Deb's newsletter, was first launched in Spring/Summer 1993. The masthead listed Deb as Editor and Alan as Publisher. Graphics included our smiling faces, vintage 1991, and a Debsketch of a stone with a lantern next to it. In later iterations, the stone appeared on a low, wheeled platform, as the Philosopher sought a new location down among the sheltering palms, which were pictured after he/it arrived there. The newsletter went into hiatus as Alan's and Deb's lives became complicated in other areas. It may soon reappear, mailed to you on stone-colored stationery, or (preferably) by email subscription. No promises, but if you are interested in signing up, send us your email address with a request. For the foreseeable future, there will be no charge for the online version of the newsletter.
March 8, 2010
The Winter of our Discontent
At this time of year, winter seems to be dragging on unreasonably long, and everyone in the North is ready to scream. This year, those of us who thought we had escaped from New England to the sunny South find ourselves in the same predicament as we look out at withered ghosts of palm trees and bare stubs of hibiscus bushes. March so far has brought more "breezes loud and shrill" than "dancing daffodils". The only green in our yard is the weeds in the lawn, and the Philosopher hasn’t even poked his head out of the cave long enough to sweep the front walk. The news is full of blizzards and ice storms, earthquakes and bank failures, pirates and cruise ships struck by rogue waves, and flu epidemics even when they fail to materialize. States and even whole countries are facing bankruptcy. Our collective negativity seems to be manifesting itself in myriad ways, not the least of which is the global cooling which for the last fifteen years has rebutted the Big Lie of global warming, which turns out to be a conspiracy to make a few people very rich at the expense of the rest of us.
Let’s add to the pile the latest round of criticisms of New Thought, a book titled Bright-Sided: How the relentless promotion of positive thinking has undermined America, by Barbara Ehrenreich. She claims that "positive thinking" has led people to get mortgages they can’t afford, indulge in magical thinking, fail to guard against terrorists, and put an artificially cheerful face on disease and death, all while blaming the victim for failing to be positive enough. New Thought with its positive thinking is to blame for all the misery we are currently facing. But the distortions of New Thought that are being referred to as positive thinking are not New Thought as outlined by its early founders and proponents. It’s high time we set the record straight. It was Norman Vincent Peale whose famous book, The Power of Positive Thinking, started a lot of the fuss. But the critics neglect to note that it was Peale who also talked about the need to "keep on keeping on" when things aren’t going well, and it was Peale who also wrote The Tough-Minded Optimist. Turning one’s thoughts to God instead of to one’s problems and being optimistic about the outcome in the long run may be simple, but it is anything but easy.
I have said it before and I say it again: New Thought is all about what you say to yourself when everything seems to be going wrong. It has nothing to do with what philosopher Tom Morris calls "chirpy cheerfulness" or what New Thought minister Marianne Williamson calls "pouring pink paint over everything". If life were all sunshine and lollipops, it wouldn’t stay that way for long, because we would lose our hardiness. Most of us are well aware of what happens when we fail to get enough roughage (fiber) in our diet. If there were no darkness, how would we ever know what light is? Worst-case analysis can be a very positive thing to do because it helps ensure that we will reach our goals even if we run into difficulties and have to revise plans, and lucky people therefore tend to be pessimists. Author Robert Ringer in his highly misunderstood book, Winning Through Intimidation describes his Theory of the Sustenance of a Positive Attitude in the Face of a Negative Outcome, and that is more nearly what New Thought teaches.
There are dozens, if not hundreds, of stories about people who made the best of a bad situation and had things turn out all right. Joel Osteen recently recounted the tale of a man who was shipwrecked on a desert island. Weeks passed, and there seemed no hope of his being found and rescued. Then the hut that he had laboriously built caught fire and burned to the ground. This was too much for the man to bear, and he broke down and wept. Just then, a Coast Guard rescue boat landed on the beach. Overjoyed, the man cried, "How did you ever find me?" The Coast Guard officer replied, "We saw the smoke from your signal fire." God frequently comes to our aid at what Emmet Fox calls the thirteenth hour. When you have reached the end of your rope, as the saying goes, tie a knot and hold on. HOPE: Hold On, Praying Expectantly. I wish I’d said that.
3/1/2010
The Beginning
If you’re new to New Thought—or even if you’re not—you may wonder where it came from. It came from the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, without getting into the teachings about Jesus of Nazareth. Nineteen centuries later, a New England clockmaker and inventor named Phineas Parkhurst Quimby got interested in mesmerism, the latest scientific wrinkle at the time, decided to try his hand at it, and discovered to his surprise that 1) he was actually healing people, not faking anything, and 2) the explanation he had been given for mesmerism was inaccurate. Word quickly spread, and the world beat a path to the door of "the Portland doctor", who was healing all sorts of ailments, both physical and mental/spiritual. What Quimby did was to argue his patients out of the idea that they needed to be sick: as he put it, "mind acts upon mind" and "my explanation is the cure". It was the beginning of what was to become known as nonlocal healing on any sort of scientific basis, rather than the occasional miracle considered to be the suspension of natural law.
Quimby, puzzled at the terribly negative, self-punitive ideas that his patients had acquired from those he referred to as "the priests and the doctors", had begun his own careful reading of the Bible to see if he could find out where these toxic ideas were coming from. He found that many of the churches had twisted the message of the Bible into these damaging messages, and the real message of Jesus was one of life, love, healing, and prosperity. Quimby believed that he had rediscovered the lost healing methods of Jesus. He healed thousands of patients during his lifetime, but he did not leave any individual or institution able to carry on his work and develop his ideas.
