Emerson Center for

Spiritual Awakening

New Thought based in ancient wisdom ... 

the timeless teachings of

Religious Science

 

Dr. Susanne Freeborn, Senior Minister

Rev. Linda S. Siddall, Assistant Minister

Web Page Index

[ Home ]

[Current Sunday Topics & News]

 [ Sunday Lessons 

 Index of Texts ]

[ About Us ]

[New Thought Links ]

[ Spiritual Services ]

[ Sample Order of Service ]

[ Classes & Study Groups ]

[ Emerson Online Studies ]

[ Site Directory ]

[ Press Releases ]

[ Driving Directions or Information Requests ]

Guest Book

Articles of Interest

[ What is Time? ]

[ Laws of Success ]

[  A Little Light: Quotations Collection ]

Ancient Wisdom Taught in a Modern Way!

Creating A New Life

October 29, 2000

Linda Siddall, RScP, Pastoral Care Director

 Have you ever noticed that, when your life is in a rut or you are starving for a change in conditions, you try bargaining with God to make things better?

     “God, if You just give me enough money to pay off my bills, I’ll never overspend again.”

      “God, I promise to go to church every Sunday if You would just help me get this job, or this car, or this house, or this relationship, etc. ….”

Some of us try to force God to do what we want, much like Little Joey that I’m going to tell you about.

Little Joey wanted a baby sister and wrote a letter to God about it. He started the letter by saying, “Dear God, I’ve been a very good boy.” Then he thought, “No, God won’t believe that,” so he tore up the paper and wrote, “Dear God, mostly I’ve been a good boy,” and then he shook his head and tore up the paper. Finally, he took his mother’s statue of the Madonna from the living room, wrapped it in his sweatshirt, tucked it in the bottom drawer of his dresser, and wrote: “Dear God, if you ever want to see your mother again, you’ll give me a little sister.”

Threatening God does not work!

Now you might be thinking, “I know better. I practice the Science of Mind. I know that you can’t bargain with God, threaten God, or force God to do anything. What really works are affirmations and affirmative prayer!”

Those of us who pride ourselves on practicing Truth principles say, “If I affirm every day, maybe even 12 times a day, that I already have that car, then I will have it. If I write on brightly colored Post-It notes that I already have that job, and stick the notes all over the house and on my computer, then I will be moving in to my new office by the middle of next week!”

And so we affirm a dozen times a day and still don’t get what we want. We treat until our lips turn blue, and yet our lives remain much the way they were. We’re affirming. We’re visualizing. We treating. We’re doing all the right things and saying all the right words. But, it just isn’t happening! Why not? What’s the deal here?

This is the “deal.” Stating an affirmation is merely wishful thinking unless we believe that we already have our good. Visualization without action is just a hallucination unless we embody the belief that we already have our good. Treating without passion in the words spoken is just spitting in the wind unless we feel that we already have our good. We must have unshakable faith in the One Mind and develop a consciousness that reflects that faith.

Our experiences in life result not from what we wish would happen but from our current state of consciousness. We cannot change our current experiences until there is movement in consciousness.

Every aspect of our lives reflects what is going on inside us. This is because God expresses through us at our highest level of belief. So if our lives do not demonstrate where we want to be, then we must raise our level of belief by creating a new cause for the desired effect. But how do we do that? How do we create a new life for ourselves?

We begin by remembering that what we think, we can un-think. We remember the principle that “Truth known is demonstrated.” And we remember to use the creative process wisely and consciously, knowing that it works like this: God gives. We receive. We speak our word. The Law of Mind acts on our word. Our word manifests into form.

