The more I study ancient spiritual principles and listen to modern lectures on the discoveries (& differences between) the quantum & classical views of reality; the more I know that we are fast heading to that place that described by Ernest Holmes in his seminal work, The Science of Mind.
“We all look forward to the day when science and religion shall walk hand in hand through the visible to the invisible. “
Ernest Holmes
Enjoy!
Each day I think that the national news surely can’t get any worse,…and then the nightly news proves me wrong. We are clearly living in tumultuous times, where long-standing norms are being upended left and right. There is a great temptation to consider the possibility of moving overseas, but that’s more complicated than it seems with multiple generations of family to consider.
Mulling over several disturbing news reports that have emerged over the past few weeks, I began to think about what I should be doing about things. Should I be protesting, running for office, setting up a non-profit? What is it that I could or should be doing?
During this time, I’ve also been diving deep into the teachings of Neville Goddard. The intersection of these 2 subjects finally came into focus for me and I realized what my work is to do: I need to keep teaching.
In his most popular lectures, Neville outlines examples where he used spiritual principles to change things for the better in his life. He recounted multiple times how he secured an honorable discharge from the US Army during WWII, as well as securing passage on a transport ship back to the USA from the West Indies within a day when all passage was booked for months ahead.
As I listened to Neville recount his story of the trip back to New York, I recalled a story that Wayne Dyer told about a time he and his wife were trying to fly out of Istanbul (1974). A military incursion had begun to brew and the airport was in full-blown chaos. The political unrest had rendered their airline tickets invalid and there were few alternative options.
In “I Can See Clearly Now” Dyer recounted how, as everyone in the airport was panicked and frightened, he kept his thoughts and his intention laser focused on getting on a plane that morning and flying out of the region. He refused to give into the fear, and held on to the vision of himself and his wife boarding a plane that morning that he says he “stuck like Super Glue” in his imagination. As it turned out, he and his wife were able to get the last 2 seats on a military transport and leave the area. The day they arrived back in the United States, Turkey invaded Cyprus – they had made it out just in time.
One of the most important skills we can learn in these politically unstable times is how to use the spiritual principles taught by Wayne Dyer, Neville Goddard and others that can shift time and space to make seemingly impossible things happen in our favor.
I’ve blogged about things less intense than escaping a war zone, such as finding a part time job when I needed money for a roof; finding an answer to paying my student loans; being in the right place at the right time for someone in need; and more. I know without a shadow of a doubt that this works – and I have seen that the more I study and apply these principles, the more things come together for me in perfect (Divine?) time and space.
Important to consider: the time to learn these skills is not when we’re facing a crisis – but in times of low stress. Learning and practicing on small things, and then expanding our ability to use the tools to larger things builds spiritual muscles. The “muscle memory” we are creating will kick in and work when the stress of a situation or circumstance threatens to throw off our concentration. When we learn and consistently use the principles, we are able to use them no matter what is taking place around us.
If ignoring the news isn’t a likely occurrence for you; you can counter the feelings of terror or helplessness. See these times as a call to arms – as the nudge you needed to inspire you to knuckle down and really learn the spiritual principles that can help you alter time and space when you need it most.
Some recommended resources:
(C) 2019 Practitioner's Path
From the time I was a very little girl, I have been instructed on how to pray. I grew up in the traditional, “high church” Protestant tradition (quiet contemplation, not loud praise) and learned the typical Anglo-American way to approach the Divine with various wants and needs.
In the Christian tradition, this is an approach of supplication: “Please consider my plea, all my good deeds, and grant me that which I desire.”
As an adult, I questioned this for many reasons, and that questioning led me to the study of ancient, non-Anglo spiritual studies and their presentation through New Thought (which is really OLD Thought in new garments).
The organized religions in New Thought have patterned their ways after the Protestants that preceded them in formally organizing. They have high-mucky mucks in charge of this and that, and they pass out titles in exchange for investments in their organizations. And they have established a RIGHT and a WRONG way of doing various things – including how to pray.