Two of Quimby’s patients met in his office, fell in love, and married. Their eldest son, Horatio W. Dresser, grew up to be the first historian of what became the New Thought movement. He earned his Ph.D. in philosophy at Harvard, studying with William James and becoming a psychologist as well as an author of many books. He was a co-founder of the Metaphysical Club of Boston, arguably the cornerstone of the new movement. He founded and edited two journals, The movement, which was originally referred to as Mental Science, in 1894 acquired the name New Thought. In 1917 Dresser published a collection of speeches and essays by various early leading lights in the movement, including a few of his own, under the title The Spirit of the New Thought. Comments Dresser, "The theory was essentially a "new" thought for most of its devotees, a new attitude towards life, hence the term was in a sense appropriate." He continues,
The New Thought is a theory and method of mental life with special reference to healing, and the fostering of attitudes, modes of conduct and beliefs which make for health and general welfare. The theory in brief is that man leads an essentially mental life, influenced, shaped and controlled by anticipations, hopes and suggestions. . . . Life is largely what we make of it, what we bring to and call out of it. Hence the importance of cultivating optimistic, constructive and productive beliefs. Beliefs lead to attitudes and these determine conduct. . . . The application of these principles to life in general grows naturally out of the success attained in applying them to health. . . . The New Thought fosters individual development, and leads each man to believe he can go to the supreme sources of life. He may make of his theory and method a spiritual gospel by turning afresh to the New Testament to find it a guide to the efficient religious life. The Christ then becomes an inner or universal principle, accessible to every soul.
A century after Quimby, the Philosopher (Alan) also earned a Ph.D. in philosophy, writing his dissertation on Horatio W. Dresser and including much about Quimby. It was later published as the book Healing Hypotheses (now available online at www.ppquimby.com). Lately, we have been rereading The Spirit of the New Thought. The movement has been through so many changes over the years that it is refreshing to return to the viewpoint of the early participants, resting squarely on a foundation of American individual freedoms, Christian principles, and outstanding character as exemplified by the founders of the United States of America. Dresser concludes his introduction:
This is the spirit of the New Thought, the glad tidings it declares to the world—the great revelation of spiritual unity and beneficent evolution by the heeding of which not only disease shall cease, but war and unhappiness. It is another form of the gospel of the Christ. It is a new interpretation of the evangel of love.
It is high time we returned to those magnificent principles of the founders of New Thought and of the founders of the United States of America, the necessary climate into which New Thought could be born. The Spirit of the New Thought is available online by Googling The Spirit of the New Thought.
Reprinted from the first issue:
WHAT THIS IS ALL ABOUT
In days of yore, the philosopher's stone was what alchemists sought to transmute base metal into gold. The object of this newsletter is to help to transmute lives, throught higher consciousness and deeper understanding, for more abundant, successful living. One needed mental transmutation is from outmoded ideas, appropriate in a day of Newtonian physics, into views consistent with quantum physics. This calls for replacing notions of changeless substance with a vision of dynamic, developing process. In relation to New Thought, the result is Process New Thought.
Our mission is to teach, in a process perspective, the practice of the presence of God for practical purposes; in other words, to show people how changing their thinking, expectation, and ultimate awareness can bring about desired changes in their lives. We teach the philosophy and psychology of New Thought: the science behind the science of mind.
Alan has described philosophy as an armchair enterprise, one that examines the nature of reality and teaches people to think independently. A peripatetic philosopher, wandering about the world with his mental lantern for illumination, as philosophers are wont to do, might stop to rest upon a stone in place of his habitual armchair; and might address a few thought-provoking remarks to those who happened to be at hand, as philosophers are also wont to do. Such remarks might even be part of the cornerstone rejected by most philosophical builders.
* * *
I (Deb) have been thinking about the various heroes and heroines that I have come across over the years, people whom I have read about or perhaps even met, who serve as role models for me, particularly when going through one of those Red Sea places in life, where "there is no way out, there is no way back, there is no other way but through." One of the most recent ones is Terry McBride. I described his book in my notes last September, and since then, Alan and I have attended his seminar at Unity Church in Clearwater, Florida in October. We bought his set of cds and materials to help internalize the lessons he teaches.
To meet Terry, knowing his horrific medical history, is to be amazed at his obviously outstanding physical condition. He radiates energy and enthusiasm, moving with ease and vigor that make it hard to believe that he once faced the prospect of a short and painful life in a wheelchair. How could anyone who does a little hip wiggle to emphasize various points have ever had back problems? The mental image of his physical presence just won't go away, and I think, "If he could learn to overcome all of that, certainly I can overcome whatever I am facing at the moment." Some of his main points:
- Our beliefs determine our experiences.
- Beliefs--our own and others'--can be changed.
- We can live out our beliefs without making anyone else's wrong.
- God--however conceptualized--is already cocreating with us, empowering us; so, by our beliefs lined up with our intentions, we are--in a sense--controlling God.
You can order Terry's book through Amazon by clicking on the link to be found in our Book Store, or go to Terry's new website, http://www.terrymcbride.net for descriptions or purchase of his book, The Hell I Can't, and his cd program, Everybody Wins.
* * *