Now let me talk about each part of this creative process. First, God gives and we receive: It is God’s nature to give, not take away. If all is God, and we are a part of God, then we automatically receive that which is God because it is also a part of us. We must then embody in our consciousness the belief that “God gives.” We speak our word: We declare that we have that which we desire—right now. We pray toward the desired result, not from the current condition, knowing that the desired result is already done in the Mind of God. It is not something waiting to occur if only we pray hard enough or long enough. It is not trying to bargain with or threaten God. The Law of Mind acts on our word: Being an impersonal law, this Law puts into action exactly what we believe, good or bad. In other words, It gives us exactly what we believe. If we say we want a better job but our underlying belief is that we don’t really deserve to have one, you can be sure that we won’t have one. Our word manifests into form. The One Mind knows exactly what to d without us having to tell it what to do or how to do it. It acts upon what we have given it from our own consciousness. That which we have prayed from shows up in form. As we sow, so shall we reap. It is done to us as we believe. If we believe that life is rough, and then we die, (as a popular bumper sticker says), that’s the kind of life we will lead. When we believe that every moment of the day we have the power to change our lives simply by changing our beliefs, then we cannot help but have a richer and more satisfying way of being.

As practitioners of New Thought, in general, and Religious Science, in particular, we know that we create our reality. This is a common metaphysical principle that we sometimes forget. We seem to remember it when our lives are sailing along blissfully and we don’t have a care in the world. And then we hit stormy seas, and the Truth becomes a lost idea to us. And we don’t know how to change the condition. Here’s a short story from a 1997 issue of Life Magazine that illustrates this point.

 The Creator gathered together all of creation and said, “I want to hide something from the humans until they are ready for it. It is the realization that they create their own reality.”  

The eagle said, “Give it to me. I will take it to the moon.”

 The Creator said, “No. One day they will go there and find it.”

 The salmon said, “Give to me. I will take it to the bottom of the ocean.”

 The Creator said, “No, they will go there, too.”

 The buffalo said, “Give it to me. I will bury it on the Great Plains.”

 The Creator said, “They will cut into the skin of the earth and find it even there.”

 Then the Grandmother mole, who lives in the breast of Mother Earth, and who has no physical eyes but sees with spiritual eyes, said, “Put it inside them.”

And the Creator said, “It is done.”

You have the power to create your own reality, to change your thinking, to change your life. Do you realize that? Are you using this power wisely and creating an enriching life? Are you wondering how to change your own reality to something more desirable?

Anna Freud said, “Creative minds have always been known to survive any kind of bad training.” In essence, she was saying that by changing our thinking, we could alter our way of being in this world. I thought about her statement after I read it, and remembered one of my friends, who blames everything that happens to him on karma. I tell him that karma explains only where we are now. It doesn’t determine our future. And it’s the same idea about our current experiences that we don’t want. They explain where we are now. They don’t determine where we want to go. What determines that is our state of conscious working jointly with the creative process that is always at work with in us. We are always co-creating with God.

Ernest Holmes says, “Whatever the mind holds to and firmly believes in, forms a new pattern of thought within its creative mold, as whatever thought is held in the mind tends to take outward form in new creations. This is the secret—and the whole secret—of the creative law of mind.” That’s the Creative Process at work. Reverse the thought and you reverse the condition.

Holmes also says, “There is but One Mind and One Law, which all people use, consciously or unconsciously, constructively or destructively.” He goes on to say, “Freedom and bondage, sickness and health, poverty and riches, Heaven and Hell, good and bad, big and little, happiness and misery, peace and confusion, faith and fear, and all conditions that appear to be opposites, are not really a result of the operation of opposing powers, but ARE THE WAY THE ONE POWER IS USED.” Let me share with you how this process has worked in my life to produce desired results.

In his book, The Dragon Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, Alan Cohen says, “Give it all up and you get it all back. I believe that this is an immensely potent formula for finding freedom and joy in living. Every time I have put this principle in action, it has worked. Whenever I have let go of something, God has either given me something better or shown me that I’m better off without it. More and more, I have come to see that God is always giving us exactly what we need for our highest good, and at no cost to anyone.”

Now, when the Law of Mind acts on our word, we have to take the steps required to get the desired result. Too many of us don’t really understand the phrase, “Let go and let God.” We think it means, “Okay, I treated so I’ll just get out of the way and let God handle it. I don’t need to do anything else.”