I have to admit that I bought into this initially and I must say that I have also learned a lot along the way. Funny thing about reading, though – the more you read and learn and think for yourself; the more you see things as they really are and not as others would like you to see them. Such it has been for me on the path of understanding prayer.
While immersing myself in organized New Thought studies, I was also reading widely across the emerging spiritual teachings of the day, including Wayne Dyer and Deepak Chopra – whose early exposure and immersion in the Hindu tradition makes him an especially rich resource for interpreting New Thought.
These teachers (and others, too numerous to mention, including many Rishis from long ago) were opening my mind and my eyes to the simplicity of communing with the Divine even as I was being instructed that there was another “right way” to do it.
Some of these teachers spoke in ways that would be comfortably welcomed in a liberal Christian church, while others spoke of things that most ministers would claim as blasphemy. Long ago I stopped being afraid to question the commandments of men (and women) with robes and titles, so I found myself drawn to those whose perspectives were most independent from the mainstream. I was sure that they had something of value to add to my journey. Neville Goddard was one such teacher.
In a previous blog I wrote about Neville and his great gift to the world. His contention that God is not some outside force, but lives within humankind as “our own wonderful, human imagination” would make most ministers of the cloth fall faint; but if you’ve studied Neville and taken his advice to try out what he shared, you know, like I do, that there’s something to it (maybe they faint worrying about not being able to pass the offering plate if too many people figure this out for themselves!!?!?)
A year ago I was looking at my finances and doing some pre-retirement planning. I knew that my savings were on track, but I wanted to make sure that I was also addressing other factors that would be relevant, and one of these was debt.
The one significant area of debt in my life was student loans, and I decided to use the tools and techniques I had been learning to deal with them. I was tired of paying them each month, and wanted to be free of that debt, but in a way that was fair and equitable to all. I didn’t want to stop paying them and thumb my nose at the creditors, but I also didn’t want to pay them out of my existing budget any longer. I knew better than to get attached to any particular way of resolving this, such as deciding that I would win the lottery or receive a long-lost inheritance from a rich relative. I decided to undertake a Neville-esque approach, following one of the ways he described in his lecture series from the mid-20th century.
“My third way of praying is simply to feel thankful. If I want something, either for myself or another, I immobilize the physical body, then I produce the state akin to sleep and in that state just feel happy, feel thankful, which thankfulness implies realization of what I want.”
“I assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled and with my mind dominated by this single sensation I go to sleep. I need do nothing to make it so, because it is so. My feeling of the wish fulfilled implies it is done.”
Neville Goddard, Core Lecture #4
Given this construct, I set about feeling the joy I would feel if I no longer had to pay that large, student loan payment each month. I did not craft elaborate prayers, petition others to pray for me or chant affirmations. I simply felt gratitude for this debt being taken off of me, as if it had ALREADY been accomplished. I also avoided daydreaming how it would come about. I remained in the END STATE of the loans not being part of my monthly expenses any longer.
It was a Saturday, much like today, and nothing seemed to happen immediately, but I did not allow myself to know anything other than gratitude for this accomplished state – especially that night when I went to sleep.
About a month or so later, someone stopped by my office at work. As we were chatting, they mentioned that their fiance had just signed paperwork that would have our employer pay her student loans in exchange for an agreement to stay on in her job for the next few years. I was immediately intrigued, and as soon as they left my office, I made a phone call.
Long story short, I am no longer sending a student loan payment in every month: the payments are being made by my employer, in exchange for me agreeing to remain for a few years. In the world of Caesar (as Neville referred to the physical world), I knew I would be working somewhere for at least a few more years. I like my job and am well-compensated, so it was not a hard choice to make in exchange for the student loans being paid on my behalf.
Some may say that this conversation would have happened anyway. Perhaps, but I’ve seen this kind of thing happen enough times that I’m not quick to believe that is the case.
One of Neville Goddard’s great gifts to the world was his uncloaking of the simple Truth in a way that is accessible to everyone. There is no need to get up early on Sunday morning, or put a certain percentage of your money in a basket or bronzed plate that is passed around, or to find specific words (while avoiding others) and place them in a pre-ordained order of speaking. We need only train ourselves to be able to feel thankful for what it is that we desire, and then assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled – to know that it is done, and live in this knowing, period.
If this is NEW to you, don’t start with something so large that your own doubt will cloud the possibilities: start with something that you can believe could happen. Once you learn how to use this, you’ll find that no news is devastating; no situation doomed; no lack unfulfilled.
Practice, keep reading and learning and live the life you truly desire to live!
(C) 2019 Practitioner's Path
To learn more; check out this lecture (in Neville's own voice).
The Google online dictionary defines HEALING as: the process of making or becoming sound or healthy again.
In a recent post I was critical of some leaders of a large spiritual organization who vocalize a narrow viewpoint that is rooted in lack consciousness. As I discussed my perspective with some colleagues, one person asked me how my contrary position aligned with “a healing consciousness“.
It was a valid question, and I thought about it for a day or so before coming to my conclusion. Sometimes the healing that is needed is difficult change.
As I pondered the question, my mind returned to the history of Infection Control in healthcare and the Savior of Mothers, who is credited for an early understanding of disease and the need for disinfection in the hospital setting, Ignaz Semmelweis.
Semmelweis was a Hungarian physician who was practicing in Vienna in the mid-1800s. At that time, Viennese physicians wore heavy, woolen cloaks. These were the visual badge of their prestige and credentials in society. Even though they were soaked with the blood, urine, feces and other body fluids of the patients they treated and the corpses they studied, they wore them with pride. It is noted in history that you could “smell” the physicians when they gathered in public places due to the thick odors held in their cloaks which they never cleaned (another tradition and badge of honor).
Semmelweis was not part of the “in” crowd with the Viennese elite physicians. His ethnicity counted against him; he was coarse in his manner and perceived to be vulgar. But Semmelweis was a thinker and he wasn’t impressed with the smelly, elite doctors. In fact, he believed that their arrogance was killing people.
At that time, child-bed fever (puerperal fever) was killing so many women in the obstetrical wards of Viennese hospitals that women were opting to have their babies in the streets as it was actually much less likely that they would die. There was well-founded and widespread fear of having a baby in the hospital.
Semmelweis had collected data and made observations that led him to hypothesize that there was something about the practice of performing an autopsy and then tending to patients that was causing the ridiculous mortality (death) rates.
He made other observations such as that the mortality rate at a different hospital, where only midwives (who did not perform autopsies) delivered babies, was significantly lower.
Semmelweis recommended that physicians rinse their hands in a lime solution (calcium hypochlorite) after performing autopsies and before touching patients. He was roundly ridiculed. His methods were scorned and his data and observations dismissed. After all, the credentialed, elite doctors of the day were in charge, and they had no interest in hearing what someone outside of their inner circle had to say – especially someone with a suspect pedigree – someone lower than them on the hierarchy.
Semmelweis was excited about the potential to save lives, but he had inspired the ire of the credentialed elites, and it would cost him his life. He was falsely accused of having a mental breakdown and committed involuntarily to an insane asylum where he died (from an infection) after being beaten to death by guards. There is speculation that his beating was done at the behest of some of his enemies in the physician ranks.
Decades later, Louis Pasteur and others would validate his hypothesis with the discovery of germ theory. Today, effective infection control is built on the observations he first made – observations that irritated and angered the credentialed, elite physicians of his day.
It’s always dangerous to buck the power structure as Semmelweis found out; but in the end, he was RIGHT. His healing contributions came to light through his role as a disrupter. And it’s important to note from his history, that he started out by attempting to have professional conversations with his colleagues. As the politics of “this is the way we’ve always done it” overtook scientific evidence and good sense, he grew strident, and dug in. It is still hard to remain smiling and calm in the face of willful ignorance.
Today there is a statue of Semmelweis in Budapest Hungary in front of the
Szent Rókus Hospital. His remains, long ago buried in a pauper’s grave, were transferred to a memorial built on the site of his former home. He is now revered as the Savior of Mothers for his work to stop the scourge of child-bed fever.