What it actually means is that we state our treatment and release it to the Law of Mind, which acts upon it. We don’t hold onto the prayer and tell God exactly when, where, and how we want the results to show up in our lives. But, when God leads us to take certain actions that allows the desired result to spring forth to unfold, then we must take them.

“But what if I fail?” you ask. “What if I make the wrong choice?” In his book, Spiritual Economics, Eric Butterworth says, “Life is fundamentally a matter of growing, a growth experience. Missing the mark is one of the ways in which we learn to hit the target. Failure is a vital part of achieving success. We have erroneously thought of success as ‘getting there,’ while actually success is ‘earning the right to be there.’ And earning means learning. Setbacks, even failures, may be an important part of learning.” So, there is no wrong choice. It’s all a way to learn and to grow into greater divine beings.

When I was in transition from being a banker to becoming a self-employed writer, my belief system supported that outcome. First, I was prepared emotionally and mentally for such a change. Second, I believed in my talent and skills. Third, I believed that I already had the network of people in place and other resources needed to jump-start the business, even when I couldn’t always see them. I had faith that they were there. I believed that “God gives and doesn’t take away.” So I was ready to move toward my higher good when Spirit revealed to me my purpose at that point in my life.

When I was completing my Practitioner studies and being called to end-of-life issues as a ministry, I was divinely led into hospice care as a volunteer. Later, I was then prepared for a staff hospice chaplain position offered to me because of the extensive training I had received as a businesswoman, as a licensed Religious Science practitioner, and as a volunteer hospice chaplain.

More importantly, as a result of my belief that I’m here to do God’s work, which is always being revealed to me, I saw that all my life had been lived in preparation for my varied careers. My education, business background, work experience, and losses had prepared me for exactly what I was to do—and to be—next. And it may well be the same for you, too.

Mary Manin Morrisey said, “Sometimes we turn to God when our foundations are shaking, only to find out it is God who is shaking them.” One might think that, when I lost my job, my foundation crumbled. I certainly thought that for the first few weeks after I was laid off. And then I saw through different eyes, through God’s eyes, and realized that God is in every situation. I was not my job; I was Spirit in form. Spirit—God—is always good, so the good from this experience was already present, if I just opened my spiritual eyes to see it. God had nudged me to this place for a divine reason. It was time to grow.

 That Teacher of Teachers, Emma Curtis Hopkins, said, “Nothing can resist the very first proclamation of Truth if we let it be spoken through us. There are many names of our Good. They are all names to which all the universe of worlds nod their heads and oppose not when they are named. The irresistible name is Good. The irresistible name is God. It is an idea, which is in everything, everywhere, and therefore you speak an omnipresent idea when you say: ‘I seek my Good; my Good is my God. My Good is my free life. My Good is my free health.’ ”

 When Life has bigger plans for us, we better get out of the way and let them unfold or there’s going to be big trouble. I love the way that Morrissey puts it: “No matter what size nest we’ve built, life’s got a bigger plan for us. Pretty soon you’re going to find that nest squeezing because you’re bigger than the life you’re leading. There’s more to you than you have experienced, and so life is going to give you a squeeze, and you’re going to feel some pricks, some pokes, and it’s going to hurt. If you fight it and try to remain where you are, it’s going to hurt more. But if you surrender and open your heart, you’ll find that life delights to lift you into a much higher and grander and more glorious experience.”

 My passion for the technical writing business began to wane in my ninth year of business. Yet, I was still clinging to the idea of being a technical writer because it’s all I thought I knew. As I held on for dear life, I encountered more and more obstacles, such as having a signed contract with each of four large, prestigious Bay Area companies, then having two of those contracts suddenly canceled and two reduced in scope and income. Those obstacles were the “squeezes, pricks, and pokes” that Morrissey was talking about. It was time for me to pay attention, become aware of the laws of the universe operating for my highest and greatest good. These were my signs that I had better change my thinking about my life fast and become more of God in an even greater way.