We can learn much from the lessons of history. The voices who criticize; who call out hypocrisy, or challenge “the way we’ve always done it” may be the healers our professions or organizations need most. The question for us is whether we are grounded enough to embrace their messages and push for change. Or will we, like the Viennese elite physicians, continue to wear our filthy, germy cloaks and cast them as troublemakers; mentally deficient and work to banish them from our ranks?
Like the footnotes on child-bed fever, the history books will tell our story. Are we writing it in a way that will make us proud when future generations read about us? Or are we pulling our putrid, smelly cloaks more tightly around us and pronouncing the disrupters around us “disloyal” and unworthy?
Only time will tell.
(C) 2019 Practitioner's Path
Many people were dedicated students of [Ernest Holmes] philosophy, actively supporting his teaching. They began urging him to set up an organization and incorporate.
Ernest Holmes resisted initially, feeling that an organization would be restrictive. He insisted on the necessity of individual spiritual freedom, saying that Infinite Truth was not the exclusive property of any special group of people, and that his teaching was not a “final revelation”.
SOM Archives
I taught for many years in a professional health care program that culminated in new graduates sitting for a credentialing exam – medical records administration – which in the late 1990s changed its name to Health Information Management.
In decades prior, these credentials were required if one wanted to work in the field of medical records management.
I still hold these credentials and work in a traditional medical records environment, but I am the anomaly. I returned to this environment recently after spending most of my career in non-traditional roles and find my experience to be useful as the profession faces significant change. As someone who is not rooted in “the way it’s always been” I am able to lead the (many) changes that are occurring in my department and profession.
There is unrest in the HIM profession right now because the credentials that were once REQUIRED are no longer given the deference they had in the past. The world has shifted from the days when paper pages filled cardboard folders, creating the record of medical care. Today the Electronic Health Record (EHR) has emerged with the rest of the technology revolution and changed healthcare and my profession.
These changes have had a significant impact on the credentialing organization. I taught at the baccalaureate and graduate level. When I left academia, the department chair had implemented a requirement that students sit for the credentialing exam to graduate, because so many students were finding jobs – GOOD jobs – without the credential and so few students wanted to pay the money and sit for the exam. For me, this was the first clue that the onward march of technology and time was exerting an impact on “the way it’s always been done” in my profession. More evidence on this would follow.
The Joint Commission (TJC) is the gold standard accreditation body that helps to hold health care organizations to high standards of care by providing oversight and evaluation of their policies, practices and more. In previous years, when TJC site visitors showed up, a call was made was to the Director of Medical Records/HIM. One reason was that the number of unsigned charts was historically a significant review activity.
In recent years, HIM Directors are not only missing from the first-call list, but sometimes never make contact with the visitors. One reason is the Electronic Health Record which makes it next to impossible to “hide” unsigned medical documentation. Instead of needing to go through the HIM Director to see if a random sample of charts are signed, anyone with login credentials can generate a report of all the unsigned records at the click of a button.
I believe another reason is that accreditation agencies have ranked patient safety as a more important metric to monitor than unsigned notes (and I agree). With limited resources and a need to focus on the biggest bang for the buck, a decision was made to remove the accreditation requirement for “delinquent records” (those that are missing or unsigned) from their checklist.
And just like that – the role of the HIM/Medical Records Director changed.
Seemingly overnight (it wasn’t), the selling points for earning and maintaining a credential in the HIM field have evaporated along with the traditional medical records department in many facilities. Rooms with multiple moving shelves of paper records have been replaced by servers and the cloud.
In Pittsburgh, one large health system which is comprised of more than 20 hospitals in the greater Pittsburgh region, closed all the HIM departments in their facilities and now manages their HIM operations from a single, central location filled with computers in the heart of their flagship location.
Why am I writing about this on a spiritually-themed blog?