Holmes says, “Our belief sets the limit to our demonstration of Principle which, of Itself, is without limit. It is ready to fill everything, because It is Infinite. So, it is not a question of Its willingness, nor Its ability. It is entirely a question of our own receptivity.” I had to take my attention away from the appearance of lack and limitation, and place it on the giving nature of Spirit, on the ever abundant and loving Universe.

By changing my thinking about this situation, I was using the Law of Concentrated Attention more wisely. The law states that whenever attention is concentrated on an idea over and over again, it spontaneously tends to realize Itself.

 It was time to let it go. I flew from my old, restrictive nest into a bigger, more freeing one. And I continue to grow, to remain aware of my oneness with God and to be more of God each day, to the level at which I am ready to accept that goodness.

When I turned that corner in my thinking four years ago, the executive director at Mission Hospice read over the job requirements and compared them with my training, experience, and skills. She saw that I met every requirement. I was ready to step into my jobs as chaplain and bereavement services coordinator and run with them, in spite of what my what my limited thinking first told me the agency wanted. My old way of thinking would have sabotaged my chances for success. The new way of thinking saved me.

Emmet Fox stated that idea clearly when he said, “We are constantly balancing our ‘outer’ desires by our inner negative thoughts and feelings with the consequence that we do not demonstrate the things we would like to have…Let no little ‘devils’ cancel out your treatments.” When I stopped the negative thoughts about my capabilities and gifts, and expanded my consciousness, God revealed to me what the hospice wanted and showed me that I already had it.

In the book, A New Design for Living, Holmes says, “The starting point for our experience of a greater freedom, a greater good, is the emancipation of our own thought. And as we start to free our thought, we realize that in such degree as we work with the laws of Spirit, they will serve us. Even bondage itself, any sort of bondage, is but a false use we make of freedom.”

You might be thinking, “She was just lucky to be in the right place at the right time.” Luck had nothing to do with it. I was divinely led to be exactly where I was because I remained available to God and I used the creative process intelligently.

You might be thinking, “This all sounds like a lot of hard work.” It is hard work only if you resist change. There is nothing in the universe that seeks to maintain the old except the human mind. All change is a natural form of evolution; only we humans fight it because we’d rather stay with what we know, no matter how much “what we know” may limit us. If I had persisted in believing that I wasn’t qualified for the job, I would have reaped the results of that erroneous belief and would not have realized a much greater potential in myself.

Or, you might be thinking that this outcome was a “miracle” that wouldn’t happen to you. But what is a miracle, really? It is not the suspension of natural law, but the operation of a higher law. It is the correct use of divine law. It is the constructive use of the creative process.

 In fact, I was using wisely the Law of Correspondence, which means “as within, so without.” For everything that is created, there must be a picture, a mental equivalent for it to exist in the world of our experience. I had a mental equivalent for the desired outcome, and that was “seeing” and “feeling” myself being spiritual nurturing to the dying and their families.

 Psychologists tell us that every one of us thinks an average of between 65,000 and 70,000 thoughts a day and 90 to 95% of those thoughts are repetitive. They’re the same thoughts we’ve always thought and they become the patterns of our thinking. Thought patterns create the experiences of our lives. Are your thoughts negative, self-limiting, or self-diminishing? Or are they radiant with joy and life and creativity? We can change our thinking, and we can change the pattern of our lives. This is the secret to authentic power.

 Here’s how a man that I’ll call “Dave” used the creative process, without knowing or understanding how it works.  

“There was a peculiar flavor to the conversations he had been having lately. It seemed like everybody he met was struggling just to get by, living a challenged survival. It was beginning to get to him. Surely, he reasoned, there are people out there not so overwhelmed by life. He wondered why he was attracting only people with problems.  

It was pointed out he had been going through some rough times himself, and had been sharing the ups and downs with those around him. People with similar issues began to congregate around him, and he was merely reaping what he had been sowing.” 

Here again is the creative process at work. This man was using the Law unconsciously and creating a life of struggle for himself. His thoughts, ideas, words—his belief system—focused on lack. And his life reflected those beliefs because the Creative Process acted upon what he gave it. The law didn’t stop to think, “Oh, Dave doesn’t really mean that, so I’ll do this instead.” It simply did what he told it to do.

  In Conversations with God, Neale Donald Walsche wrote, “The tools of creation are thought, word, and deed. That which you think of, but thereafter never speak of, creates at one level. That which you think of and speak of creates at another level. That which you think, speak, and do manifests in your reality. To think, speak, and do something which you do not truly believe is impossible. Therefore, the process of creation must include belief or knowing. This is absolute faith. This is knowing of a certainty. This place of knowing is a place of intense and incredible gratitude. This is thankfulness in advance and it is the biggest key to creation: to be grateful before and for, the creation. Such taking for granted is not only condoned, but also encouraged. It is the sure sign of mastery. All Masters know in advance that the deed is done. Celebrate and enjoy all that you create. Whatever it is that is now presenting itself as part of your creation, own it, claim it, bless it, and be thankful for it.”

What he has described is how we create a new life. We don’t bargain with God. We don’t threaten God. We don’t bend the world to our will, but instead move into alignment with the Master Creator.

  We can be like an old mule in this short story I’d like to share with you. Once there was a farmer who owned an old mule. I’ll call the mule Old Clarence. One day Old Clarence fell into the farmer’s well and the farmer heard him “praying,” or whatever mules do when they fall into wells.

  After carefully assessing the situation, the farmer sympathized with Old Clarence, but decided that neither the mule nor the well was worth the trouble of saving. Instead, he called his neighbors together, told them what had happened, and enlisted them to help haul dirt to bury Old Clarence in the well and put him out of his misery.

  Initially, Clarence was hysterical! But as the farmer and his neighbors continued shoveling and the dirt hit his back, a thought struck him. It dawned on him that every time a shovel load of dirt landed on his back, HE COULD SHAKE IT OFF AND STEP UP!

  This he did, blow after blow. “Shake it off and step up...shake it off and step up...shake it off and step up!”

  He repeated this to encourage himself. No matter how painful the blows, or how distressing the situation seemed, the Old Clarence fought “panic” and just kept right on SHAKING IT OFF AND STEPPING UP!

  It wasn’t long before that old mule, battered and exhausted, STEPPED TRIUMPHANTLY OVER THE WALL AND OUT OF THAT WELL! What seemed like it would bury him actually helped him, all because of the manner in which he handled this appearance of adversity.

  Old Clarence simply changed his thinking about his situation and, in that moment, saw opportunity instead of danger. He refused to give in to panic, bitterness, or self-pity.

The lesson here is that THE ADVERSITIES THAT COME ALONG TO BURY US USUALLY HAVE WITHIN THEM THE VERY REAL POTENTIAL TO BENEFIT US! The losses or setbacks we have in our lives can potentially benefit us if we but change our thinking about them.

We don’t know what we are missing until it arrives. What wonderful things are you missing in your life because you aren’t yet using the creative process wisely? What potential are you not yet realizing because you have forgotten that you are a divine being, a creative expression of Spirit? Where can you change your beliefs and your thinking for a better outcome in your life?

I’m going to stop here for two minutes and ask you to go within and find just one idea or belief you can change this week to create a new life for yourself.

(TWO-MINUTE PAUSE)

Don’t worry about how the desired result will manifest. Stay aligned in consciousness with God. Let the creative process manifest your greatest good at your highest level of belief. Know that it must happen in us before it can happen to us.

Put these principles in action today, starting right now to create a new, richer, more joyful, and more rewarding life for yourselves. Open your minds, hearts, and consciousness to allow God to be an even greater expression of Itself in you, as you, and through you. To borrow a line from the U.S Army, “Be all that you can be,” reaching your highest potential and having no regrets and no unfinished business. That way, when it comes time to die, all you have to do is die!

Warmly Celebrating Spiritual Growth and Abundant Life in an Open Community

Send mail to Dr. Susanne Freeborn with questions or comments about Emerson Center or this  web site.
Copyright © 2000-2002 Emerson Center for Spiritual Awakening
Last modified: August 23, 2002