Because it is an example of the impact of technology and shifting norms that are inevitable as time moves on. And because I see the same “camps” in my spiritual community that I have seen in my professional sphere:
In the HIM field, there are MANY ways to apply the foundational education that is provided in the best programs. The graduates that I and others have taught are proof positive that this is the case, as they are a who’s who of successful, professional individuals working in the healthcare industry. They do not manage medical records departments; but the skills they learned in college opened doors into careers that will sustain them as long as they choose.
I recently heard someone in my larger spiritual sphere talk about the need for loyalty to the main organization that credentials religious science Practitioners, and I had a deja vu experience.
Ten years ago I was hearing this same verbiage from a department chair (and others in the credentialing organization). Did their mandatory requirement that all graduating students take their credentialing exam and remain loyal to the organization result in more credentialed HIM professionals?
Short term, yes. Students did what they had to do to graduate. But at the end of that 1st year when the renewal notices came in the mail, very few renewed their credentials.
Was it because they were angry at being forced to do it in the first place?
No – it was because the credential was irrelevant for them, and had nothing to do with what they were contributing in the workforce and the world. And this trend is continuing downward as new college programs that teach the foundational concepts are emerging without an affiliation with the credentialing organization (which means more people than me are seeing this trend and acting on it).
There’s a lesson here that echoes the cautions of Ernest Holmes in the last century. He insisted that “Infinite Truth was not the exclusive property of any special group of people”. He was also stern in his push back against those eager at the time to create a formal organization:
As the organization took form, however, Ernest made it clear that the founding of the Institute was not intended to promote Religious Science as a cure-all religion. He would not allow anyone to regard the Science of Mind message as infallible. “Religious Science is shorn of dogmatism, freed from superstition, and open at the top for greater illumination, unbound and free,” Ernest said.
SOM archives
Unbound and free.
Open at the top for greater illumination.
Ernest Holmes would have encouraged students of the Truth principles that he taught to explore the world; to engage with other philosophies and test the veracity of the SOM postulates. He would have encouraged collaboration, exploration and the integration of other streams of spirituality in the consideration of the principles he put to pen and paper.
There’s nothing unbound and free in “you must remain loyal to this organization“.
There’s no greater illumination possible if it’s “this is the company line that you adhere to, …or else” (especially in the “or else” – implied or explicit).
The definition of the dogma Holmes specifically warned against is evident when the hierarchy begins to marginalize and speak negatively about those who wander off the prescribed path and speak the Truth through their own, perhaps slightly different, lens.
Truth principles hold that “there is enough for everyone“. Insisting on loyalty to an organization “or else” is a lack mentality, and had no place in Ernest Holmes’ emerging philosophy and has no place in the New Thought of the 21st century.
We are better than this. And I look forward to seeing that better side expand beyond the fear and lack that I have heard too much of over the past few years. And so it is.
(C) 2019 Practitioner's Path
The past few weeks in my life have been hectic. I work a full-time job, and teach classes (mostly software training) regularly at the local community college. In addition, I was recently approached for consulting work with another college.
With a schedule like that, I have narrow margins for “life blips“, which are – well – part of life! My mother recently had some health issues and was hospitalized for a number of days. This altered my usual weekly schedule and provided me some time to sit and think.
When I get stressed from being over-scheduled, I am tempted to complain; but I know that I am blessed to have such “problems” and quickly remember how truly grateful I am for all of them.
The nature of my work over the years has afforded me the opportunity to work with groups of people who are seeking career changes or simply trying to find a job. It is sobering work.
Any time that I am tempted to feel miserable about an over-scheduled week, I recall the faces of people I’ve met over the years who became frequent flyers at local job fairs. Many of them mid-career professionals, a good number had, at one time, been employed in solid and well-paying jobs that they left for some reason. They may have faced illness – of themselves or a family member – and had to leave their job for a time. Others were downsized or caught up in a layoff.
Some folks were trying to re-enter the workforce after borrowing money and slogging their way through a degree program, just to find that being a new graduate at 45 is a whole different ballgame than it is in your early 20’s. Regardless of the story, I know that any one of them would gladly trade their current circumstances for a hectic week juggling multiple, paying jobs.
Working with unemployed and underemployed mid-career job seekers, I have felt their desperation, and heard the resignation and doubt in their voices after repeated dead-end interviews. I have provided a sympathetic ear as they spoke about the salaries they once made and hope to again achieve and I have watched as they eagerly practiced elevator pitches and interview skills with recruiters half their age.
I hope that along the way I have provided good advice and encouragement that was useful to them. Something they don’t know is that they have provided me with a powerful life lesson. I know that regardless of how insane my life may seem at times, I am blessed beyond words.
No matter who we are, or what we are experiencing – in the midst of the hectic pace, the insane schedule, the exhaustion, the ridiculous demands whatever it is that we are complaining about (to ourselves or out-loud) – there exists, always, the opportunity for a “gratitude adjustment”.
Think about the things in your life that inspire the most complaints. Now, consider the other side of the coin: can you think of other people who would be happy to carry that burden, due to all the benefits that are also a part of the package?
When we can stop, look around and appreciate what may seem to be burdens, we will very often find that they are in fact blessings. Once we realize this, we are well on our way to experiencing true abundance in life. And so it is.
(C) 2019 Practitioner's Path
The word Karma is thrown around casually in today’s culture. Although the textbook Hindu definition is often not applicable to the circumstances where the word is applied, most of us get the general gist of things: what goes around, comes around.
While the concept of karma is most often referenced in context of the Hindu tradition, there is actually biblical text that echoes this Vedic truth in the Christian text’s book of Matthew.
23 “Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. 24 As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand bags of gold[h] was brought to him. 25 Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.
26 “At this the servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ 27 The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.
28 “But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins.[i] He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded.
29 “His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it back.’
30 “But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. 31 When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged and went and told their master everything that had happened.
32 “Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. 33 Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ 34 In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.
35 “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”
Matthew 18:23-35
There are references to Karma in some form in Jainism, Sikhism, Buddhism and Falun Gong (Asian-origin religions) as well as Hinduism, and as highlighted above – in Christianity. There are also many references to the concept in Judaism. Consider the following.
Mishnah Pe’ah 8:8
Whoever does not need to take [gifts for the poor] but takes, will not die of old age until he becomes dependent on people. And whoever needs to take but does not take will not die of old age until he supports others from his own. About him it is stated: Blessed is the person who trusts in HaShem, then HaShem will be his security. [Jeremiah 17:7] And similarly, a judge who renders a true judgement according to its truth. And anyone who is neither lame, nor blind, nor crippled, but makes himself as one who is, will not die of old age until he becomes like one of them. As it is stated: He who seeks evil, it shall befall him. [Proverbs 11:27] And it is further stated: “צדק צדק תרדוף– Justice, justice shall you pursue.” [Deuteronomy 16:20] Similarly, any judge who takes a bribe and perverts judgment will not die of old age until his eyes grow dim. As it is stated: You shall not take a bribe…for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise, etc. [Exodus 23:8; Deuteronomy 16:19]
Mishnah Pe’ah 8:8
When the same or similar concept is repeated across cultures and time, it’s a good idea to sit up and pay attention. Whether we are using the term according to textbook definition or not, the concept of karma is something we need to pay attention to, or suffer the consequences.
I know that “karma” is very real and have witnessed it – in my own life, when I’ve not been wise – and in the lives of others when they’ve been intentionally mean to others, and to me.
The general concept of karma needs to be better understood and more widely taught in society. It’s an ancient principle and one that, sadly, many are missing in their basic understanding of the human experience.
Imagine what a nicer overall experience living in this world could be if everyone – especially those in positions of power and policy-making – would take heed of these ancient truths, and act accordingly.
“… anyone who is neither lame, nor blind, nor crippled, but makes himself as one who is, will not die of old age until he becomes like one of them. As it is stated: He who seeks evil, it shall befall him.”
Imagine what could be if this was the concept pondered before every political decision or legislative act… (“You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one!”). And so it is.
(C) 2019 Practitioner’s Path
